In his famous book The Culture of Control from 2001 David Garland
postulates a paradigmatic change in the penal culture of the western
world from the 1970s on. While the postwar decades were characterized by
an optimistic belief in rehabilitation, treatment and individual
prevention, coined penal welfarism, the ideological climate has changed
to an emphasis on punitive sanctions, often of a harsh nature. The
prison population has increased, both in the US and in most European
countries. Garland’s main interest is in describing and analyzing the
new ‘culture of control’. The same is true for other authors interested
in the field. There has been less interest in in-depth descriptions and
analyses of the realities of ‘penal welfarism’ in the 1950s and 60s. Did
‘penal welfarism’ really differ as sharply from today’s ideology and
penal practices as is often supposed? And what, exactly, were the
differences? According to Garland, the rehabilitative ideal was ‘the
hegemonic, organizing principle, the intellectual framework and value
system’ for the practitioners of penal welfare. (Garland 2001:35) In the
1970s, penal welfarism came under heavy critique, which served to
undermine its credibility and prestige, preparing the ground for a
transformation of the field of crime control and criminal justice.
Social changes also played their part in making the old penal paradigm
seem obsolete. Among the defining characteristics of the new penal
paradigm, Garland mentions the decline of the rehabilitative ideal, the
re-emergence of punitive sanctions and expressive justice, the return of
the victim (‘any untoward attention to the rights or welfare of the
offender is taken to detract from the appropriate measure of respect for
victims’), emphasis on protection of the public, politicization and the
new populism (ibid: 8 -13) The new paradigm is also seen, by Garland
and others, as related to the development of welfare policies, which has
taken a more punitive turn as well, from welfare to “workfare”. Welfare
provisions are shrinking, while prisons are expanding. Some authors
(Christie 1993, Wacquant 1999) point to the tendency that imprisonment
and related criminal justice measures are becoming the main form of
control (at least in the US context) of marginalized sections of the
population, who are not needed/useful as part of the labour force.
Garland’s context is mainly Britain and the US. However, his work has
struck a note in several other societies (among them the Scandinavian
countries), where the paradigmatic shift towards a more punitive
criminal justice policy is discernable, if not as marked. The aim of the
proposed Onati workshop is to scrutinize the ‘penal welfarism’ as
concretely as possible. We would welcome perspectives from various
regions and nations, to get varied images of the penal realities of the
50s and 60s. We will also include research on measures and institutions
outside the criminal justice system in a strict sense, if they have
relevance for the broader picture of ‘penal welfarism’. The overarching
question posed will be the following: How and where did penal welfarism
differ in significant ways from what we believe and do today? What are
the continuities? We will explore this overarching question by delving
into the following topics, with today’s ideologies and practices as a
comparative background: • Penal welfarism in the courts. Can welfare
penalism be discerned in the sentences that were passed by the courts? •
Penal welfarism in the prisons. In what way (if any) was penal
welfarism shaping prison regimes? • Penal welfarism and the police. Is
penal welfarism discernible in police practices of the time? • Penal
welfarism, preventive measures and the extra-legal interventions in the
name of rehabilitation, education and treatment. Such interventions were
to a large degree, but not exclusively, aimed at juvenile delinquents.
Do they deserve their bad reputation? • Penal welfarism and the position
of the victim. It is assumed that while penal welfarism concentrated on
correcting and rehabilitating the offender, today support and justice
for the victim has gained a more central place in criminal justice
policy, to the detriment of the offender. What was the position of the
victim in penal welfarism? Is there a gender dimension to this question?
• Penal welfarism is said to have been ruled by professional experts,
while today’s criminal justice policy is shaped by politicians trying to
adapt to the sentiments of a mass public, nourished by the media. Is
this a correct picture? • Penal welfarism and ‘the other’. Today,
immigrants are regarded as a special crime risk. Juliet Stumpf (2006)
has coined the term ‘crimmigration’ to denote the association between
immigration and crime. Did penal welfarism also perceive some groups as
‘the other’, representing a special criminal danger to society? Not only
scholars and researchers, but also many practitioners and politicians
today feel that the punitive and harsh trends create as many problems as
they solve. What kind of criminal policy changes are needed? Could we
learn something from the ideologies and practices of ‘penal welfarism’,
or do they represent a dead end, while the solutions to today’s problems
should be sought elsewhere? This last question will also be raised at
the conference. References: Christie, Nils (1993) Crime control as
industry: towards Gulags, Western style. London: Routledge Garland,
David (2001) The Culture of Control. Crime and the Social Order in
Contemporary Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press Stumpf, Juliet
(2006) The crimmigration crisis: immigrants, crime and sovereign power.
American University Law Reviews, 56 (2), 367-419 Wacquant, Loïc (1999)
Les prisons de la misère. Paris : Raisons d’agir éditions.
