Penal Welfarism Research Articles

Disciplinary welfare and the punitive turn in criminal justice: Parallel trends or communicating vessels?

When it comes to the relationship between social policy and penal policy, existing scholarship often focuses on the penal–welfare tradeoff, according to which countries with large and generous welfare states tend to have lower incarceration rates and less harsh treatment of offenders. We know much less about the relationship between the punitive turn in criminal justice and the use of discipline within social policy. Has there been a parallel trend of law-and-order policies and stricter benefit conditionality, a kind of ‘criminalization’ of welfare beneficiaries, as critical scholarship suggests? We test this idea for the first time with quantitative data, using public spending on public order and safety and unemployment benefit conditionality data for 18 rich democracies between 1990 and 2012, that is, the period when a punitive turn as well as the rise of activation and workfare is said to have taken place. Contrary to the critical literature, we do not find evidence of parallel trends toward more discipline in both areas, but rather a negative relationship of ‘communicating vessels’, where a greater use of disciplinary tools in social policy is associated with stagnating or even shrinking spending on police and prisons. Moreover, this pattern tends to emerge under conditions of higher welfare state generosity. These findings have important implications about the role of state ‘discipline’ in contemporary policymaking.

Strong Control and Weak Service: Enforcing Drug Treatment in China

The proliferation of drug treatment services, crafted under harm reduction and evidence-based principles, is touted as a benevolent approach for drug offenders, foregrounding their rehabilitation and reintegration into the community, and embodying the ideal of penal welfare. Despite extant studies on the functional effectiveness on recidivism among drug offenders, little research has situated the operational significance of drug treatment programs within a broader project of the Chinese state’s efforts to govern a rapidly modernizing society. To bridge this gap, this study examines the implementation of drug treatment in the Chinese justice system by unravelling the processes and logics that assemble strong control and weak service in practice. The analysis suggests that Chinese drug treatment programs both reflect and reinforce the state-centric logic of the Chinese approach to social governance, functioning to enhance the state’s legitimacy and strengthen its capacity for social control. We contend that when state interests and political ideologies are prioritized over drug offenders’ recovery, concerns and needs of drug offenders are downplayed and the rehabilitative effectiveness of those programs is diminished. Future research and policy implications for ameliorating drug treatment programs are also addressed.

The limits of criminal justice reform: an analysis of elite rhetoric in four cities

Abstract As the coronavirus pandemic swept the nation in 2020, many emphasized that carceral spaces were hotspots for the virus, leaving Black and Brown people especially vulnerable to infection. In combination with other critiques of racism in the carceral state, these observations created pressure to decarcerate, especially on the political left. How did political elites discuss the carceral state in this changed atmosphere? To answer this question, we analyze rhetoric in public statements across four liberal metropolitan areas during the spring and summer of 2020. In these statements, we find a long-standing discourse of racially paternalist penal welfarism, retrofitted to pandemic times and accompanied by a distinction between “deserving” and “undeserving” criminals. Accommodating portrayals of incarcerated people as vulnerable to COVID-19 and in desperate need of care, this pattern of rhetoric positioned the carceral state as a protector in order to justify continued incarceration.

Gendering the carceral web: Public sector reform, technology and digital (in)justice

The UK government's Transforming Our Justice System agenda represents an emerging system of penal governance. Its cumulative impact, manifested through the mainstreaming of virtual hearings, a system of automatic online convictions and the Single Justice Procedure is a story yet to tell, with the potential impact on marginalised women simply a footnote. Such women, well-documented victims of the legal aid cuts as well as the digital divide, must comply with and negotiate the requirements of the carceral web alone. Pursuance of the reforms, representing the next instalment in the neo-liberal justice agenda, exposes another example of life at the penal–welfare nexus. This precarious territory has burgeoned since government-imposed austerity, with implications for self-criminalisation, net-widening and social justice. Reforms couched in the language of ‘efficiency’ and ‘common sense’ are likely to run in direct opposition to what marginalised women might need (or respond well to) and may jeopardise official reductionist strategies.

Rehabilitation within pre-crime interventions: The hybrid criminology of social crime prevention and countering violent extremism

Criminological literature frequently argues that the rehabilitative penological paradigm of the 20th century (‘penal welfarism’) has been replaced by pre-crime, risk-based, ‘new penology’. Under the conditions of social and economic neoliberalism, it is claimed, the commitment to rehabilitating individuals has been withdrawn. In this article, we explore the curious persistence of rehabilitation—enacted within crime prevention and countering-violent-extremism programmes. We show that rather than ‘new penology’ replacing ‘penal welfarism’, the history of social crime prevention programmes demonstrates the presence of a ‘hybrid penology’. Here, rehabilitation was brought into the pre-criminal space and practised upon pre-delinquents. This pre-emptive rehabilitation of at-risk subjects pervaded preventive policy in both Western Europe and the socialist Former Yugoslavia. In both case studies, this logic of pre-crime rehabilitation then transferred into the counterterrorism sector—with ideological dissidence identified as the threshold for reform-oriented intervention. Rehabilitation remains with us, warped by the turn to pre-emption.

Penal Welfare or Penal Sovereignty? A Political Sociology of Recent Formalization of Chinese Community Corrections

In this study, we address two observed gaps in existing accounts on Chinese community corrections (hereafter CCC): 1) lack of multilevel understanding of this penal institution’s local variations in a highly centralized penal regime; 2) inadequate scrutiny of political logics of, and the authoritarian state’s significance in, its recent formal introduction. Those limits may inhibit adequate understandings of state power and punishment in an authoritarian polity like China. To that end, we argue for a multilayered and hybrid conceptualization of CCC as an assemblage of penal welfare and penal sovereignty to understand CCC’s formation and function. Fracturing the holistic entity of CCC, our study challenges the approach to viewing it as a system of singular logics and unifying structure, and contrasts three modes of operational practices across localities—bureaucratic, professionalization, and technology-dominant models. Moreover, our analysis of its political functions suggests that in effect penal sovereignty subjugates penal welfare within contemporary Chinese penality. Far from heralding the full-fledged rise of Chinese penal welfare, this legal formalization represents a space created for the authoritarian state to penetrate political ideologies, and to reclaim, consolidate and exercise sovereign power through managerial penal strategies in a rapidly developing and differentiating society.

The long history of prevention: Social Defence, security and anticipating future crimes in the era of ‘penal welfarism’

Using a combination of documentary and archival research methods, this article explores the development of Social Defence criminology across the 19th and 20th centuries—highlighting the influence the ‘new’ Social Defence movement had upon the United Nations' and Council of Europe's international crime policy programmes. By exploring the integration of Social Defence within these international programmes, the article is able to challenge several longstanding arguments in Criminology which associate pre-crime and the securitization of criminal justice with the neoliberal era. Social Defence scholars influenced International Organizations to research and disseminate anticipatory mechanisms to identify and reform potential deviants decades earlier than prominent theses suggest. These measures were steeped in the language of security and were oriented towards the prevention of future juvenile crime. The article argues for a reweighing of the influence of Social Defence criminology and against accounts which draw significant divisions between ‘penal welfarism’ and ‘neoliberal penality’.

A double-edged sword: Children’s experiences of visiting a parent in prison in Scotland

Prison visits are recognised as an important feature of a humane prison system, providing important benefits for prisoners and their family in maintaining ties (McCarthy and Adams, 2017). Scotland has a history of penal welfarism and a right-based agenda in relation to visits (McCarthy and Adams, 2017); however, there is a lack of research that focuses on visits in the context of Scottish prisons. Equally, there is limited research that considers the perspective of children visiting a parent in custody. This paper explores the experiences of children visiting a parent in prison in Scotland, highlighting lessons for policy and practice.

Restorative Justice, Crime Victims and Penal Welfarism. Mapping and Contextualising Restorative Justice Policy in Scotland

While the criminological literature is abundant in studies on the functioning and effectiveness of restorative justice, there is a lack of engagement with policy on this subject, in spite of the increasing incorporation of restorative justice into policy frameworks. This paper contributes towards addressing this gap by mapping and discussing Scottish policy on restorative justice. The focus is placed on how policy frames restorative justice around certain problems, subjects and objects, reconstructing their underlying assumptions. Additionally, the paper analyses the cultural and political context within which those representations have emerged. From this perspective, it enhances the legibility of the particularly slow and fragmentary development of restorative justice in Scotland, compared to the rest of the UK. More generally, the paper provides an original (and relevant beyond British borders) case study on the interplay between cross-national and local, cultural and political factors in influencing policy change.

The partisan politics of the penal–welfare nexus: a quantitative analysis of party influence on the relationship between penal and welfare policies

AbstractEvidence of a link between the retrenchment of the welfare state and the expansion of the penal state has sparked a debate about the existence of a nexus. In this study, we critically explore this link by focusing on political parties. First, we argue that welfare and penal policies are likely to follow distinct paths, with left-liberal/green parties pushing for less punitive penal and market-liberal/conservative parties for less generous welfare policy. Second, we only expect a nexus between both policy domains if conservative or “third way” social democratic governments are in power. The former follows a coherent ideology, the latter compensates for welfare retrenchment with tough-on-crime policies. We test these claims quantitatively on a unique dataset covering all changes to welfare and penal legislation in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom and France between 1990 and 2014 and find our expectations supported except conservative influence on the penal–welfare nexus.

Penal welfarism ‘gone global’? Comparing international criminal justice to The Culture of Control

With the consolidation of a cosmopolitan field of international criminal justice, penality has ‘gone global’. In spite of the abundance of doctrinal legal analysis, human rights studies, and transitional justice studies, there are few analytic attempts to engage with the working assumptions, cultural commitments, and dominant mentalities that give shape to international criminal justice as a penal field. Based on ethnographic observations, interviews with key actors, and critical reading of international criminal justice scholarship, this article compares the cosmopolitan penality of international criminal justice to that of late modern, domestic, penality. Using David Garland’s The Culture of Control as an analytic yardstick, it argues that international criminal justice both resembles and departs from ‘the national’. For example, whilst the cosmopolitan penality relies upon retributive justifications, it makes no appeal to harsh penal sanctions; nor is it concerned with the rehabilitation of prisoners. Rather, it is an expressive and humanitarian form of justice where the victim takes central stage – as the embodiment of a suffering humanity. Moreover, there is a remarkable faith in the transformative effects of international criminal justice, resembling a form of penal welfarism ‘gone global’. As national capacity building and penal development has become intrinsic to the project of international criminal justice, the article shows how the global dimension of the power to punish is based on a moralization of politics.

Contesting Probation in Scotland: How An Agonistic Perspective Travels

In this Review Essay, I try to rise to one of the challenges that Goodman, Page, and Phelps pose to other scholars in their book, Breaking the Pendulum (2017). They invite us to explore whether and how well their “agonistic perspective” on penal change travels. In response, I draw on original archival and oral history research on probation history in Scotland to explore their model’s utility in the context of this particular and challenging test case. Although Scotland is often discussed as an anomaly because of a supposed consensus around an enduring commitment to penal welfarism, my analysis reveals precisely the kinds of contestation that Goodman, Page, and Phelps describe. I conclude that their agonistic perspective seems to travel well, at least to this Atlantic edge of Europe, but that scholars in other jurisdictions will need either to undertake or revisit primary research to properly test the model and further refine it.

Help Wanted? A Narrative Look at Penal Welfarism ‘From Below’

This article explores principles of penal welfarism. For a number of years, there has been a wide-ranging debate on the impact of penal welfarism and on its transformation or indeed its possible supersedence. To date, however, discussions have rarely started with those directly affected (‘from below’) and asked how welfarist measures are experienced and perceived by young people who have been charged with or convicted of offences. This is the approach taken here as I focus on young defendants in the context of their trial. The young people describe in detail problematic life stories and personal challenges. However, the majority reject any attempt to label them as cases for education or rehabilitation. Help in the respondents’ view should primarily resolve specific, pragmatic problems, and not interfere with their identity.

Pastoral penality in 1970s Ireland: Addressing the pains of imprisonment

This article aims to deepen and broaden our US- and UK-centric theories and histories of late 20th-century penal transformation. Using oral history interviews with civil servants, archival research and analysis of published documents, this article investigates Ireland’s delayed progressive penal transformation in the 1970s. It challenges the dominant narrative that Irish penal policy was stagnant or merely pragmatic during this period and provides cultural, social and political explanations for Ireland’s changing penal culture. These findings also show the limitations of penal welfarism for sufficiently capturing the character of Ireland’s progressive penal ideas and intentions. The article outlines the concept of pastoral penality as an alternative kind of progressive penal politics. Pastoral penality focuses on the problems of the prison, rather than the problems of the prisoner, who is not viewed as inherently criminal and in need of treatment. Instead they require support in coping with the harms of imprisonment.

Från behandling till hårdare tag? En kritisk analys av högervågsargumentet inom svensk kriminalpolitik

In this article I address the question of whether there has been a punitive turn in Swedish crime policy or not. Since the punitive turn is connected to the downfall of the rehabilitative ideal, and to what David Garland has termed penal welfarism, I make my argument with reference to these phenomena in Sweden. I claim that there were two rationales behind the penal welfare state and the rehabilitative ideal in Sweden: a social liberal rationale built on paternalism and interventionism, and a social democratic rationale built on Marxist class analysis. My argument is that while penal welfarism is still operating in Sweden, the social liberal rationale has been discarded. This means that the social democratic rationale built on Marxist class analysis is now the single dominating force behind Swedish penal welfarism. The argument for a punitive turn in Sweden therefore has no support.

Penal welfarism og norsk sikkerhetspsykiatri, 1895-1940

AbstractThis article presents the early decades of Norwegian forensic psychiatry as a basis for exploring David Garland’s term «penal welfarism». While Garland focuses primarily upon penalties and prisons, I find it relevant to look at a type of sanction not officially defined as punishment according to Norwegian law. Insanity has provided exemption from criminal punishment in Norway since 1842. Yet criminals considered dangerous to themselves or others have been housed in criminal asylums since 1895, which is the same year Garland argues that a transformation in penal strategies occurred in Britain (Garland, 1985).

Brottsprevention i straffvälfärdspolitikens tid – Samverkanstankens historiska rötter

AbstractCooperation between authorities is a central part of present-day crime prevention in Sweden. At the same time, the idea of cooperation has an extensive heritage within Swedish welfare policy. The purpose of this article is to trace the trajectory of crime prevention and in particular the idea of cooperation as a crime policy solution. Dating back to the post-war decades, cooperation between authorities in an effort to tackle youth crime has also been in line with David Garland’s concept of penal welfarism. While Garland mainly focuses on penal institutions and penal law rather than prevention, cooperation in Sweden shares several characteristics with penal welfarism such as the optimistic belief in expert rule and individualized treatment. The professional expertise that colonized the field of criminal justice was an equally prominent feature of how schools would prevent crime. Against this background I also discuss whether or not the concept of the preventive turn is applicable to the trajectory of crime prevention in Sweden. My conclusion is that the development of crime prevention is best understood as a continuous process dating back to the post-war era’s focus on youth crime, as opposed to a break.

Victim compensation: a child of penal welfarism or carceral policies

Abstract SwedishUnder efterkrigstiden förändrades många västerländska länders kriminalpolitik i riktning mot välfärd och rehabilitering. Detta ideal fokuserade gärningsmannen, inte brottsoffret. Detta skulle snart komma att förändras. En av de första initiativ som togs för brottsoffer var brottsskadeersättning, en ekonomisk kompensation som infördes på 1960-talet. Denna artikel jämför utvecklingen av brottsskadeersättningi två länder, USA och Sverige, i relation till deras välfärds- och kriminalpolitik. Båda länderna initierade kompensationsreformer för brottsoffer ivälfärdsinstitutionella kontexter. Med stöd i en jämförande historisk fallstudiemetod visar artikeln dock att kompensationsreformerna i de två länderna skilde sig åt och kom att avspegla respektive lands välfärds- och kriminalpolitik. De första svenska kompensationsreformerna förankrades som en socialförsäkringsfråga, medan deras motsvarigheter i USA snabbt banade väg för mer straffinriktade program.Abstract EnglishIn the post-war period, many Westernized countries advanced toward more rehabilitative and welfarist ideals informing crime policies. These ideals centered on the offending individual, not the victim. This was soon to change. Victim compensation programs were one of the first initiatives taken for victims of crime with the first established in the 1960s. This paper examines and compares the development of victim compensation programs in two countries with contrasting social welfare and penal policies, the United States and Sweden. Both countries developed victim compensation programs located within welfarist administrative institutions, suggesting common penal welfare frameworks and instruments. Using the comparative historical case study method, the study finds that formative victim compensation policies in the two countries differed widely, reflecting social welfare versus remedial welfare policies, and rehabilitative versus punitive carceral frameworks, respectively. Arguments upholding penal welfarist ideals and social insurance concerns underlay the early formation of Sweden’s victim compensation program and anchored subsequent developments while, in the United States, political conditions led to a rapid trajectory in more punitive directions.

Prison visitation as human ‘right’ or earned ‘privilege’? The differing tales of England/Wales, and Scotland

Prison visitation has been widely recognised as an important feature of a just and humane prison system, providing important benefits for prisoners and their family in maintaining ties. However, emphasis on maintaining prisoner–family ties over the sentence has remained a low priority for the prison service in England and Wales, with prison visits ideologically framed as a ‘privilege’ rather than a ‘right’ for prisoners. This paper contrasts England and Wales with Scotland where a diverging approach to supporting visitation and family contact has been implemented. In Scotland, a strong focus on human rights as a justification for these policies has occurred, in tandem with more palatable historical context of penal welfarism. This paper assesses differences between the two governmental approaches to prison visitation, situated in discussion of some of the broader resettlement outcomes which may be garnered via these policy responses.

Confined to Care: Girls’ Gendered Vulnerabilities in Secure Institutions

In Denmark, secure care institutions are gender-integrated and accommodate young people with a wide range of psychiatric and social troubles. The large majority of young people are placed here in surrogate custody, and a minority, mostly girls, are placed here in protective care. Based on a qualitative study of gendered practices and experiences in Danish secure care institutions, this article provides insight into how gender and pathology merge to produce vulnerabilities in care. The study finds that while girls are viewed through a lens of pathology, secure care practices largely fail to provide treatment for girls. Drawing on feminist scholarship on penal–welfare responses to women, I argue that institutional practices contribute to the production of disordered selves and the marginalization of girls in secure care. This demonstrates how welfare provision for the most marginalized girls reproduces and reinforces the inequalities that brought them into secure care. The study hereby supplements an emerging scholarship on how gender underpins penal–welfare responses and interventions.