Book review: Philip Goodman, Joshua Page and Michelle Phelps, Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle over Criminal Justice
| Date | 01 November 2018 |
| Author | Jamie Buchan |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895817719785 |
| Published date | 01 November 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Book review |
research-article2017
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2018, Vol. 18(5) 647 –648
Book review
© The Author(s) 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895817719785
DOI: 10.1177/1748895817719785
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Philip Goodman, Joshua Page and Michelle Phelps, Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle over
Criminal Justice, Oxford University Press: New York, NY, 2017; 219 pp.: 9780199976065,
£16.99 (pbk)
Reviewed by: Jamie Buchan, Edinburgh Napier University, UK
The pendulum – with its regular, mechanical movement between extremes – is an intui-
tive metaphor for thinking about the process of penal change, and popular in undergradu-
ate teaching. However, this provocative new book argues persuasively that the metaphor
has outgrown its usefulness – and that it advances a mechanical, homogeneous version
of penal change which distorts historical fact without explaining why penal systems
change dramatically in particular ways and at particular times.
Chapter 1 proposes instead a theoretical approach previously developed by Goodman
et al. (2015) – an ‘agonistic’ framework with three key axioms: that penal change results
from struggle between various types of actors, that these struggles are constant and con-
sensus often illusory, and that these struggles are affected in complex ways by larger
social developments. Plate tectonics – a process in which apparently ‘settled’ terrain hides
gradual, constant shifting, with occasional climactic reorientations – is convincingly
advanced as an alternative metaphor.
The next four chapters apply this approach sequentially through the history of
American imprisonment, beginning with the ‘penitentiary era’ between the Revolutionary
and Civil Wars (Chapter 2) and continuing through the Gilded Age and Progressive era
(Chapter 3), the post-war ‘heyday’ of rehabilitation (Chapter 4) and the...
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