lecture 2 - adaptation and punitive control Flashcards
4 key criticisms of garland
- exaggeration of similarities between US and UK
- the end of rehabilitation?
- the normalisation of high crime rates?
- determinism and apocalyptic theories
how does garland exaggerate similarities between US and UK?
- lethal violence
- mass imprisonment and capital punishment
- plural cultures of control (e.g. european countries)
what criticisms are there about garlands idea of the end of rehabilitation?
- the ‘what works’ agenda in the early 2000s
- restorative justice
- his ‘rose-tined’ view of penal welfare era
what criticisms are there for the normalisation of high crime rates?
- falls in crime since mid-1990s
- state still promises crime control
what criticisms are there for determinism and apocalyptic theories?
- self-fulfilling prophecies
- lack of policy agenda
what are the 4 complex and contradictory tendencies in crime control?
- welfarism
- justice
- managerialism
- populism
what makes up welfarism? DIRT
Diversion
Intervention
Rehabilitation
Treatment
what makes up justice? JIP
Just deserts
Individual rights and responsibilities
Proportionality
what makes up managerialism? PEEV
Performance
Efficiency
Effectiveness
Value for money
what makes up populism? PCT
- public opinion
- common-sense
- toughness
define managerialism - mclaughlin 2013:260
- a set of governmental knowledges, techniques and practices which aim to fracture and realign power relations within the core agencies of the cjs in order to transform the structures and reorganise in a cost-effective manner the processes of both funding, delivering and imagining criminal justice
what is managerialism a core theme of?
a core theme within the adaptive strategies of crime control highlighted by garland 2001
managerialism is used as a broad term covering a range of similar ideas including what 3?
3 new things
- the new penology - feeley and simon 1992
- new public management - hood 1991
- new criminologies of everyday life - garland 2001
what 3 categories make up the old and new penology
DOT
- discourses
- objectives
- techniques
what discourses make up the old penology?
- rights, responsibilities, intent, guilt, blame, just deserts
- pathology, diagnosis, rehabilitation/ treatment
- moral or quasi-medical language
what discourses make up the new penology?
3 types of language
- actuarial language - statistics, probability, risk
- managerial language - business, costs, efficiency, output
- neutral, technical language
what 3 objectives make up the old penology?
- delivering justice
- crime control
- reforming offenders via rehabilitation
what objectives make up the new penology?
- assessing and managing risk
- reducing harm
- improving efficiency
- providing value for money
- achieving performance targets
what techniques make up the old penology?
- just deserts - sentencing tariffs, guidelines, grids
- probation centres, supervison etc
- diversion schemes
- employment skills training
- cognitive behavioural therapy
what techniques make up the new penology?
- statistical techniques
- actuarial modelling
- risk assessment instruments
- new technologies e.g. electronic tagging
- new public management
- privatisation, contracting out
what is new public management (hood 1991)?
- associated with neoliberal reforms of inefficient, centralised public sector bureaucracies
- importation of private sector mentalities/ methods into public services
- citizens re-configured as consumers
- specialist managers
- applied first to other public services, from 1990s on, increasingly apparent in criminal justice
what are new forms of criminological reasoning about crime and punishment (garland 2001)?
- criminologies of everyday life
- assumptions of the rational offender, weighing up costs and benefits of actions
- focus instead on reducing opportunities for offending, manipulating the environment to increasing the risk/ reduce the potential rewards of crime ‘target hardening’
- hugely influential in policy terms in the USA and in E and W
define populism - bottoms 1995 definition of populist punitiveness
populist punitiveness = intended to convey the notion of politicians tapping into and using for their own purposes, what they believe to be the publics generally punitive stance
define populism - roberts et al 2003 - penal populists
penal populists allow the electoral advantage of a policy to take precedence over its penal effectiveness
- in short penal populism consists of the pursuit of a set of penal policies to win votes rather than to reduce crime or to promote justice
what are the key elements of the punitive turn?
- growth in severity of sentencing - mass incarceration, growth in prison population
- focus on rebalancing cjs away from protecting the right of the defendant, and privileging the victim
- public attitudes to punishment - general survey evidence suggests punitive public views
- re-emergence of emotive and ostentatious punishments
- political rhetoric, media influence and soundbite politics
hough and roberts view on a punitive public
- low levels of public knowledge about crime
- high proportions of the public over-estimate the proportion of crime accounted for by serious violent and sexual crimes
- high proportions of the public think crime is rising rapidly
- low levels of public knowledge about and confidence in sentencing and criminal justice institutions
- lenient sentencing seen as a key cause of increasing crime
- the UK public appears to be significantly more punitive in their attitudes than those in other european countries
examples of emotive and ostentatious punishment
- community service
- house arrest - tracking ankle bracelet
- public announcement of your crime - sex offenders list
- chains
examples of political rhetorics and emotive soundbites
-‘prison works’
- ‘three strikes and you’re out’
- ‘honesty in sentencing’
- ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’
-‘megans law’ ‘sarahs law’
- ‘zero tolerance’
what difference between rhetoric and reality is important?
important to remember that there is often a difference between what is said (rhetoric) and what is real and/ or done (reality)
empirical paradox of punitive crime policy and democracy - lacey 2007
‘and here we encounter one of the most troubling empirical paradoxes of contemporary democratic criminal justice
for the fact is that, in many countries, criminal justice policy has been driven in an exclusionary direction with - perhaps even because of - popular and hence literally democratic support’
