The Politics of Punishment: A Comparative Study of Imprisonment and Political Culture

Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of figures
List of tables
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Introduction
Comparative penology: Conceptual challenges
Ireland and Scotland: Anglophone punitive exceptions
Ireland
Scotland
Comparing penal cultures
Notes
Chapter 2: Comparative penal culture
Introduction
Comparing imprisonment
The sociology of imprisonment
Imprisonment regimes
Political culture
Explaining penal differences: political economy or cultural compulsion?
Comparative framework for the politics of punishment
Cultural sensibilities
Political reasoning
Political culture – a logic of practice
Comparing politics and imprisonment
A methodological note
Oral histories
Archival research
Reading the material culture of documents
Contingent social field of relations
Notes
Section 1: Irish imprisonment regimes and political culture, 1970–1999
Chapter 3: Pastoral penality: Addressing the pains of imprisonment
Political, social and cultural background
Prison developments
‘Ordinary’ imprisonment
‘Subversive’ imprisonment
Political culture
The prisoner of poverty
Sanctity of the flock
Rehabilitation: an ‘approach to living’
Humanitarian sensibilities: shepherding the prisoner through the pains of imprisonment
Nationalism
Pastoral penality
Notes
Chapter 4: Pastoral penality losing ground
Economic downturn and rising violence
The politics of panic and retrograde regimes
Doubling-up
Shedding – a rolling amnesty
Authority under threat
The ‘new hardcore’
Drug addiction
Urban criminality
Gangland crime
The revolving door
Note
Chapter 5: The power to imprison
Ireland: A late moderniser
Political and cultural conflict
Reaffirming pastoral penality
Signal crime
Politicisation of punishment
Expansion of the sovereign state
The underserving prisoner
A new governmental authority
The reinvention of the political apparatus
The promise of prisons
Prisons – preventative detention and deterrence
Prison works: techniques of intervention
Punitive modernisation
The irony of the punitive turn
Notes
Section 2: Scottish imprisonment regimes and political culture, 1970–1995
Chapter 6: The dismissive society: Discipline and exclusion in Scottish imprisonment
Scottish social landscape
Imprisonment in Scotland
Mainstream imprisonment
Long-term imprisonment
Release
Progression: training for freedom
Segregation: the deep end
Political culture
Liberal aspirations
Dangerous places, dangerous prisoners
The feckless and disordered prisoner
Prison: the terminal position
Notes
Chapter 7: Crisis management
New prison problems
Refining care and control
Legitimacy crisis
Note
Chapter 8: Civilising Scottish imprisonment
Progressive penal transformation
Reassessment
The Scottish prison service
The reformed Scottish prison and the responsible prisoner
Nationalism and fear in Scottish prison administration
Civilising imprisonment
Notes
Chapter 9: Conclusion: Comparing the politics of punishment
Comparative summary
Ireland and Scotland: Divergent penal cultures
Comparing the politics of punishment
The political cultural meanings of imprisonment
Punishment as a social institution
Why we punish
References
Index