Book review
| Author | Peter Raynor |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20662203221115919 |
| Published date | 01 August 2022 |
| Date | 01 August 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book Review
European Journal of Probation
2022, Vol. 14(2) 169–174
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/20662203221115919
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejp
Book review
Ian Cummins. (2021) Welfare and punishment: from thatcherism to austerity. Bristol: Bristol University
Press, pp. 172.
Reviewed by: Peter Raynor, Swansea University and University of South Wales, UK
This book is about the impact of neoliberalism on welfare and penal policy. The authoroffers a
well-detailed account of how the adoption of neoliberal ideology by political elites in Britain
and the United States has led to erosion of the welfare states established after the Second World
War to meet social needs and theirgradual r eplacement by more punitive penal systemswhich
mainly punish the poor. This argument is familiar from the work of such writers as Loic
Wacquant, who is frequently cited in this book (for example, Wacquant 2009); what
Cummins’s account contributes is a full explanation of the parallel evolution of welfare cuts
and penal excess, together with its ideological underpinnings such as negative stereotyping of
the poor. One minor criticism (in addition to very occasional typos, like Wolff for Woolf)is that
Charles Murray’s‘underclass’theory is frequently cited, but never really explained: a fuller
account of Murray’s arguments, and the evidence against them, would have strengthened the
main themes of the book. Even without this, the argument is well made, particularly in relation
to Britain; after all, it was a British Prime Minister who told us in 1987 that ‘There’snosuch
thing as society’. Some complexities are, however, arguably understated: for example,
Governments obsessed with reducing public expenditure and rolling back the size of the state
will sometimes aim to keep prison numbers stable to save money, and even try to reduce the
cost of policing. More often, however, we see growth in imprisonment and increases in police
powers. If the poor are thought to be undeserving of welfare, they are also thought to need the
discipline of a harsh penal system to maintain order. The essential link is individualism:
neoliberalism argues that the rich deserve their wealth through their individual merit, ignoring
the role of social advantage in helping them to succeed. For the rich to feel that they deserve
their wealth, it is necessary to see the poor as deserving their poverty through their individual
failings. Blindness to the social contexts of poverty also blinds us to the social contexts of
crime, and the consequences are less help and more punishment.
What would be welcome here is a causal account of offending to clarify its connexion
with poverty. For example,we know that poverty plays a role in many offences, butalso that
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