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Week 3a Readings
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Week 3a: The Culture of Control
Reading:
The pervasive control that has come to characterize corrections, other components of the criminal justice system, and society is discussed in detail in Chapters 2-8 of Garland’s 2002 text Culture of Control. Garland builds a framework in which political, economic, social, and criminological/criminal justice policy changes that have occurred since the 1970s can be understood. Thus, the other readings for this week, which discuss various policy changes that have taken place since the early 1970s, can be placed within Garland’s broad framework. For example, Cullen (Chapter 6 in Latessa et al.) assesses the penal harm of the decline in penal welfarism/the 20th Century Rehabilitative Ideal, focusing on the negative effects the imprisonment binge (an effect of the culture of control) has had on racial minorities and the current inability of policy makers to embrace rehabilitative efforts that are shown to effective (via empirical tests/evaluations) in treating offenders/reducing recidivism.
Chapter 1 of the Culture of Control (2002) text was discussed last week (Week #4) in conjunction with readings focusing on penal theory. What follows is a broad outline of Garland’s main ideas that are presented in Chapters 2-8 of his 2002 text. Other readings for this week will be introduced and discussed where appropriate.
Prior to the 1970s, a penal welfare state pervaded the correctional enterprise. Penal welfarism can be equated with many aspects of the 20th Century Rehabilitative Ideal (see Chapter 8 of Blomberg & Lucken, Week #2 readings). Garland notes that many theories and methods characterized penal welfarism (eclecticism/multi-disciplinary); furthermore, he notes that many ideals/goals of penal welfarism never played out in reality. Many of these discrepancies are discussed in previous readings; furthermore, examples relevant to the 20th century prison are discussed in Chapter 3 of Johnson’s Hard Time: Understanding and Reforming the Prison. Johnson details the ideals and goals of the reformatory of the early 20th century, the big house prisons of the 1930s, and the correctional institutions of the 1940s and 1950s. The ideals/goals, not surprisingly, embodied reform of the offender; however, the reality was often characterized by physically painful punishments, oppression by officials, and psychological pain that was rarely acknowledged and addressed by officials.
In spite of this disappointing reality, there was a hegemonic acceptance of the ideals and goals of penal welfarism/the 20th Century Rehabilitative Ideal, as many officials and administrators within the system supported penal welfarism; furthermore, many social elites, experts, as well as public and political figures supported the penal welfarist agenda(s). Yet, the 1970s saw a dramatic change in ideological and theoretical orientation, as many actors turned against penal welfarism. Why did this shift occur? Garland notes several key pieces of research (i.e., the Martinson report, to be discussed in Week #9) served to aid in the shift from an ideology and respective regimes that had established such a strong practical hold on Western penal thought since the early 20th century. Furthermore, criminology was changing as a discipline, as the critical school of thought was emerging. Garland surmises that this perspective paved the way for other critiques, such as that of penal welfarism, to emerge. Shifts outside the realm of criminology include social changes, such as the rise in number of working women, increased media coverage of crime and crime-related stories, the growth of suburbia, and a decrease in morality. The politics of the 1980s reacted to this with a return to market principles and a moral revival. This shift is discussed in Chapter 12 of Blomberg & Lucken’s American Penology.
The shift from penal welfarism provided society with several predicaments, including high crime rates, limits of the criminal justice system, and the myth that the state is sovereign and thus has a monopoly on crime control. These predicaments caused politicians and administrators to adapt with the implementation of management styles that highlighted professionalization/rationalization, the privatization of services, the redefinition of success (output highlighted, NOT outcome), a focus on the victim and citizens fear of crime, as well as a focus on community mechanisms and how such mechanisms can support the CJS (i.e., components of the communities, such as neighborhood watches, that could aid community policing efforts). Furthermore, during the 1980s, intermediate sanctions were developed and implemented in communities throughout the United States. This movement is discussed in Chapter 12 of Blomberg & Lucken.
In essence, new regimes and their respective social importance have been adapted to the structures that have been central to Western punishment/reform for the last 250 years. As stated above, the current system has expanded to include the community, and this sector has been instrumental in prevention and security efforts (hence, external social control is increasing). In turn, the criminal justice system is experiencing a decline in autonomy. This decline is exacerbated by politics and revenge-oriented law (i.e., Megan’s Law, three-strikes laws) used in practice today. In sum, rehabilitation has been redefined (or perhaps discarded, as some may argue), the prison has been reinvented, individualized treatment strategies (Chapters 6-8 of Blomberg & Lucken) have been rebutted, and new varieties of classical theory have emerged. These frameworks, such as the neoclassical perspectives of rational choice theory and the routine activities perspective, are discussed in Chapter 12 of Blomberg & Lucken.
Garland’s concluding chapter (Chapter 8) provides and excellent summary in the context of his framework developed in Chapter 1. He equates the recent change in crime control to other social changes, such shifts in the view of the lower class, as the poor are seen as left behind/neglected in today’s economically and technologically advanced society. Specifically, the poor are to be controlled while the freedoms of the middle and upper class are to be protected (i.e., tax cuts for the wealthy). Garland states that the future should not been seen as inevitable after considering the evidence for a culture of control, as politicians and policy makers do have the ability to make informed and responsible decisions. However, the selection by Blumstein (Chapter 11 in Punishment and Social Control) can leave the reader with misgivings, as Blumstein concludes that the future holds little promise given the current state of sentencing policy in the United States. However, the “iron cage” can, and must, be escaped if we would like to avoid social and political costs and the mistakes currently being made by criminal justice decision makers (i.e., innocent people being sentenced to death). Citizens must work together and not rely on coercive, centralized state control. Several of these principles can be discerned in the selection by Garland in Blomberg & Cohen’s Punishment and Social Control (Chapter 2). Specifically, Garland highlights the shift to penal postmodernity through his discussion of points that can be found throughout his 2002 text Culture of Control. |