These notes cover 4 main blocks:
1. Garlands key themes
includes penal welfarism
conditions of penal welfarism - theoretical, social and political
policy predicaments
2. punishment
includes sentencing
probation
punitive control
managerialism
prisons
the death penalty
3. policin...
Portfolio assessment 70% - 2 questions, question 1 compulsory and connected to sem 1, question 2,
choose one from sem 2,3, or 4. Portfolio planning session Week 9.
Multiple choice exam 30% - In person, all questions are from throughout the module. Week 10 mock
multiple choice exam.
BLOCK ONE
Lecture 1 – 31/01/23
Gartland- Key Themes
History of the present:
‘Penal Welfarism’ 1800s to 1970
- Rehabilitation of offenders is the main concern of the penal system – support them re
educate the and ‘fix them’
- There was a political consensus that you could rehabilitate people – something that both
political parties agreed with
- Penal experts were listened to and taken seriously – only taking on board what works for
them (politicians) selecting experts to fit their visions
- Held up by relatively low crim rates and social and economic features of the 20 th century
- Post ww2 less young men around (stat commit more crime) – had a sense of community
cohesion ‘all in this together’
- Rested on a particular version of society at the time
Transformation to a culture of control 1970 onwards
- High levels of crime – this led to people feeling insecure
- People lost faith in rehabilitation and penal experts due to the spike in crime (bit of a moral
panic)
- Policy predicament -
- Contrasting responses to populism and managerialism
- Underpinned by high crime rates, community breakdown, individualism and unemployment
Populism- political approach that is aimed at ordinary people who feel their concerns are
disregarded by elite groups.
Era of Penal Welfarism (1945-1970)
Key characteristics
- A rehabilitative ideal as a core principle of the penal system – people are able to be fixed
- Faith in the criminal justice system and its experts
- Limited influence from politicians
- public opinions on the penal policy was not important
- General political consensus on crime and punishment – both agreed that it generally worked
- A belief in the efficacy of state crime control
, - Introduced special custodial reforms – specialist courses or sessions to find out why people
did what they did and tried to fix them from this
- Indeterminate sentencing – not sure how long rehabilitation will take so there were no
sentences set
- Children should not be treated the same as adults – not put in the same pond as adults or
treated in the same way
- Penal sanctions stressed reinterrogation of offenders
Foundational Conditions of Penal welfarism
Political and economic conditions
‘Welfare capitalism’ – economic management and social policy put in place to combat problems of
inequality – eg. Poverty, bad health, poor education, poor housing.
Keynesian economics – primary goal was full employment and wanted to takle inequality, poor
education, poverty, poor health and housing.
Social conditions
- Stable or falling crime rates
- Full employment
- Stable family structures - Families and communities were stable and cohesive
- United communities
- Women went back into the home after being in work during the war when their men came
home
- Low divorce rates
Theoretical conditions – dominant ways of thinking about crime
- Positivist theories of crime causation eg. Strain theory, social disorganisation theory
- Outside factors determine whether people commit crime
Transformation post 1970 – a culture of control
12 indices of change:
- Decline in rehabilitative ideal – no longer accepted as widely
- Re-emergence of punishment sanctions and expressive justice
- Change in the emotional tone of crime policy
- Focus on the victim
- Public protection
- Politicisation and populism
- Reinvention of the prison
- Transformation of criminological thoujgnt
- Expanding infrastructure of crime prevention and community safety
- Civil society
- Commercialisation of crime control
- New management styles and working practices
- A sense of crisis
Political conditions
The attack on welfare capitalism: Neoliberalism and the New Right
, Neo-liberalism- pro capitalist economic theory which believes that the free market is the best way of
organising society, no interference in the free market economy from the government, if it fails so be
it. Meritocratic idea ‘if I succeed its because I worked hard.’
- Conservative dominance and the reintervention of the left
- Economic liberalism
- Moral authoritarianism
- Rolling back the state into minimal
Margret thatcher’s era was the first time you saw someone including crime control in their
manifestos…
- Increase use of prisons
- Zero tolerance initiatives
- Politicisation of crime and punishment
The role of the mass media
Social Conditions
- Unemployment and economic recession – decline in industry
- Changes in family structure – historic hights in divorce 1980, decline in the nuclear family,
before staying where you were now moving away from home for jobs school/new life.
- Social and spatial mobility- the eroding of community, people no longer knew their
neighbours and the people around them
- New middle-class insecurity – no longer believe in rehabilitation as it is much closer to home
- Rapidly rising crime rates
Theoretical conditions
- Then aetiological crisis- nothing works (martinson 1974), rehabilitation doesn’t always work,
it also costs lots of money as it is intensive
- The challenge of critical criminology, kept an eye on structural causes but didn’t last long
- Criminiologies of everyday life – risk management and rational choice theories – minimising
risk and opportunity for people to commit crime
- Criminologies of the other – the dangerous other – separating ‘normal everyday crime’ to
the exceptional heinous crimes.
LECTURE 1- part 2 (garlands culture of control)
Policy Predicaments in crime control
- High crime rates where a normal social fact – its just the way it is
- The limits of the criminal justice state and the myth of sovereign crime control – it cannot
guarantee everyone’s security, Private acknowledgement that they can’t do it even though its their
job.
- The public demand expects the state to ensure crime control and security but the state can’t
deliver.
Schizoid ‘state strategies: a split personality’ – one hand (STRAT A) is the reassurance from the gov
to the public (dealing with extreme criminals)
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