Punishment and the Lessons from History
| Author | John Pratt |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486589202500201 |
| Published date | 01 July 1992 |
| Date | 01 July 1992 |
AUST &NZ
JOURNAL
OF CRIMINOLOGY (July 1992) 25 (97-114)
PUNISHMENT AND THE LESSONS
FROM
HISTORY
John
Pratt"
97
This
article
examines
the
range
of
social
forces
which
constitute
the collection
of
legal
sanctions
which
make up modem punishment
systems.
While
not
disputing
the importance
of
the social
control
capacities
whichhave
been
influentialin the
process,
it
argues
that wealso haveto take into
account
changing
cultural
sensitivities
and the still
prevailing
remnants
of
19th
Century
political
economy
if we are to
effectively
understand the nature
of
punishment
today.
It
draws
primarily,
although
not
exclusively,
on
historical
research
undertaken in New Zealand.
How have we arrived at the collection of legal sanctions which
make
up 'punishment
today'? Until recently, this would probably have
been
something of a superflous
question. By
the
same token, histories
of
punishment were something
of
ararity, in
part' at least
because
the evolution of 'punishment today'
seemed
to have
been
such
ataken-for-granted affair: surely it could be presented as some kind of
eternal
contest between
the
forces of humanitarianism on the one
hand
and
the
forces
of
reaction on the other. Hence the
gradual
shift from punishment being primarily
corporeal in
nature,
to carceral and now community based (see, eg, Grunhunt, 1948;
Radzinowitz, 1966). In this respect,
the
task
of penologists was to show how
punishment might be made to work more effectively - since, despite
the
best
intentions of administrators and so on, problems
kept
occurring with it; or to
rationalise its aims
and
objectives - the philosophy of punishment -
and
bring
these and sentencing practices into line (see, eg, Walker, 1985).
Against this, Foucault's (1978)
Discipline
and Punish can
be
said to have brought
about arevolution in penological thought.2
Indeed,
such has his impact
been
that
Stan
Cohen
(1985: 10) suggests
that
'to
write today
about
punishment
and
classification without Foucault, is like talking about
the
unconscious without
Freud.'
For
Foucault
and
most of
the
secondary literature
that
has
been
generated in his
wake, the history
of
modern
punishment should be
approached
as a history
of
social
control, ahistory
of
how domination in
modern
society
has
been
achieved;
and
a
history of how,
what
on
the
face of it seems to have
been
intended
as reform, has
come to play a
part
in this process. As is well known, Foucault suggests
that
the
tactics used to achieve these ends have
been
disciplinary training
and
surveillance.
Their original
site
was the early 19th century prison (typified by
Bentham's
Panopticon), from where they
are
then
seen
as being disseminated right across
the
social body.
And
it has
been
the discourse
of
criminology itself
that
continually feeds
and
fuels this process: because of its glaring failure to prevent crime and reform
criminals, it
has
become an ever-expanding universe, holding enquiries,
commissioning reports, sucking in to its empire new agencies
and
organisations,
and
colonising new domains in its quest to fulfil objectives that always remain elusive.
The
shift towards community based sanctions in the last two decades, with its
attendant recruitment of former voluntary organisations,
parts
of
the
private sector
and so on, should
thus
be seen in this light. In this way,
whathad
hitherto
been
the
apparently
unending
travail of penologists to improve
'the
system' is seen from a
new critical perspective. It is
not
that
the
projected improvements themselves do
not
• Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Institute of Criminology, Victoria University of Wellington, New
Zealand.
98
JPRAIT
(1992) 25
ANZJ
Crim
materialise that is the issue: what is more to the point is that such efforts only
support the creeping expansion of the institution of punishment.
Contingent to this, one of Foucault's many achievements has been to
re-emphasise the importance of historical analysis if we are to develop fresh insights
and deeper understandings of punishment and its complexities. Far from it taking
the form of a fairly straightforward path, we find instead 'an institution so riven with
contradiction, with failure, and with self-defeating policies' (Garland, 1990: 277). In
particular, he offers a compelling reading of the way in which penal reform can be
represented as only the latest stage in a 'history of consecutive waves of [the]
modernisation of social control' (Steinert, 1991: 17). At the same time, these 'waves'
are likely to bear the imprint of those forces which originally constituted them and
made their existence possible. By identifying these forces we identify
the
limits,
constraints and underpinnings of punishment today - as Foucault does in Discipline
and
Punish. With due deference to him, though, I want to suggest in this article, by
drawing primarily, although not exclusively, on historical research undertaken in
New Zealand3that punishment should not be understood as constituted solely
through its social control capacities. While obviously not denying that this has been
one central element, I wish to draw attention to two more - which also constrain
and shape the extent of social control that is possible in modern society. These are,
first, the visibility of punishment and, second, the legacy of Victorian political
economy.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind: The Disappearance of Punishment
My starting point is a 19th century lithograph by the English artist Augustus Pugin,
reproduced in Robin Evans' (1982: 241) beautiful and. very important book on
prison architecture, The Fabrication
of
Virtue. In a series title, Contrasts, Pugin
charted architectural change from the 15th century to his own time. In the 1841
edition, 'the modern city' is shown to have the following buildings at its epicentre: a
church, a lunatic asylum, a gasworks and a prison. Of course, modern city centres of
the late 20th century look completely different: indeed, we should surely be amazed
to find such a collection of buildings 'downtown' today. We would think that we had
stepped back in time, so out of place would they be with our late 20th century
weltanschaung. To enquire into
the
disappearance of all these institutions would no
doubt raise a series of interesting questions about culture, social control and
technology. Here, though, I must confine my remarks simply to the removal from
public viewof the prison. It would seem to be the case, in very general
terms."
that
where we do now find prisons in central city areas, then these are likely to have
become ghetto territories, derelict and rundown and long since bypassed by the
wealth and technology of modern development." Indeed, the very names of the
penal institutions they contain sometimes have a Dickensian ring to them that gives
away their age. British prisons provide excellent examples: 'Strangeways' in
Manchester, or 'Wormwood Scrubs' in London - names such as these reflect the
way such institutions and their localities belong to a bygoneperiod.
Other than this, prisons that remain in central city areas may be converted into
tourist attractions, as with 'Old Melbourne Gao!'. Just a few minutes' walk away
from the latest shopping mega-complexes, the gaol, which was completed in 1864,is
now a National Trust building and is open to visitors. As if reminding us
that
such a
scene belongs to the past and not to the present, the brochure
that
can be purchased
on entry tells us that 'today the Melbourne Gaol appears gloomy, sinister and
depressing. Visitors looking at it in its present condition try to imagine
the
poor
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