Book review: Confronting Penal Excess: Retribution and the Politics of Penal Minimalism
| Author | Steve Collett |
| DOI | 10.1177/0264550520934332b |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
300
Probation Journal 67(3)
describing traumatic childhood experiences, she discusses the dilemma of
remaining objective but also human (p. 31). There is a tendency however for the
author to accept at face value what she is told and I found some of the accounts
given unconvincing. Perhaps this reflects my own lack of understanding of the
researcher’s role, but from a practitioners point of view, I was uncomfortable
about the lack of challenge to what the author was sometimes being told. The
clearest example of this was the following: ‘The intent to persist in offending was
not always deliberate. In fact, only two individuals in the sample expressed a
strong commitment to reoffend, which highlights that a very small proportion of
prisoners maintain a conscious intent to harm’ (p. 154.). I would also have been
interested to know how the author as researcher, dealt with the ethical dilemma,
when one of the participants reported having ‘consensual’ sexual relations with a
female officer (p. 45).
Kazemian is illuminating about some of the distinctive cultural and historical
characteristics of the French criminal justice system. For example, ‘in order to
ensure equality before the law’ (p. 18), the French government refrains from
publishing official prison statistics on diversity, an omission that seems shocking at
a distance. Kazemian points out that the unintended consequence of this is that it
‘prevents the detection of discriminatory treatment on the basis of ethnicity, race or
religion’ (p. 18). She also usefully discusses the mixed results on the use of con-
jugal visits and makes interesting comments about the role of financial restitution.
The French Prison Study is a largely self-reported account of the experience of
long-term prisoners, both during custody and post release, its strength is that it
provides some of these individuals with a voice that would otherwise remain
unheard. The theoretical and methodological material covered will be of value
and interest to academics and perhaps policy makers, but probably less so for
practitioners.
Confronting Penal Excess: Retribution and the Politics of
Penal Minimalism
David Hayes
Hart; 2019, pp. 238; £49.50; hbk
ISBN: 978-1-500991-797-6
Reviewed by: Steve Collett, Editorial Board Member, Probation
Journal
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