Lecture two: Adaption and Punitive Control

Question 1

What are the Key criticisms presented?

Answer 1

1. Exaggeration of similarities between UK and USA
   - Lethal violence
   - Mass imprisonment and capital punishment
   - Plural cultures of control
2. The end of rehabilitation?
   - ‘What works’ agenda in the early 2000s
   - Restorative Justice
   - Rose tinted view of penal-welfare era
3. The normalisation of high crime rates?
   - Falls in crime since mid-1990s
   - States still promises crime control
4. Determinism and ‘apocalyptic’ theories
   - Self-fulfilling prophecies
   - Lack of policy agenda

Question 2

What are the four complex and contradictory tendencies in crime control?

Answer 2

1. Welfarism – Focus on rehabilitation, diversion, intervention, and treatment
2. Justice – Emphasis on proportionality, just deserts, and individual rights/responsibilities
3. Managerialism – Prioritizes efficiency, effectiveness, performance, and value for money
4. Populism – Driven by public opinion, common sense, and calls for toughness

Question 3

What is managerialism in the context of crime control?

Answer 3

Managerialism refers to a set of governmental knowledges, techniques, and practices aimed at realigning power relations within core criminal justice agencies. It seeks to transform structures and reorganize processes (funding, delivery, and conceptualization of justice) in a cost-effective way.
(McLaughlin, 2013:260)

It is also a core theme in the ‘adaptive’ crime control strategies identified by Garland (2001).

Question 4

What does the term managerialism cover?

Answer 4

▪ The ‘New Penology’ (Feeley and Simon 1992)

▪ New Public Management (Hood 1991)

▪ New criminologies of everyday life (Garland 2001)

Question 5

What are the key differences between the ‘Old’ and the ‘New’ Penology?

Answer 5

Old Penology:

• Focuses on justice, blame, rehabilitation
• Uses moral or medical language
• Techniques include sentencing, probation, therapy

New Penology:

• Focuses on risk management, efficiency, performance
• Uses actuarial and managerial language
• Techniques include risk assessment tools, electronic tagging, privatization

Category | Old Penology | New Penology |

Question 6

What is the new public management? (Hood 1991)

Answer 6

• Associated with ‘neo-liberal’ reforms of ‘inefficient’, centralised public sector bureaucracies
• Importation of private sector mentalities/methods into public services
• Citizens re-configured as ‘consumers’
• Specialised ‘managers’

Question 7

What were the new forms of criminological reasoning about
crime and punishment (Garland 2001)

Answer 7

• 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
  England & Wales

Question 8

What are the key elements of the Punitive Turn?

Answer 8

• Growth in severity of sentencing
• focus on rebalancing criminal justice system away from protecting the rights of the defendant, privilege of the victim
• public attitudes to punishment: general survey evidence suggests punitive public views
• Re-emergence of ‘emotive’ punishments

Question 9

What is a punitive public?

Answer 9

• 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.