Explaining penal momentum: Path dependence, prison population forecasting and the persistence of high incarceration rates in England and Wales
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Author | Thomas Guiney,Henry Yeomans |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12507 |
Received: 7 February 2022 Accepted: 18 August 2022
DOI: 10.1111/ho jo.12507
SPECIAL ISSUE
Explaining penal momentum: Path dependence,
prison population forecasting and the
persistence of high incarceration rates in
England and Wales
Thomas Guiney1Henry Yeomans2
1Thomas Guiney is Assistant Professor of
Criminology, University of Nottingham
2Henry Yeomansis Professor of
Criminology, University of Leeds
Correspondence
Thomas Guiney, Assistant Professorof
Criminology, University of Nottingham.
Email: thomas.guiney@nottingham.ac.uk
Abstract
This article seeks to explain the persistence of high incar-
ceration rates in England and Wales. Building upon
recent theoretical work on path dependence, we iden-
tify prison population forecasting as a poorly understood
positive feedback mechanism that helps to determine
the overall scale, scope and reach of the prison estate
by connecting capital expenditure decisions with ‘busi-
ness as usual’ planning cycles that assume considerable
policy continuity with the past. We illustrate this point
with reference to recent controversies over women’s
imprisonment where the everyday, routinised working
practices of the penal system have played an important
role in sustaining prison expansionism long after the ini-
tial conditions that fuelled the mid-1990s prison boom
have faded. Disrupting these self-fulfilling logics will
not be easy and we conclude this article with a call for
a more deliberative democratic politics that confronts
penal momentum and invites greater consideration of
the many possible futures of penal policy.
KEYWORDS
carceral capacity, forecasting, historical criminology, path depen-
dence, population penal policy, prison
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and
reproduction in any medium, providedthe original work is properly cited.
© 2023 The Authors. The Howard Journalof Crime and Justice published by HowardLeague and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Howard J. Crim. Justice. 2023;62:29–45. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hojo 29
30 THE HOWARDJOURNAL OF CRIME AND JUSTICE
1 INTRODUCTION
In recent decades, the adult prison population in England and Wales has experienced periods
of continuity and profound change (see Figure 1). Between 1945 and 1993, the prison popula-
tion followed a saw-edged pattern of growth as politicians pursued a series of strategies, often
‘by stealth’,that were intended to limit the use of imprisonment, manage overcrowding and con-
trol prison expenditure (Green, 2016, p.190). This broad disposition towards the management of
British prisons collapsed in the mid-1990s (Jacobson & Hough, 2018). Reflecting trends seen else-
where, England and Walesexperienced a significant ‘punitive turn’ after 1993 and this shift in both
the aims and techniques of penal policy saw the prison population almost double in the next two
decades, reaching a post-war peak of just under 87,000 in 2012 (Ministry of Justice, 2022). In the
years that followed the prison population began to stabilise and has now fallen to just over 80,000
in 2022. While the long-term effects of Covid-19 remain unclear,there are signs that England and
Wales has now entered a new, and less certain, developmental phase.
The social, economic and political determinants of the mid-1990s prison boom in England
and Wales are now well documented within the literature (see Newburn, 2007). In terms of its
proximate causes, prison expansionism was driven by a dramatic increase in the number of per-
sons sentenced to immediate custody by the courts, a gradual rise in the length of average prison
stays for those sentenced for violent and sexual offences, and a growing recall population that has
FIGURE 1 The average prison population and imprisonment rate per 100,000 of the population in England
and Wales, 1945–2021
Sources: Ministry of Justice (2022, Table A1.2); WorldPrison Brief – United Kingdom: England and Wales. Prison
population rate per 100,000 of the adult population, 1945–2018. Available at:
https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/united-kingdom-england-wales [Accessed 10 October 2022].
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