The case for a postmodern penality

Abstract

Rising prison populations and the return of punitively orientated ‘ostentatious’ forms of punishment (Pratt, 2000) have led a number of theorists to consider whether key defining characteristics of western penal modernity have been abandoned and replaced with something entirely different. The question has been raised: Are we witnessing the rise of a postmodern penality qualitatively different in form than that which prevailed in the modern era? While this question has tentatively been answered in the affirmative by Simon (1995) and, more recently, Pratt (2000), a number of criminologists have argued a contrary case (see Garland, 1995; Lucken, 1998; O’Malley, 1999). There is, they suggest, no such thing as a postmodern penality, or if there is, evidence for it is very slight. Such theorists have also sought to question both the utility and validity of the discourse of modernity and postmodernity as a framework in which to locate an understanding of contemporary penal development. This article questions this critique and does so by addressing the criticisms that have been raised against those who have challenged the validity of this framework of analysis and by reaffirming the case for seeing the rise of certain new penal trends as indicative of an emergent postmodern penality.

CCTV: Beyond Penal Modernism?

“…This article draws upon research conducted for the European Union-funded URBANEYE project 1 to ask how the rapid growth in the use of CCTV in the UK fits in with contemporary debates on the emergence of a 'post modern' penality (Garland 1996(Garland 2001Hallsworth 2002; Lucken 1999;O'Malley, 1999;Simon 1994 …”

Discourses of Mass Probation: From Managing Risk to Ending Human Warehousing in Michigan

“…This is particularly apparent in the U.S. criminal justice system, which experienced a massive expansion in punitive policy in the wake of increases in serious violent crime in the 1960s (Garland 2001). As imprisonment rates exploded in the U.S. and expanded more modestly in some European countries, scholars debated whether we were entering a unique “neo-liberal” or “post-modern” period of punishment, or “culture of control,” defined by an obsessive drive to identify, monitor, and contain risky individuals and dangerous situations (Garland 2001; Hallsworth 2002; Pratt 1997). These accounts share a focus on increasing punitiveness, discourses of individual responsibility and citizens as the “customers” of justice, and a retrenchment of therapeutic or rehabilitative aims.…”

“…The new penology and related perspectives have been sharply critiqued for their characterization of a clean break from penal welfarism to risk management, with scholars arguing that penal practices are instead “braided” (Hutchinson 2006) or “layered” (Rubin 2016), with a “governmentality gap” between broad-scale discourses and local practices (McNeill et al 2009; see also Cheliotis 2006; Goodman 2012; Hallsworth 2002; Hutchinson 2006; McCorkle & Crank 1996; Miller 2001; O’Malley 2000; Phelps 2011; Robinson 2008). Maurutto and Hannah-Moffat (2006) explain this gap through the concept of assemblages, arguing that “new penal technologies combine, merge and continually reassemble risk with other logics in response to various institutional agendas” (439).…”

¿Metamorfosis de la prisión? Proyecto normalizador, populismo punitivo y “prisión-depósito” en Argentina

“…La "criminología del otro" es una "criminología de la guerra" (Young, 1999, 116-117). El "populismo punitivo" articula propuestas y medidas que se presentan claramente como reflejo de esta "criminología del otro", "de la guerra" y en tanto tales, abren el terreno del control del delito a la resurrección de una "economía del exceso", a su "descivilización" (Hallsworth, 2002(Hallsworth, , 20062006a;2006b, 205-268;Pavarini, 2006, 131-133).…”