The prehistory of innovation: A longer view of penal change
| Published date | 01 April 2018 |
| Author | Ashley T Rubin |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474517690522 |
| Date | 01 April 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Punishment & Society
2018, Vol. 20(2) 192–216
!The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474517690522
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Article
The prehistory of
innovation: A longer
view of penal change
Ashley T Rubin
University of Toronto, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Abstract
New penal technologies, however innovative, rarely emerge fully formed, but we
currently lack a theoretical appreciation of the lengthy, messy process by which penal
innovations develop. Indeed, most studies of penal change focus on the conditions
surrounding the emergence of a particularly successful innovation, a model of punish-
ment whose widespread diffusion is indicative of significant change. This paper extends
our analytical focus by examining the legacy of an innovation’s prehistory, the ideational
period in which an idea is created at the margins of criminal justice before manifesting
on a wider scale. This paper traces the history, and influence, of American uses of penal
incarceration before Pennsylvania’s famous Walnut Street Prison, often referred to as
the country’s first prison. This prehistory complicates the notion of innovation by
identifying significant precursors. Ultimately, recognizing penal innovations’ prehistory
challenges macro-level theories of penal change, which largely overlook those causes
that significantly predate the ‘‘moment’’ of innovation.
Keywords
history, incarceration, innovation, penal change, prison
Introduction
Theories of penal change, from Durkheim (1984 [1893]) to Garland (2001), fre-
quently locate the engine of change in macro-level shifts in society and culture, the
economy and labor market, or politics and governance. Changing socio-cultural
and political-economic conditions, according to such theories, can necessitate or
facilitate new punishments and penal schema. However, focusing on the
Corresponding author:
Ashley T Rubin, University of Toronto,3359 Mississauga Road,William G. Davis Building, Mississauga, Ontario
L5L 1C6, Canada.
Email: ashley.rubin@utoronto.ca
correspondence between macro-level shifts and apparent ‘‘moments’’ or instances
of significant penal change minimizes the drawn-out process by which penal change
occurs. Indeed, Goodman et al. (2015: 328) have recently criticized these
‘‘rupture’’-based accounts, describing penal change instead as ‘‘a dialectical process
that plays out between individuals and groups in the penal and neighboring fields.’’
This perspective requires ‘‘a longer (and broader) view of the ongoing contestation
over the targets, processes, and goals of punishment.’’ To this end, they have
provided an ‘‘agonistic’’ account that centers on the ‘‘long struggle’’ between
actors to shape and achieve penal change. In this account, apparently significant
penal changes that look like ruptures result from changes in the power or influence
of different groups and actors who seek to shape punishment: actors are thus
bridges between significant social developments and widespread penal change
(Goodman et al., 2017). While this impressive account has resolved many problems
with macro-level approaches, it has overlooked the important role of historical
legacies in the larger process of penal change surrounding innovations.
When new groups ascend within the penal field and effect change, they often rely
on ideas with much older pedigrees, ideas that emerged at the field’s peripheries
decades before manifesting on a larger scale. Penal reforms, however innovative,
rarely emerge fully formed. While the recycling of penal technologies is a
well-known phenomenon (e.g., Brown, 2002; Meranze, 2016; Simon, 1995), we
lack strong awareness of the labored process by which a nascent idea for punish-
ment becomes a manifest tool of punishment. This article argues that ‘‘innovative’’
penal reforms frequently build on a series of visible, but subdominant ideational
and physical precursors. As such, they are less a product of their times than the
result of years, decades, or even centuries of thought and experience.
Using a case study of Early American incarceration, I illustrate the influential
legacy of a penal innovation’s prehistory.
1
While the first state prisons (‘‘proto-
prisons’’) spread across the country in the 1790s onward (Rubin, 2016), their
central principle of penal incarceration—incarceration as punishment, not simply
for administrative convenience—developed over the course of a century (at least).
While most accounts of penal change focus on factors behind a popular penal
technology’s creation or widespread appeal, this account calls attention to the
ideation of a new punishment before it manifests as a new technology.
Ultimately, this approach offers a more nuanced, more accurate understanding
of penal change by moving analyses beyond an emphasis on the ‘‘moment’’ of
change (Rubin, 2015). This approach shows that, while the contemporary context
informs the adoption of new penal technologies, the historical past is often just as
important by laying the groundwork for these technologies’ invention. Rather than
conceptualizing such ‘‘innovations’’ as a product of their time, we must examine
their lengthy prehistory during which the initial idea takes hold, slowly at first and
then at a rapid clip, before becoming a manifest model. This approach thus com-
plicates the notion of penal change. For example, we can simultaneously recognize
the proto-prison as a revolutionary innovation and as the product of multiple
experiments with, and attempts to utilize, penal incarceration. Importantly,
Rubin 193
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