Rates of incarceration and main trends in Israeli prisons
| Published date | 01 February 2003 |
| Date | 01 February 2003 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1466802503003001454 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Criminal Justice
© 2003 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks
and New Delhi.
1466–8025(200302) 3:1;
Vol. 3(1): 29–55; 030454
Rates of incarceration and
main trends in Israeli prisons
A L I N A K O R N
Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Abstract
Contrary to the majority of studies dealing with prison in Israel that
examine the relationships within the prison system, the current
article attempts to present a general picture of the changing trends
in the rates of imprisonment over the years. Three findings emerge
from this analysis. First, after a steady rise, which reached its peak
in the late 1980s, came a slow but consistent drop in the total
incarceration rate. This drop is due to a significant reduction in the
number of Palestinian prisoners from the Occupied Territories held
in Israel in the wake of the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993.
Second, with reference to Israeli citizens only, without including the
Palestinians, there is a clear and steady rise in incarceration rates.
Finally, the Arab/Jewish breakdown for Israeli citizens in prison
shows that a disproportionate number of prisoners are Arabs,
throughout the entire period. The article examines the question of
over-representation of Israel’s Arab minority in prison, and discusses
the penal policy in Israel in theory and practice.
Key Words
Israeli prisons • minority over-representation • political
prisoners • prison population • rates of incarceration
Introduction
In October 1948, when the civil prison system was introduced, some 66
prisoners were held in custody in Israel. From then onwards, the prison
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Criminal Justice 3(1)
system grew steadily, both in absolute terms and relative to population
numbers. After 1967, the overall prison population increased dramatically
with the addition of massive numbers of Palestinian political prisoners
from the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Regretfully, the history,
organization and conditions of Israeli prisons were inadequately resear-
ched, and little attempt was made to characterize the prison population and
to examine the changes in the rates of incarceration over the years. In this
article I intend to present a general picture of imprisonment in Israel. After
discussing the theoretical links between crime, imprisonment and the
parameters of the Israeli–Arab conflict, the main trends and rates of
imprisonment will be examined. Attention will be drawn to the broader
political and historical context wherein these patterns were developed and
constructed. Sentencing and penal policy will be discussed and further
reflections will be made on the place accorded to imprisonment in theory
and practice.
Carrabine (2000) distinguishes between two different research tradi-
tions. One focuses on the internal dynamics of the prison and reveals what
the experiences of imprisonment are like for the keepers and the kept. The
other tradition describes the external functions of imprisonment, and
thereby illustrating what punishment is for. The majority of studies dealing
with prisons in Israel fall within the first body of inquiry. These studies are
written from a ‘correctional’ approach, often by researchers who work in
the penal system as treatment or administrative staff, analysing different
aspects of the relationship between prisoners and wardens or between
different groups of inmates (Shapira and Navon, 1986; Ben-David, 1992;
Ben-David and Silfen, 1994; Ben-David et al., 1996; Einat and Einat,
2000). Some of the studies discuss the feasibility and efficiency of various
methods of treatment and rehabilitation (Silfen and Hechal, 1986; Timor,
1998). Most of the researchers use questionnaires, interviews and observa-
tions in order to broaden the existent knowledge on specific groups of
prisoners (such as violent criminals, women, religious prisoners, drug
addicts, etc.), by measuring their attitudes, perceptions, personality, their
level of moral judgement, and other characteristics (Shoham, 1989; Ben-
David, 1994; Ben-David and Weller, 1995; Wolf et al., 1995).
Yet, there is no critical overview of the penal sanctions utilized in Israel
and how these sanctions are organized. Different aspects of Israeli impris-
onment are hardly discussed, unlike studies written in Europe and the
United States that analyse the relationship between rates of crime and the
high rates of imprisonment, and which examine the prison population in
relation to sentence disposition, type of offence, class, gender and ethnic or
racial composition (Ruggiero et al., 1995; Blumstein, 1998; Kensey and
Tournier, 1999; Tonry, 1999; Aebi and Kuhn, 2000; Garland, 2001a).
The standard chronologies (Eaton, 1964; Hermon, 1965) describe the
initial expansion of the Israel Prison Service (IPS) in the 1950s and 1960s,
when new prisons were opened, mainly in old Ottoman and British
Mandate buildings like police fortresses and barracks. They also describe—
Korn—Rates of incarceration in Israeli prisons
31
in the usual progressivist mode—the development of a rehabilitative model
of imprisonment based on a humane discourse of welfare and treatment.
However, these histories were not updated and there is no analysis of
prison policy in the past decades.
Documenting trends and main issues of Israeli imprisonment seems to be
necessary first and foremost as a starting point in clarifying factual
questions related to the scope, composition and living conditions of the
prison population in Israel. Second, this depiction is important so that it
may be possible to begin thinking about the role of the prison within the
state, its functions and its relations to the broader social, economic and
political processes. It may also be useful in anticipating further evaluations
of the philosophy, practices and politics of punishment in Israel, thereby
enabling comparisons with issues and processes that take place in other
societies.
Any attempt to provide a meaningful and contextual account of past and
present trends must relate to the Israeli–Arab conflict and its effects on the
rates of incarceration. This discussion is vital because a disproportionate
amount of prisoners throughout the years have been Arab, even without
the massive addition after 1967 of Palestinian prisoners from the Occupied
Territories. I will refer first to the general literature situating the study of
incarceration within the broader political and economic processes, and
then I will discuss more specifically the links between rates of imprisonment
and the parameters of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Many scholars have linked the process of crime control to the interests
of dominant classes and elites. Jonathan Simon (1997) has used the term
‘governing through crime’ to illustrate the growing tendency to use the
crime control apparatus to regulate behaviour and bring about conformity.
In various neo-Marxism analyses criminal punishment is seen as a strategy
and mechanism used by the state to control a class whose interests
constitute a threat to capitalist structures and elites. Box and Hale (1982)
argue that increased use of imprisonment is not a direct response to any rise
in crime, but a response to the perceived threat of crime posed by the
economically marginalized population. They argue that unemployment has
an effect on the rate and severity of imprisonment over and above the
changes in the volume and pattern of crime. Hochstetler and Shover (1997)
argue that the unemployed are managed by intensified punishment ini-
tiatives because they constitute a growing concern for dominant groups.
Their analysis confirms the early findings by Rusche and Kirchheimer
(1939) that the criminal justice system becomes more punitive as labour
surplus increases.
Wacquant (2000, 2001) has analysed the institutions that have operated
to define, confine and control African-Americans in the history of the
United States. He argues that in order to understand the extra-penological
role of the penal system as instrument for the management of dispossessed
and dishonoured groups, it is necessary to take a longer historical view and
to go beyond the narrow paradigm of ‘crime and punishment’ (2001). It is
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not enough to explain black over-representation in prison by focusing on
patterns of criminality, bias in arrest, prosecution and sentencing, nor is it
satisfactory to expand the analysis to measure the influence of non-judicial
variables such as the size of the black population, the poverty rate or
unemployment (Wacquant, 2001). He asserts that none of these factors,
taken separately or jointly, accounts for the sheer magnitude, rapidity and
timing of the recent racialization of US imprisonment, especially as crime
rates have been declining. Wacquant is replacing the carceral institution
within the historical context of ethnoracial division and domination in the
United States. He is explaining the sharp rise in black incarceration in the
past three decades as a result of the obsolescence of the ghetto as a device
for caste control and the correlative need for a substitute apparatus for
keeping African-Americans in a subordinate and confined position in
physical, social and symbolic space.
Lichtenstein (1996, 2001) studied the radicalized history of punishment
in the American South. He argues that imprisonment in the USA is bound
up with larger patterns of historic and contemporary racial inequality,
discrimination and repression. His analysis reveals many similarities and
continuity with today’s criminal justice process. He shows that in the last
quarter of the 19th century, crime...
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