Contemporary Western Penology Issues Research Paper

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Nowadays, it is becoming increasingly clear to social scientists that the traditional tenets of modern penology, closely associated with the notion of rehabilitation through punishment, are being conceptually inadequate, due to the sheer ineffectiveness of today’s penological practices. The validity of this statement appears especially self-evident when discussed within the context of how contemporary American jurisprudence addresses a variety of operational challenges. As Lorna Rhodes had rightly pointed out in her article “Toward an anthropology of prisons”: “In the United States today almost two million people are in prison. The expansion of the prison system began in the early 1980s, continues despite years of falling crime rates, and has resulted in the highest rate of incarceration in the world” (Rhodes, 2001, p. 65). Thus, it comes as no surprise that, as time goes by, the number of criminologists who insist on the methodological revision of contemporary Western penology, continues to increase rather exponentially.

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Their stance, in regards to the subject matter, is being articulated in Malcolm Feeley and Jonathan Simon’s article “The New Penology: Notes on the emerging strategy of corrections and its implications”: “The new penology is neither about punishing nor about rehabilitating individuals. It is about identifying and managing unruly groups. It is concerned with rationality, not of individual behavior nor even of community organization, but of managerial processes. Its goal is not to eliminate crime but to make it tolerable through systemic coordination” (Feeley & Simon, 1992, p. 452). Apparently, the revolutionary breakthroughs in the fields of biology and anthropological sociology, which had taken place during the course of recent decades, point out the fact that, while designing penal policies, criminologists can no longer be concerned with the observation of politically economic considerations alone. As time goes by, it is becoming increasingly clear to progressive criminologists that; whereas, it is absolutely appropriate to think of penology within the context of social engineering, the very practice of such engineering must be thoroughly revised, in order to correlate with the realities of post-industrial living. In our paper, we will to explore this thesis at length.

For professionals that specialize in criminology, it represents a matter of crucial importance to be able to understand that the essence of a particular penological practice cannot be discussed outside of objectively existing preconditions, which make this practice socially appropriate. The best proof as to the full validity of this suggestion is the fact that, throughout the course of Western civilization’s history, the concept of corporal punishment never ceased continuing to transform, in order to correspond to newly emerged socio-political and economic circumstances. For example, before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, which predisposed the emergence of such concepts as ‘mass production’ and ‘total war’, the punishing of a criminal was usually concerned with the infliction of physical pain or with the disposal of this criminal altogether.

Nevertheless, after the establishment of secular nation-states in the early 19th century, even criminally minded individuals were beginning to be perceived by policy-makers as representing a certain ‘human capital’, which is why, during the course of the 19th century, the concept of penal punishment was transformed from being concerned with punishing the ‘body’, into being concerned with punishing the ‘mind’. In its turn, this coincided with the legitimization of the concept of penal imprisonment, in the contemporary sense of this word – after having ‘done’ time in jail; convicted criminals were expected to turn back into productive members of society, who could be consequentially utilized as laborers or soldiers.

According to Michael Foucault, who in his book “Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison” had referred to the concept of imprisonment as ‘emanation of power through discipline’, the emergence of highly structuralized penal codes in Western countries was socio-economically predetermined: “Discipline acts to make the body docile, to produce a body that can be manipulated, shaped, trained, which obeys, responds, becomes skillful and increases its forces” (Foucault, 1979, p. 136). The continuous industrialization of Western countries had established a set of objective preconditions for these countries’ penal codes to be increasingly concerned with rehabilitation, as opposed to being solely concerned with punishment, simply because in the society that undergoes the process of industrialization, ‘human resources’ are being in particularly high demand. Thus, throughout the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the rehabilitative function of the Western penitentiary was quite consistent with the dominant socio-political discourses, as defined by Foucault.

Nevertheless, the fact that in the second part of the 20th century, Western socio-political realities were becoming increasingly post-industrialized (reflected in the shift from industrial manufacturing to producing technologies), had undermined people’s beliefs that a particular individual represents ‘human capital’ by the mere fact of its existence. Nowadays, it is namely individual’s rate of IQ, which defines his or her chances of social advancement more than anything else does – 90% of the world’s milliards, which had made their fortunes during the course of last few decades, are so-called ‘self-made men’, who were able to benefit from the rapid progress in the field of informational technologies.

Such our observation has a direct relation to this paper’s subject matter – nowadays, there are no socially predetermined preconditions for policy-makers to base their penal-related philosophies upon the assumption that the imprisonment of convicted criminals may serve any rehabilitative purpose, whatsoever, simply because, suppressing criminal’s anti-social urges by sentencing him or her to time in jail, will not result in such individual beginning to represent social value, in the post-industrial sense of this word. In a post-industrial society, one’s ‘body’ has no value (apart from containing organic transplants), but only ‘mind’. And yet, the way in which conventional penology goes about ‘reforming’ criminal’s mind, is essentially depriving this mind of those psychological qualities that may come in particularly handy, within the context of an individual striving to deal with the challenges of urban living – intellectual flexibility and perceptional tolerance.

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During the course of the industrial era, all that was needed from convicted criminals to qualify for rehabilitation, in the eyes of law enforcement authorities, was his willingness to conform to socially imposed rules and regulations. And, the best way to assure such willingness, on the criminal’s part, was subjecting him to the prospect of his time in jail being prolonged, in case he continued to exhibit socially-inappropriate attitudes, while imprisoned. In his book “The future of imprisonment”, Norval Morris provides us with rather a sarcastic outlook on what the traditional concept of ‘rehabilitation through punishment’ was all about: “The dreamers of that day (19th century) foresaw prisons as a place for contemplation on a misguided life. Violators were to be redeemed by Bible reading and esoteric thinking on the nature of man in an atmosphere removed from their peers” (Morris, 1984, p. 45). However, time served in jail hardly results in an inmate beginning to expand its intellectual horizons. On the contrary – the longer an inmate stays in jail, the more he becomes associated with the values of rural (pre-industrial) living – tribal solidarity, ritualistic religiosity, racial intolerance, etc. And, above all – such an individual becomes convinced that the application of direct physical violence is the only effective way to address life’s challenges, simply because social realities of penitentiary confinement are essentially the same with social realities that exist within the pack of primates.

Just as it is the case with apes, while ‘doing’ time, inmates become solely preoccupied with ensuring their dominance over other inmates on a full-time basis (an additional proof as to full validity of evolutionary theory) – this is exactly what helps guards to maintain order in jail. For as long as guards do not actively intervene in the lives of prisoners, they remain in control. As Gresham Sykes had rightly noted in his book “The society of captives: A study of a maximum-security prison”: “It is a paradox that guards they can ensure their dominance only by allowing it to be corrupted” (Sykes, 1956 [2007], p. 58). In his article “The corruption of authority and rehabilitation”, the same author provides us with the insight into the concept of penal rehabilitation as being conceptually fallacious, in its very core: “Insofar as the prison inmates manage to destroy the guard’s role as an impersonal enforcer of the rules, the path is opened for a host of beliefs and attitudes which negate the approval or disapproval of legitimate society” (Sykes, 1956, p. 261). The fact that the proper functioning of Western post-industrial societies is concerned with continuous observance of the principle of legal/perceptional impartiality, on the part of its members, removes even a slight probability for criminals who have served time in jail to be able to rehabilitate and to reintegrate into these societies. The reason for this is simple – while being imprisoned, people learn to assess surrounding reality through the lenses of tribal kinship, which is especially the case with representatives of racial minorities. This is why; today’s Western prisons can be the least referred to as ‘places of rehabilitation through punishment’, but rather as ‘academies of crime’. As it has been rightly noted by Australian author Paul Donatiu in his article “Towards a restorative model of criminal justice”: “To attempt rehabilitation in an environment that is oppressive, often violent and totally isolated from the community, will never realistically provide individuals with the skills they need to become productive members of our communities. It is unrealistic for the community to maintain the expectation or perception that the prison experience will rehabilitate individuals” (Donatiu, 1992, p.32). Those who believe in otherwise, are dreamers.

In its turn, this undermines the conceptual legitimacy of the Western penitentiary system, as it has ceased being associated with the notions of justice and rehabilitation while being turned into yet additional instrument of society’s atomization along racial, religious and cultural lines. Given the fact that the governmentally sponsored policy of multiculturalism denies even a slight probability for an individual’s tendency to commit a crime to be reflective of particulars of his or her biological constitution, it comes as no surprise that, as of today, jails in Western countries have been effectively transformed from the places of rehabilitative punishment, into the places of social exclusion, where criminally-minded elements are being held for as long as possible (often without being formally charged), so that their absence on the streets would allow police officers to report personal progress, on the way of combating crime, without having to face the accusations of racial profiling. In the same article from which we have already quoted, Paul Donatio states: “Aboriginal people constitute 13% of our prisoner population in Queensland, but only 2.2% of our total state population” (Donatiu, 1992, p.32). Given the fact that Australian penology continues to be concerned with rehabilitation, just as it is the case with penology of other Western countries, it comes as no surprise that since 1992, the rate of representatives of ethnic minorities’ overrepresentation in Australian jails has increased. In his article “Criminal justice in Australia”, one of the most prominent Australian penologists, Peter Norden states: “Because of the sterile environment of prisons, both intellectually and physically, it’s hard to overstate the harm done to the individual there. Almost without exception, imprisonment means that a person deteriorates” (Norden, 1999, p. 15). Thus, the concept of ‘rehabilitation through imprisonment’ can no longer be thought of as even formally appropriate.

It is important to understand that, while appearing extra egalitarian and multicultural on the outside, the actual essence of neo-Liberalism (dominant political ideology in the U.S., Britain and Australia), is intolerantly individualistic. Apparently, ‘progressive’ politicians’ wishful dreaming does affect the process of designing socio-political policies in these countries, but it does not change the fact that the concept of post-industrial urban society implies a high degree of existential autonomy, on the part of its members – quite inconsistent with highly communal existential mode of representatives of racial minorities. As it has been rightly suggested in Michael Cavadino and James Dignan’s book “The penal system: An introduction”: “The general ethos – of the culture, or ideology – of neo-Liberalism is one of individualism rather than communitarianism or collectivism
 The economic system creates much material inequality, and this results in the social exclusion of many people who find themselves unable to participate to any great extent in civil, political and social life” (Cavadino & Dingan, 2007, p. 86). This is exactly the reason why, as time goes by, more and more jails in the U.S., Britain and Australia are being turned into nothing short of racially secluded ghettos, behind the barbed wire (as opposed to city-ghettos), out of which one simply cannot escape – and yet, mainstream Media in these countries never cease on reporting continuous progress on the way of ‘multiculturalization’.

Such our observation validates the conclusion of Jeff Yates and Richard Fording’s study “Politics and state punitiveness in black and white”, in which authors have proven that Western penology’s adherence to the principle of impartiality is being purely formalistic: “State punitiveness does not appear to be driven by governmental responsiveness to mass ideology, at least as measured in the aggregate. Instead, our findings suggest that states’ use of imprisonment is tied to the ideological tenor of the elite political environment and politicians’ electoral incentives” (Yates & Fording, 2005, p. 1118). Given the fact that representatives of political establishments in Western countries are overwhelmingly White, the high incarceration rate among these countries’ non-White citizens does not come as a particular surprise.

Thus, it would only be natural to come to the conclusion that the utter ineffectiveness of contemporary Western criminological theories, when applied in practice, reflects the metaphysical dichotomy between these theories’ conceptual (pre-industrial/industrial) premises and highly technological realities of post-industrial living. In its turn, this implies sheer inappropriateness of application of emotionally charged notions of conventional (read Christian) morality, within the operational framework of contemporary penology and criminology.

For example, much advertised ‘war on drugs’, conducted by George W. Bush during his time in Presidential office, could not possibly result in the reduction of drug-related crime rates, simply because politicians who came up with the idea of this ‘war’ lacked the basic knowledge of sociology, biology, and psychology. For people who do possess this knowledge, however, it is perfectly clear that applying restrictive measures, within the context of trying to combat drug abuse, is doomed to failure, as the number of potential drug addicts in every particular society is static and approximately equals 20%-25% of total population (the same applies to sociable high mammals, such as primates). Therefore, it is impossible to mechanistically reduce the number of these drug addicts by subjecting them to harsher criminal punishments – if anything; it would put their lives at even greater risk because then, they would be more prompted to experiment with surrogate drugs.

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What can be done though, is identifying citizens who have been hooked on drugs and those who are about to get hooked, and providing them with the ‘dose of high’ in the safety of the hospital’s environment – thus, putting drug barons out of business. The same ‘managerial’, rather than ‘punitive’ approach could be utilized by law enforcement while dealing with gang-related violence. Instead of trying to arrest the members of competing gangs, the representatives of law enforcement should simply be adding to the intensity of territorial and financial disputes between gangsters, so that they would be more likely to kill each other off and consequently, to benefit society by their absence. After all, it represents well-established practice, with Western countries’ secret services, to intentionally add to the intensity of inner disputes between Islamic countries – by doing it; these services ensure the continued well-being of Western societies.

As criminologists are well aware, all crimes can be generally divided into ‘premeditated’ and ‘unpremeditated’. The bulk of unpremeditated violent crimes is being committed by individuals clearly incapable of suppressing their animalistic urges, which substantiates the validity of the so-called ‘born criminal’ concept, formulated by the founder of Positive Criminology, Cesare Lombroso. Despite the fact that hawks of political correctness refer to the methodological framework of Positive Criminology as ‘unscientific’, the recent breakthroughs in the field of genetics, point out the concept of ‘born criminal’ as being fully legitimate. In her article “Criminal man rediscovered”, available on the website of Humanities & Social Sciences Online, Isobel Williams states: “He (Lombroso) first hypothesized that the tendency to commit the crime was mirrored in the physical characteristics, or physiognomy, of the criminal, including such factors as race and color… As gene research advances, some behavioral traits that were designated as learned are being cast into doubt and reclassified as innate when taken together with environmental factors” (2007). However, once we accept the validity of a ‘born criminal’ concept, then we would have to admit that the very fact that conventional penology is being concerned with such issues as guilt, recidivism, rehabilitation, etc., makes it utterly irrelevant, in methodological context of this word.

Similarly, the fact that premeditated crimes (especially the so-called ‘white-collar crimes’) are being primarily committed by individuals capable of planning of their actions a few steps ahead of time, leaves no doubt as to these criminals’ high rate of IQ. And, as psychologists are aware of – the higher a particular individual’s rate of IQ, the more he or she would be likely to disregard conventional dogmas of morality and social appropriateness. Therefore, just as it is the case with ‘born criminals’, the application of ‘rehabilitation through punishment’ penal concept to highly intelligent but nihilistically minded criminals, appears to be deprived of any sense, whatsoever. Thus, it appears to be only a matter of time before ‘punitive’ penology would be replaced by ‘managerial’ penology – the laws of historical progress are dialectically predetermining such eventual replacement.

The conclusions of this paper are being consistent with the paper’s initial thesis:

  1. The very expectation that, while spending time in jail, a convicted criminal will be able to ‘straighten out’ – thus becoming rehabilitated, is utterly fallacious, due to the fact that jails in Western countries had been turned into the ‘academies of crime’ a long time ago
  2. The realities of post-industrial living render many classical notions of conventional penology utterly outdated.
  3. The emergence of innovative penological methodologies likely coincides with the time when the concept of multicultural egalitarianism in Western countries will be declared socially counterproductive and when these countries’ Christian lobby will be deprived of instruments of affecting the design of socio-political policies.

Bibliography

Cavadino, M. & Dingan, J. (2007) The penal system: An introduction, (4th ed.), London: Sage Publications.

Donatiu, P. (1992). Towards a restorative model of criminal justice. Social Alternatives, 11(3), 31-33.

Feeley, M. & Simon, J. (1992). The new penology: Notes on the emerging strategy of corrections and Its implications, Criminology, 30(4), 449–474.

Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Vintage Books.

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Morris, N. (1984). The future of imprisonment. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Rhodes, L. (2001).Toward an anthropology of prisons. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30(5), 65-83.

Sykes, G. (1956). The corruption of authority and rehabilitation, Social Forces, 34(3), 257-262.

Sykes, G. 1956 (2007) The society of captives: A study of a maximum-security prison, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Norden, P. (1999). Criminal justice in Australia. America, 180(21), 15-16. Print.

Williams, I. (2007). The criminal man rediscovered. Humanities & Social Sciences Online. Web.

Yates, J. & Fording, R. (2005). Politics and state punitiveness in black and white, The Journal of Politics, 67(4), 1099-1121.

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