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The New Punitiveness: Trends, Theories, Perspectives by J. Pratt, D. Brown, M. Brown, S. Hallsworth and W. Morrison (Eds.)

2007; Wiley; Volume: 46; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1468-2311.2007.00457_4.x

1468-2311

Roger Matthews,

Cullompton : Willan ( 2005 ) 346pp . £45.00hb ISBN 1-84392-110-3 £22.00pb ISBN 1-84393-109-X This is an interesting and provocative collection of articles. Like most collections it is uneven, but there are enough good quality contributions in this collection to make it required reading for anyone interested in making sense of recent developments in crime control. The title, however, is a little misleading and should really have a question mark after it. As it stands, the title The New Punitiveness suggests that the book will include contributions that will map out in some detail recent examples of punitiveness in its various forms. Thus one might have expected that the book would focus on the growth of prison populations, the use of mandatory and determinate sentencing, increases in the length of sentences, the use of boot camps and supermax prisons, zero tolerance and all of the different measures which have become associated with punitiveness. Although there is an element of such an approach in the book there are also a number of articles which either stress other ‘non-punitive’ developments or are critical of the notion of ‘punitiveness’ and argue that it fails to capture some of the more significant developments of crime control policy which have surfaced in recent years. For me the book falls into three sections. The first includes various articles that accept that there has been a ‘punitive turn’ in recent years, although they may disagree about the nature and intensity of this turn. Second, there are a number of contributions that either question the notion of ‘punitiveness’ or demonstrate that punitiveness does not typify the major changes which are taking place in different countries. The third section involves a general discussion of theories of social control and social change which are mobilised to help explain recent changes. The lead article in the first section is by Loic Wacquant who presents his, now familiar, thesis that the decline of welfarism and rise of neo-liberalism has resulted in a greater reliance on punitive measures to maintain social order, and that these measures have been disproportionately focused on ethnic minorities. Other contributors to this section include David Brown who outlines the development of penal practices in New South Wales, Lin Hinds who provides an overview of crime control in Western countries between 1970 and 2000, Mona Lynch who writes on supermax prisons and death row in the US, while Roy Coleman and Joe Sim provide a critique of the ‘new penology’ thesis, and although they accept that there has been a marked expansion of punitive policies in recent years, they emphasise that these policies have been resisted and contested. Thus there are differences of focus and emphasis in this section and, with the notable exception of Wacquant, most of these authors express some degree of critical awareness and reflexivity regarding the deployment of punitive policies. Indeed the myopic nature of Wacquant's account becomes increasingly evident when one engages with the various contributors in the second section of the book who either question the ‘new punitiveness’ thesis or demonstrate that the major changes taking place in their respective countries cannot be meaningfully reduced to a surge in ‘punitiveness’. This group of articles is by far the strongest section of the book. The articles by Ulla Bondeson on Scandinavia, David Nelken on Italy, Jeffrey Meyer and Pat O'Malley as well as Dawn Moore and Kelly Hannah-Moffat on Canada, suggest that the changes in policy and practice in these countries cannot be properly understood in relation to changing levels of punitiveness. Meyer and O'Malley's article, which indicatively is entitled ‘Missing the Punitive Turn’, examines the ways in which recent Canadian criminal justice policy contrasts with that of other countries, particularly its neighbour, the USA. Similarly, Moore and Hannah-Moffat argue that, in contrast to the suggestion that penal policy has become more harsh and austere, correctional programming in Canada appears to have taken a step towards what seems to be a more liberalised notion of punishment, by encouraging prisoners to heal themselves and to take on greater responsibility for their own reform. David Nelken, in a characteristically thoughtful piece, both questions the meaning and significance of the notion of ‘punitiveness’ and explains why it is an inadequate concept for understanding the complexities of Italian criminal justice policies, particularly those relating to juveniles. Taking a slightly different perspective, Mike Nellis analyses the recent developments in electronic monitoring and satellite tracking and argues that these developments do not fit into what he calls the ‘punitive-retributive’ discourse with its emphasis on pain delivery, but are better seen as part of a ‘managerial-surveillant’ strategy tied to impersonal notions of efficiency and the monitoring of collectivities. In the third section, four of the five editors offer some reflections on social control and engage in some thoughtful and provocative but ultimately unconvincing theoretical deliberations. Simon Hallsworth explores the links between modernity and punitiveness, David Brown examines the significance of liberalism and neo-liberalism in relation to the development of criminal justice policy, while Wayne Morrison engages in a wide-ranging discussion which examines the issues of power, politics and genocide. John Pratt reworks his Elisian perspective, but as in previous papers, the evolutionary and historicist nature of the Elisean project appears to be more of a constraint than a help in understanding the changing nature of crime control in late modernity. Just as the attempt to reduce the complex and contradictory nature of recent crime control policies to something called ‘The New Punitiveness’ was always destined to fall short of its objective – as this book ably demonstrates – so reducing social history to a ‘civilising’ or even a ‘decivilising’ process, was always going to be inadequate.