Reviews : Women's Imprisonment: A Study in Social Control PAT CARLEN RKP; 1983
| DOI | 10.1177/026455058303000414 |
| Author | Linda Kelly |
| Date | 01 December 1983 |
| Published date | 01 December 1983 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
154
REVIEWS
· Contributions,
comments
and
suggestions
to
Peter
Simpson,
5
Derby
Lane,
Old
Swan,
Liverpool
L 1 ~
6QA,
tel:
051-220
4461.
Approaches
to
Welfare
PHILIP
BEAN
AND
STEWART
MACPHERSON(EDS)
RKP,
1983;
£6.96;
pb;
pp
293.
Assembled
to
mark
the
retirement
of a professor,
this
collection
contains
some
arcane,
in-house
debating
and
some
slight,
duriful
essays.
Much
of
it,
though,
will
be
of
interest
to
practitioners
in
probation
and
social
services.
Some
of the
authors
attempt
to
encapsulate
cases
argued
at
greater
length
elsewhere,
including
Prof.
Pinker
on
the
difficulties
of
integrating
theory
and
practice,
Robert
Holman
on
the
total
immersion
method
of
community
work
and
Philip
Bean
on
the
intel-
lectual
origins
of
state
welfare.
Of
these,
only
Holman
manages
to
combine
brevity
with
read-
ability.
Others
challenge
the
dominance
of
Fabian
ideology
in
Social
Administration
since
1945.
Paul
Wilding
and
Gillian
Pascall
point
out
that
poverty
should
not
have
needed
rediscovery
in
the
sixties,
and
that
Marxist
and
feminist
contributions
had
been
ignored
prior
to
1968.
Stewart MacPherson
devotes
his
essay
to
the
tendency
to
ignore
the
lessons
to
be
leamt
from
the
Third
World,
whilst
exporting
often
inappropriate
assumptions
with
British
Soc.
Admin.
John
Greve’s
chapter
on
social
policy
in
Britain
and
Scandinavia
contrasts
the
meanminded,
tentative
British
approach
with
the
insistence
on
setting
clear
and
agreed
national
priorities
and
decentralising
decision-making
in
Scandinavia.
Peter
Leonard’s
chapter
is
a
fascinating,
if
sketchy,
attempt
to
explain
the
unpopularity
of the
Welfare
State,
by
pointing
to
its
impact
on
indi-
viduals
and
reviewing
some
attempts
by
Marxist
writers
to
remedy
this.
Richard
Silbum
traces
the
concept
of
the
’scrounger’
back
to
the
Pool
Law,
and
shows
how
Supplementary
Benefit,
almost
uncontentious
when
first
introduced,
has
become
such
a
political
football
that
the
1980
Social
Security
Acts
cut
it
substantially
without
causing
much
of
a
fuss.
Only
devoted
students
of
post-war
Social
Administration
will
read
all
these
essays,
but
they
contain
many
ideas,
facts
and
arguments
of
use
to
practitioners.
BRIAN
WILLIAMS
Probation
Officer,
Darlington
Women’s
Imprisonment:
A
Study
in
Social
Control
PAT
CARLEN
RKP;
1983
Recent
years
have
seen
the
publication
ot
a
number
of books
and
research
articles
outlining
the
attitudes
and
responses
of
the
various
sections
of
the
criminal
justice
system
to
women
offenders.
This
book,
based
on
research
in
Comton
Vale,
Scotland’s
only
women’s prison,
attempts,
through
a
series
of
interviews
with
prisoners,
prison
officers,
sheriffs,
police
and
social
workers
to
describe
and
explam
the
‘experience’
of pnson
and
the
variety
of
factors
and
interests
in
Scottish
society
which
determine
its
nature
and
meaning.
The
method
of Ms.
Carlen’s
research,
especially
the
interviews
with
the
20
short-term
prisoners,
whose
backgrounds
are
briefly
sketched,
some-
times
succeeds
in
vividly
illustrating
how
they
are
subject
to
contradictory
definitions
of,
for
example
’womanhood’
and
’adulthood’.
She
outlines,
as
have
other
researchers
before,
how
the
evaluation
of
the
women
as
wives,
and
especially
mothers,
rather
than
simply
the
nature
of
their
crime,
is
a
key
factor
in
the
decision
of the
Court
to
imprison
them
or
deal
with
them
in
some
other
way.
Comton
Vale
is
generally
perceived
and
des-
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