Prisons - Criminology

Prisons and Imprisonment

Prison Populations

Lacey, Soskice and Hope et al (2017): “Understanding the Determinants of Penal Policy: Crime, Culture and Comparative Political Economy” Annual Review of Criminology

Four main explanatory paradigms that are the key determinants of penal policy:

1. Crime

2. Cultural dynamics

3. Economic structures and interests

4. Institutional differences in the organisation of different political systems and economies

Crime

Counterintuitive idea that crime does not constitute an important determinant of penal policy has assumed prominent position in criminology over the past fifteen years

• Influential scholars arguing that penal policy is driven primarily by political considerations (Scheingold 2010, Western, 2006, etc)

• Supported by studies, e.g. comparing imprisonment rates to homicide rates, which shows imprisonment rates continuing to rise long after the marked decline in violent crime in most advanced democracies from the 1990s on

  • Birkel & Dern 2012, Imprisonment and homicide trends in the US, UK, Germany and Norway 1950 – 2010

But superficial reading of these figures is misleading:

1. Significant time lag between decline in crime and decline in imprisonment: release rates do not correlate to admissions rates, and particularly in system with long sentences, decline in the rate of people sentenced will take a considerable time to show up in imprisonment rate (Pfaff 2012)

   1. Relevant measure should not be imprisonment rate, but rate of change in that rate

2. Factor of race:

   1. Reiner 2007: in relation to England and Wales, correlation between crime, and public perceptions of crime, and punishment is complex

   2. Crime is not the only factor that shapes penal policy via political concern

   3. Best evidence and analysis currently available support the view that crime rates, public levels of concern about crime, and politician’s perceptions of these factors are important determinants of penal policy (Garland 2001, 2017)

Economic Forces

Rusche & Kirchheimer’s Punishment and Social Structure 1968:

• Punishment plays a structural role in regulating labour

  • Capitalist economy: punishment operates not only to underpin the regime of private property rights but also to discipline a reserve army of labour – to govern social marginality

  • So expect to see punishment rise during times of unemployment and lower rates of punishment in times and places marked by high rates of employment

• Punishment has a clear ideological function in legitimising the capitalist system, construing conduct often produced by the injustices of capitalism as moral wrongs deserving of censure and sanctions

Drawback: monocausal nature of the theory; likely that economic factors are not the only factor involved.

Institutional Structure of the Political Economy

• Structural economic conditions within the context of changing technology regimes set key parameters for policy-makers and prompt conditions for crime and for the development of cultural attitudes and attachments

  • Seen in the immense social and economic transformation of advanced societies in the past half century – transition to information era

• Lacy (2008, 2010, 2012): argued that the structure of electoral competition in winner-take-all systems like England Wales and the US tends under certain conditions to produce “law-and-order arms race” between the two parties

• Liberal economies like US and UK are more likely to create surplus of labour, with less economic intervention and investment

How do market economies influence criminal justice?

• Structure of the political system affects the capacity to build coalitions capable of providing support for long-term investment in institutions, such as the welfare state, the education system and criminal justice intervention

• Shape of the political system affects the ways in which perceived anxiety about crime or insecurity register in the electoral process

  • In first-past-the-post systems like the UK, it is a typically adversarial and individualistic political culture

In liberal market economies with majoritarian electoral systems, the unmediated responsiveness of politics to popular opinion in the adversarial context of a two-party system makes it harder for governments to resist a ratcheting up of penal severity wherever key voters become concerned about crime

Conclusions

• Comparative political economy model, with its close attention to institutional particularities and their concrete shaping of incentives, provides the most promising framework in terms of bringing these insights together

• Comparative political model can help to explain

  • The production of crime patterns and responses to them

  • The way in which cultural factors are filtered and countered or reinforced in particular settings

  • The ways in common economic shocks are refracted differently and produce varying incentives to actors and groups in differently configured political systems

Cavadino and Dignan, “Penal Policy and Political Economy”, 2006

Globalisation has not led to global homogenisation of penal policy and practices

• Study of penal systems in 12 contemporary capitalist countries (US, England, Australia, NZ, SA, Germany, Netherlands, France, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Japan)

• Authors demonstrate that political economies of such countries can be broadly categorised as:

• This categorisation is strongly related to the punitiveness of the penal culture and the rates of imprisonment found in each country

• Crucial factor for this association may be the degree to which societies with different types of political economy are “inclusive” rather than “exclusive” towards deviant individuals

Private prisons: in their interest to have high prison population, provides business of incarceration

Market business between private companies

Building of prison will bring employment opportunities to the local area

Recall to prison – compliance with community orders, indeterminate sentences dependent on parole board for release, increase in such sentences...