Book Review: Imaginary penalities, Pat Carlen (ed.). Cullompton: Willan, 2008. 368 pp. £25.00 (pbk). ISBN 9781843923756. £58.00 (hbk). ISBN 9781843923763
| Author | Barry Vaughan |
| Published date | 01 January 2010 |
| Date | 01 January 2010 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1462474509341162 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Nevertheless, this is still a valuable book. It conscientiously traces the scope of the
presumption and gives a timely warning about its condition today. Modern lawyers are
schooled in the view that the presumption is the cornerstone of our criminal justice
system. Few question this view or even feel the need to defend it. This intellectual
laziness among legal professionals facilitates the ongoing assault on this supposed corner-
stone so ably described in this book. No doubt many will be shocked to discover the
extent to which this assault has succeeded. By offering a defence of the presumption of
innocence Claire Hamilton has sounded a call to arms. This is perhaps the greatest
virtue of her book.
Notes
1 Book of Genesis 18: 23–32.
2 [1935] AC 462, 481.
3 [1966] IR 501, 513 (per Walsh J).
4O’Leary v. Attorney General [1995] 2 ILRM 259.
Reference
Blackstone, William (1979/1769) Commentaries on the laws of England, Book IV.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
Conor Hanly
National University of Ireland, Galway
Imaginary penalities, Pat Carlen (ed.). Cullompton: Willan, 2008. 368 pp. £25.00 (pbk).
ISBN 9781843923756. £58.00 (hbk). ISBN 9781843923763.
DOI: 10.1177/1462474509341162
Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said that if you get on the wrong train, running down the
aisle in the opposite direction really doesn’t help. It is this sense of frenzied futility
that Pat Carlen is trying to capture in this edited collection based on the theme of
‘imaginary penalities’. According to Carlen, the genesis of this term arose from observ-
ing how the original rehabilitative ethos of a prison had been fundamentally altered.
Staff could not envisage any possibility of prisoner re-integration thanks to external
obstacles. They therefore modified various indices of success to encompass activities
happening within the prison rather than have them refer to events outside such as
gainful employment. Yet staff were unwilling to consider how these amendments
subverted the original raison d’être of the prison and were unwilling to advertise them
to the judiciary. And the social environment of prisons, enveloped in a haze of public
alarm about the alleged threats posed by offenders, demands disproportionate action
that leeches energy from rehabilitative hopes. Carlen labels this reaction against possible
harms ‘risk-crazed governance’ which through its very excess fosters the harms it claims
to deplore.
Carlen admits that there is nothing novel about institutions being unable to fulfil
their mandates. Indeed, there is growing research literature on what have been termed
‘perpetually failing organizations’ that manage to survive despite serving no obvious
PUNISHMENT & SOCIETY 12(1)
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