Book Review: Prison Within Society, L. Hazelrigg (ed.), Doubleday, New York, 1968, 536 pp., $8.95; The Tasks of Penology: A Symposium on Prisons and Correctional Law, H. S. Perlman and T. B. Allington (eds.), University of Nebraska Press, 241 pp., $10.60
| Published date | 01 September 1969 |
| Author | P. Wilson |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486586900200316 |
| Date | 01 September 1969 |
186 AUST. & N.Z. JOURNAL Q,F CRIMINOLOGY (1969): 2, 3
students and general readers with a sense
of the cultural relativity of crime and
delinquency. So
faras
unanalysed com-
parative illustrations can provide a step
in that direction, it has an overall ele-
mentary usefulness. But one feels
that
the authors wanted to go further and to
show
that
some order might be brought
into the comparative study of crime and
delinquency if their varieties and incidence
could be tied back to a comparative theory
of social structure.
The first half of the material presented
is in fact organized in terms of some such
framework. It succeeds in surveying facts
and Interpretations of "deviant" behaviour
among Indian, Eskimo and Mexican group-
ings, in the village, village in transition
and city settings. In the primitive village,
the Cavans argue, there is no juvenile
delinquency. The very existence of the
category pre-supposes adolescence as a
transitory stage between childhood and
the full assumption of adult roles; a period
during which the young person "should
not be held fully accountable for crimes
and should have various offences treated
as due to shortcomings in his training
rather than as wilful . . ." (P.7). The
transition from no delinquency to delin-
quency can be seen as a product of
transition in the structural type of the
social system as a whole.
If in the first
part
of the book this
comparative approach allows us to sense
some order beneath or within the illus-
trations, the absence
or
aframework for
the subsequent chapters accentuates their
detachment from this earlier core of
material. Essays on "England: The Mature
Industrial Nation" or the "The Soviet
Union: Change of Ideology"
are
not re-
lated to one another or to the preceding
studies except in terms of a proposition
that
as times and conditions change, so
does crime. Overall then
what
one has
here is a useful comparative survey of
crime and delinquency in phases of Eskimo,
Indian and Mexican society, plus un..
exciting makeweight chapters which are
not a substitute for available treatments
of the same subject matter.
The Cavans' view of crime and deHn..
quency as products of faulty socialization
is consistent with their tendency to see
the social system itself in terms of norma-
tive consensus. While they fleetingly
acknowledge the role of strains and con..
flicts in the social structure their primary
interest in socialization in
part
explains
their failure to draw upon either the
functionalist or conflict schools of com-
parative social structure. Hence they
cut
themselves off from access to major figures
who might have suggested
meansof
com..
prehending rather than merely citing dif-
ferences in crime and delinquency within
settings as varied as those encompassed
here. G. B. SHARP,
Lecturer in Social Studies,
University of Melboume.
Prison Within Soclety, L. Hazelrigg
(ed.), Doubleday, New York, 1968, 536 pp.,
$8.95.
The Tasks of Penology: A Symposium on
Prisons .and Correctional Law, H. S. Perl-
man and T. B. Allington (eds.), University
of Nebraska Press, 241 pp., $10.60.
THESE two books represent additions to
the ever increasing literature on penology
flooding into the Australian market.
"Prison within Society" is intended to
serve as a remedy, at least according to
the author, to the inadequate flow of in-
formation from the research scientist to
the correctional practitioner. The book is
an
attempt
to provide the prison adminis-
trator
with, in the author's own words,
an "integrated and more readily accessible
coUection of some of the most important
studies of the correctional organization".
The
stated
aim of
the
book falls miserably.
The twenty-four articles in
the
volume
are presented with
a11
the jargon
that
social scientists can muster with no real
attempt made to Interpret
and
edit the
academic material so
that
they
are
under..
standable to the practising .penologist,
Australian prison administrators would, I
suspect, throw their hands up in horror
upon reading the almost random collec-
tion or articles thrown together in this
book, which would simply reinforce their
already negative views on
the
contribu..
tion
that
the academic criminologist can
make to prison organization. Books written
for practitioners in the law enforcement
and correctional field should attempt to
direct their language and generat presen-
tation at a level understandable to their
audience. This does not mean
that
authors should write with simplistic
naivety. It does mean, however,
that
a
real
attempt
should be made to write in-
telligently and directly towards the target
audience without using
the
almost mystical
language
that
behavioural scientists some-
times adopt,
The book, though, does provide the
serious scholar with some important refer-
ences on prisons and penology generally.
There Is, for example, an excellent chapter
by Cloward on social control in the prison,
avery informative article by Scott on
the role
that
sociological theory can play
in research and penology, and an effective
summary by Don Gibbons on the variety
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