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This article utilizes the sociology of punishment, particularly the work of Gresham Sykes in 1958, to develop an understanding of the particular pains of police custody for children, drawing on the first comprehensive study in England and Wales to review the police custody process as a whole from the perspective of the child suspect. By identifying the correspondences and contrasts between the experience of adult sentenced prisoners and child suspects in detention, the analysis illuminates the damaging ramifications of harsh custody processes for children, both in terms of their effective participation in the justice process and their ongoing attitudes towards the police.

This chapter explores the promise of another theory of punishment which incorporates certain elements of the deterrence, retributivist, and rehabilitation views, but whose justification for punishment and whose formula for determining what punishment a wrongdoer deserves are distinctive and importantly different from the reasons and formulas characterizing the traditional rival theories. It focuses on the theory’s application to the state’s punishment of criminal offenders and looks at the theory’s implications for punishment within other societal institutions, most notably the family. The chapter shows that this theory is promising, and merits considerably more discussion and study by the larger intellectual community. Philosophers who write about punishment spend most of their time worrying about whether the state’s punishment of criminals is justifiable, so let us begin with that particular issue. Comparing punishments to electrical fences helps to make clear how a certain kind of deterrent message is built into the larger moral point which punishment aims to convey.

Resumo Argumenta-se que a análise da natureza dos regimes punitivos de países do sul global constitui plataforma privilegiada de observação do fenômeno contemporâneo do encarceramento em massa. Não apenas para iluminar o caráter articulado das tecnologias de poder e dos efeitos bumerangue que aproximam padrões de controle da conduta e governo das populações em diferentes formações sociais do capitalismo global, mas, sobretudo, para revelar a própria direção mais geral desses processos. Dessa perspectiva, analisar a experiência brasileira poderia contribuir para especificar o conceito de racionalidade neoliberal e o modo como ele configura o encarceramento em massa, na medida em que a articulação truncada entre gestão autoritária e eficiente do crime e da violência que está na base de processos de criação e reprodução de mercados ilegais e informais no país, com a consequente saturação econômica de sentido de diferentes esferas sociais, anda de par com a adoção de práticas análogas às dos rackets e com a apropriação violenta de recursos econômicos e meios de poder. Abstract The nature of punitive regimes in southern countries is argued to serve mainly as a means to observe the contemporary phenomenon of mass incarceration, not only to clarify the articulated nature of the technologies of power and the boomerang effects that bring together patterns of the control of conduct and government of populations in global capitalism but, above all, to reveal the more general direction of these processes. Thus, analysis of the Brazilian experience could contribute to specify the concept of neoliberal rationality and the way in which it constitutes mass incarceration, insofar as the truncated articulation between authoritarian and efficient management of crime and violence-which forms the basis of processes of creation and reproduction of illegal and informal markets in the country-and the consequent economic saturation of meaning of different social spheres go hand in hand with the adoption of racket-like practices and the violent appropriation of economic resources and means of power.

It is now common in the sociology of punishment to lament that comparative penology has not matured as an area of research. While there have been seminal works in the comparative canon, their conceptual tools tend to be drawn from grand narratives and macro-structural perspectives. Comparative researchers therefore lack concepts that can help capture the complexity of penality within a single nation, limiting the cross-national perspective. Why is this relative lack of comparative refinement still the case? This article investigates this question by looking specifically at penal exceptionalism, a concept central to comparative penology. While punitiveness as a comparative and descriptive category has been critiqued, its converse, penal exceptionalism remains prevalent but undertheorised. Examining exceptionalism reveals that it is not merely the macro-structural approach to comparison that has limited the development of cross-national sociology of punishment, but the Anglocentric assumptions, which are the bedrock of comparative penology. In this essay, I argue that penal exceptionalism versus punitiveness is an Anglocentric formulation. These taken-for-granted assumptions have become so central to the comparative enterprise that they act as a barrier to developing new innovative comparative frameworks and concepts. The article concludes by suggesting some methodological strategies that are intended as a way of helping comparative penology to expand its toolkit and support the ongoing development of more equitable criminological knowledge.

Following the general rise of incarceration rates in Latin America, two general frameworks have been influential in attempting to explain the phenomenon: the neoliberal and the state transformation theses. The article takes the case of Chile, the Latin American model of neoliberal governance, to test the broad explanatory power of both frameworks. By doing so, it shows that the connection with a narrative of substitution has distortive potential. Although the Chilean case does show that investment in state capacity augmentation and output maximization mechanisms did have direct effects on incarceration rates, no change in the project of control through criminal justice can be appreciated. Rather than changing its orientation towards the type of social control it provides for, the system still stands for the traditional Latin American project of control of a large, marginalized population through confinement.

The author analyses the different ways in which the concept of ‘culture’ is currently deployed in the sociology of punishment. Using a distinction first developed by W.H. Sewell Jr, he distinguishes two usages of the concept—culture as an analytical dimension of social relations (‘the cultural’) and culture as a collective entity (‘a culture’). The theoretical issues and problems entailed in these two usages are discussed and several pragmatic solutions proposed. The author argues that analytical accounts of ‘the cultural’ should be regarded as artificial (though necessary) abstractions. Descriptive ethnography, discourse analysis and textual explication ought to be viewed as components of historical or sociological explanation, not as substitutes for explanatory analysis. The author argues for the integration of cultural analysis into the explanatory project of a multi-dimensional sociology of punishment., O autor analisa as diferentes maneiras pelas quais o conceito de “cultura” é atualmente empregado na sociologia da punição. Utilizando-se de uma distinção primeiro empregada por W. H. Sewell Jr., distingue dois usos do conceito – cultura como uma dimensão analítica de relações sociais (“o cultural”) e cultura como uma entidade coletiva (“uma cultura”). As características e problemas envolvidos nesses dois usos são discutidos e diversas soluções pragmáticas são propostas. O autor defende que narrativas analíticas do “cultural” devem ser tomadas como abstrações artificiais (embora necessárias). A etnografia descritiva, a análise de discurso e a explicação textual devem ser vistas como componentes de compreensão histórica ou sociológica, não como substitutos de uma análise compreensiva. O autor defende a integração da análise cultural em seu projeto de compreensão de uma sociologia da punição multidimensional.

The peace agreement recently concluded between the Government of Colombia and the farc-ep not only marked a milestone in the history of Colombia and peace making; it also introduced an unprecedented penal measure: negotiated criminal punishment. This example demonstrates that criminal punishment can be moulded to accommodate the needs of a society undergoing a political transition triggered by a peace negotiation. In the 1990s Garland already pointed out that penal measures are shaped by their social and historical context, and also affect their social environment. Based mainly on a sociological perspective on punishment, this article analyses the relationship between the punishment negotiated in the recent peace talks with the farc-ep and the Colombian government’s trying to come to terms with atrocities committed during the armed conflict. Based on the Colombian experience, this article also outlines contextual factors, which shape how punishment is negotiated in the context of peace agreements

The field of punishment theory promises to deal with the question of whether state punishment can be justified and on what grounds. In this field, punishment is rarely conceptualized as imprisonment. Even in the more practical subfield of sentencing theory, the realities of prison conditions rarely appear. Legal actors borrow the vocabulary of punishment and sentencing theory, proceeding as if theories speak to and justify the practice of imposing custodial sanctions and imprisonment generally. This article tries to explain how the fields of punishment and sentencing theory largely avoid the prison. The question, in a sense, is how a field can evade what is ostensibly its own subject matter. What this critique means is that sentencing authorities and other legal actors should turn away from punishment theory – or should look well beyond its boundaries – when they are thinking through the legitimacy and severity of the custodial sanctions they are imposing and administering.

This article provides an interpretation of the evolution of criminal punishment and prisons in China from an historical perspective. The historical investigation reveals that the current ganhua and paternalistic or fatherly approaches to prison corrections are expressions of an underlying cultural tradition that is deep and abiding. However, the existence of the paradoxical goals of punishment and reformation at the level of the implementation of prison sentences, which can erode the protection of the rights of prisoners, is contingent upon political and legal decisions that can be changed by acts of law and legal reform.

The number of babies in prison could be significantly reduced if the international human rights framework was monitored and implemented. There is a need to engage with sociological analysis to link this macro-level with micro-levelled policy and practice. This article has adapted Foucault’s concept of governmentality to analyse the neo-liberal rationalities of a Ministry of Justice review from England and Wales. The Covid-19 pandemic has led to critical contributions from a range of sources that are trying to protect the public (including babies in prison. In re-thinking imprisonment in the interests of babies, this article argues that the ‘art of government’ has meant that it is taken-for-granted that there is a need for mother and baby units. This article suggests an alternative economic framework is needed as a way forward for activists and criminologists who are actively engaging with the topic of babies in prison.

The neglect of studying the political economy of punishment in social sciences and humanities in transitional democracies may affect the impartiality of science as a whole. This article is devoted to offering the concept of the political economy of punishment, followed by its implications. To this end, analyzing the political economy of Tsarist Russia and the Soviet state would be the point of departure. It is argued that transformation from a command economy to a market-orientated economy in its various manifestation can indeed facilitate the emergence of ‘the surplus’ population, which could possibly be targeted by crime-control policies. It suggests that uncertainty of current economic condition resulted by economic crisis coupled with fractured policy responses against combatting the burdens of a pandemic may cause ‘mobilization’ of the most ‘crime-prone’ strata which would be penalized by tough on crime-control responses., Пренебрежение изучением политической экономии наказания в социальных и гуманитарных науках в странах с переходной демократией может повлиять на беспристрастность науки в целом. Данная статья посвящена предложению концепции политической экономии наказания с последующим ее следствием. С этой целью отправной точкой данной статьи является анализ политической экономии Царской России и Советского государства. Утверждается, что переход от командной экономики к рыночной экономике в ее различных проявлениях может действительно способствовать появлению «избыточного» населения, которое, возможно, может стать маргиналом для политики контроля над преступностью. Это предполагает, что неопределенность текущего экономического положения, возникшая в результате экономического кризиса в сочетании с раздробленными политическими ответами на борьбу с бременем пандемии, может вызвать «мобилизацию» наиболее «склонных к преступности» слоев населения, которые будут наказаны жесткими мерами по борьбе с преступностью.

This chapter considers the lessons that high-profile controversies in parole in England and Wales might provide for our understanding of dominant conceptions of risk and populism in the sociology of punishment. Sparks’ (Dangerous Offenders: Punishment and Social Order. Routledge, London, 2000) earlier examination of risk and blame in a series of scandals facing English prisons in the mid-1990s is utilized as a point of comparison and a methodological sensitizing device: the former in that this provides us with a means by which to consider what might have changed in the two decades separating these high-profile episodes; the latter in that I seek, as Sparks did, to consider what insights these ‘sorry stories’ might provide for penal theory. I thus discuss broader cultural trends regarding the recognition and involvement of ‘publics’—including victims, families, prisoners and others—in penal policy. I suggest that these developments have implications for our understanding of risk and populism, and the dominant theoretical narratives that have tended to accompany conceptions of these terms.

In a recent account of border control, Mary Bosworth introduces the notion of ‘penal humanitarianism’ to describe how humanitarianism enables penal power to move beyond the nation state. Based on a study of international criminal justice, this article applies and develops the notion of penal humanitarianism, and argues that that power to punish is particularly driven by humanitarian reason when punishment is disembedded from the nation state altogether. Disguising the fact of situatedness through claims to the global and universal, international criminal justice is not only a product of situated relations of power, but also constitutes new geographies of penal power. By complicating notions of humanitarianism, penal power and the state, international criminal justice raises interesting questions about the epistemological privilege of the nation state framework in the sociology of punishment.

Los últimos veinte años han visto un notable incremento en la cantidad y extensión de los estudios sobre «el castigo y la sociedad». Junto con esta expansión cuantitativa, también se han presentado importantes desarrollos cualitativos en materia de investigación, análisis e interpretación, muchos de los cuales pueden considerarse avances científicos. Este artículo especifica una serie de dimensiones en que se han mejorado la teoría, el método y los datos en el campo, y a su vez identifica algunos problemas y desafíos continuos. Se utilizan ejemplos de la literatura sobre el surgimiento del “encarcelamiento masivo” y la naturaleza de la “guerra contra las drogas” para dar cuenta del abanico de recursos teóricos que han desarrollado los académicos en este campo, y para relevar algunas preguntas empíricas y teóricas que quedan por resolver. The last twenty years have seen a remarkable increase in the extent and range of “punishment and society” scholarship. Together with this quantitative expansion, there have also been important qualitative developments in research, analysis and explanation – many of which can be counted as scientific advances. This article specifies a number of dimensions along which theory, method and data in this field have been improved and also identifies some continuing challenges and problems. Examples from the literature on the emergence of “mass incarceration” and the nature of the “war on drugs” are used to indicate the range of theoretical resources that scholars in this field have developed and to point to empirical and theoretical questions that remain to be resolved.

The final chapter situates some of the book’s major findings within contemporary resistance towards international criminal justice as global justice. It addresses how current pushback against international criminal justice is not only part of the story of the breaking of the universal and the move towards a multipolar, or a multiregional, system of international relations; pushback is also a result of the unevenness, tensions, and disconnections as revealed throughout the book’s analysis. Criminal justice has materialized transnationally with transnational agents and with ideas of criminal justice as part of a narrative of civilization circulating between borders. Therefore the book concludes by sketching out some key orientations for a sociology of punishment beyond the nation state.

This chapter offers a number of reflections on how an exploration of the functions of electronic monitoring is useful for understanding EM in contemporary cultures of surveillance. The functional analysis inspired by Willem Nagel’s study of imprisonment is presented as a prolegomenon that helps to defamiliarize electronic monitoring, that is, it helps asking questions that ‘…make evident things into puzzles’ (Bauman 1990: 15). Three questions are being addressed in this final chapter: do we have too little or too much electronic monitoring?; is electronic monitoring a failure or a success?; is electronic monitoring Appolonian or Dyonisian?

First published in 1985, Punishment and Welfare: A History of Penal Strategies develops a number of themes that continue to animate the research agenda of today’s sociology of punishment. This essa...

Traditional theoretical accounts in the sociology of punishment largely overlook the situation of crime control and mass incarceration outside Western democracies. In this sense, their explanatory power has a limited reach. It is fundamental to engage with different contexts for expanding the scope of this transdisciplinary field, while also rethinking its foundational canons. By thinking through the global-south, the present argument advocates the development of a decentred perspective to punishment and crime control. In a two-pronged approach, the article argues that peripheral countries have attempted to modernize their criminal justice apparatuses, while social control in Western democracies has increasingly adopted postcolonial features. The aim is not only to expand this scholarship by encompassing more diversity, but also to refine existing accounts through insights from other realities.

The number of life-sentenced prisoners in the United States is growing, an increase that deserves ongoing critical consideration. Such consideration is heightened by the fact that many lifers undergo significant personal transformations during their incarceration. This paper uses interviews with 21 life-sentenced prisoners in the state of Washington to document the degree of such transformations. These transformations create compelling questions for theoretical strains in the sociology of punishment that draw upon the seminal work of Durkheim. Further, those transformations deserve greater consideration as the politics and practices of incarceration continue to unfold in the United States.

Understandings of punishment within the criminological enterprise have failed to capture the nuances associated with experiencing punishment. Moreover, mainstream academic discourses are inherently...

Both scholars and legal practitioners have long theorized that a central function of criminal punishments is to reinforce moral values and, in so doing, symbolically reaffirm the vitality of the shared beliefs that underpin social trust and bonding—or what Durkheim refers to as “mechanical solidarity”. Crime, according to this theoretical scholarship, is a symbol of disconsensus and possesses the potential to trigger a demoralization cascade. Punishment counteracts the demoralizing effect of crime by demonstrating that a consensus remains about the moral boundaries in society and that legal authorities continue to have the motivation and resources necessary to enforce this consensus. Versions of this denunciatory or expressive theory of punishment can be found in the criminological, sociological, and legal literatures. All varieties of the theory share a common feature: to date, they have largely escaped empirical scrutiny. The current study tests this theoretical tradition’s foundational hypotheses using data from a randomized factorial survey experiment conducted with a sample of 5042 Americans. The findings provide no support for expressive theories of punishment. However, the evidence does show that punishment may play an important role in reducing the emotional impact of crime on citizens. Specifically, when the offender is caught and punished it appears to diminish the aversive emotional reactions (e.g., anger) caused by learning that a crime was committed in the first place. Our study suggests that, although punishing crimes may not influence individuals’ social or moral beliefs, it might serve another important function by attenuating potentially criminogenic emotional reactions to crime, such as anger. The sanctioning effect, then, shares similarities with conventional coping mechanisms described in general strain theory.

The argument advanced in this paper is that the motivation to punish relies on punishment producing a kind of solidarity that allows individuals to pursue emotional release together with a sense of belonging, without having to question or address why it is that they felt alienated and insecure in the first place. This raises the possibility that the reason why we believe punishment to be useful, and why we are motivated to punish, is because we derive pleasure from the utility of punishment. Simply stated, punishment pleases. It then analyses the relationship between punishment and solidarity to investigate why and how punishment pleases. We argue that the pleasure of punishment is directly linked to the specific kind of solidarity that punishment produces, which we call hostile solidarity. The paper explores the links between punishment and identity in order to examine the allure of hostile solidarity and then draws implications from this perspective and sets out an agenda for future research.

Latin America has neither suffered the majority of mass atrocities in the contemporary world nor the worst of them but, after a sustained period of transition to democracy, it holds the record for the most domestic trials for human rights abuses. Argentina is an emblematic case in Latin America and the world. Due to the early development of its human rights trials, their social impact and their scale, it has a leading role in what is known as ‘the justice cascade’. Until recently, leading scholars in sociology of punishment have studied the penality of ‘ordinary crimes’ through causally deep and global narratives largely from the perspective of the Global North. State crimes and regional paths of transitional justice have been neglected in their accounts. This paper will question this state of affairs – or ‘parallelism’ – through an exploration of the punishment of both ‘common crimes’ and ‘state crimes’ in Argentina, thus contributing to the growing body of scholarship on southern criminology.