Pastoral penality in 1970s Ireland: Addressing the pains of imprisonment
| Author | Louise Brangan |
| Published date | 01 February 2021 |
| Date | 01 February 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1362480619843295 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480619843295
Theoretical Criminology
2021, Vol. 25(1) 44 –65
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480619843295
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Pastoral penality in 1970s
Ireland: Addressing the
pains of imprisonment
Louise Brangan
University of Stirling, UK
Abstract
This article aims to deepen and broaden our US- and UK-centric theories and histories of
late 20th-century penal transformation. Using oral history interviews with civil servants,
archival research and analysis of published documents, this article investigates Ireland’s
delayed progressive penal transformation in the 1970s. It challenges the dominant
narrative that Irish penal policy was stagnant or merely pragmatic during this period and
provides cultural, social and political explanations for Ireland’s changing penal culture.
These findings also show the limitations of penal welfarism for sufficiently capturing
the character of Ireland’s progressive penal ideas and intentions. The article outlines
the concept of pastoral penality as an alternative kind of progressive penal politics.
Pastoral penality focuses on the problems of the prison, rather than the problems of
the prisoner, who is not viewed as inherently criminal and in need of treatment. Instead
they require support in coping with the harms of imprisonment.
Keywords
Historical criminology, pastoral penality, penal transformation, prison history, Republic
of Ireland
The Republic of Ireland is said to be an exception within Anglophone penal history, where
it resisted the punitive turn of the 1970s and a more pragmatic and dispassionate penal poli-
tics prevailed. Even during the 1970s, when Ireland displayed tendencies towards penal
Corresponding author:
Louise Brangan, School of Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA,
UK.
Email: Louise.Brangan@stir.ac.uk
843295TCR0010.1177/1362480619843295Theoretical CriminologyBrangan
research-article2019
Article
Brangan 45
welfarism, this is argued to have been more rhetorical mimicry than commitment to the
principles of offender transformation. This article first interrogates these claims by provid-
ing an in-depth historical and sociological analysis of penal culture and transformation in
the prison system in Ireland in the 1970s. By conducting this analysis in conversation with
penological theory, in this case penal welfarism, the study presents a new concept of parsi-
monious penal power: pastoral penality. Pastoral penality was a more humane penal cul-
ture that emerged during the 1970s in Ireland. It is hoped that these historical and theoretical
contributions developed throughout this article contribute to the shifting and deepening of
our US- and UK-centric understandings of punishment history and patterns.
The key features of penal welfarism are presented first. This is followed by an over-
view of the main conventions in Irish penal and social historiography. The substantive
historical findings from the research are then outlined. The evidence reveals a counter-
narrative of an intentional and highly principled penal transformation led by those who
held the power to imprison. The concept of pastoral penality is then forwarded. This was
a more humane and empathetic approach to imprisonment that reflects Ireland’s socio-
cultural and political context, shaped by a conservative political ethos, Catholic values
and a communitarian class structure. A wider lens permits us to also see that this form of
penality was contingent on Ireland’s distinctive field of social control. The article con-
cludes by acknowledging the structural and practical limits of pastoral penal welfarism
but emphasizing that while pastoral penality is non-abolitionist it operates with a deep
scepticism of the prison and an awareness of the harms it causes.
Penal welfarism
By the 1960s penal welfarism was the established logic of British and US penality
(Feeley and Simon, 1992; Garland, 2001). In practice penal welfarism was correc-
tional, interested in reducing recidivism through rehabilitative interventions, with a
positive emphasis on re-education and reintegration of offenders. The penal welfare
approach was underpinned by its social and political context, underlain first by a foun-
dation of ‘legal liberalism’ (Garland, 2001: 27) that encouraged a rational approach to
individual rights, due process and a proportionate distribution of justice (Feeley and
Simon, 1992). Second, a penal welfare approach was ideologically connected to state
welfare, where the state was charged as the provider and protector of its citizens’ well-
being. In addition, penal welfarism was underpinned by the modernist context that
prevailed in Britain and the USA (Garland, 2001: 40–41), shaping a commitment to
rational scientific reason. Confidence in the superior authority of social science and
psychological expertise led to ‘down-playing the role of informal action on the part of
the public’ (Garland, 2001: 32). Hence, crime was understood as a technical matter
whereby effective treatments could be developed to achieve the aims of reducing reof-
fending (Garland, 2001: 27–36). Thus, ‘in the world of penal welfarism it came instead
to be no treatment without diagnosis, and no penal sanction without expert advice’
(Garland, 2001: 37, emphases in original; Loader, 2006). There was a pronounced
confidence in the state’s rehabilitative and crime control capacities (Garland, 2001:
33–34). Penal regimes could be progressive transformative spaces when used in tan-
dem with the right corrective and re-educative interventions. Prisoner classification,
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