The Thrill of the Chase: Punishment, Hostility and the Prison Crisis
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663918759820 |
| Published date | 01 February 2019 |
| Date | 01 February 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The Thrill of the Chase:
Punishment, Hostility
and the Prison Crisis
Anastasia Chamberlen and Henrique Carvalho
University of Warwick, UK
Abstract
This article offers one of the first analyses of the current and ongoing crisis affecting
English and Welsh prisons and of recent proposals for prison reform. The article pits the
impression of novelty surrounding the current framework of incarceration against the
notion promoted by critical scholarship that the nexus between crisis and reform is not
new. Building on this debate, we deploy an original theoretical perspective, grounded on
the concept of hostile solidarity, to argue that the promise of prison reform is an
essential aspect of the utility ascribed to punishment, which allows the prison to be
perpetually preserved and seen as unquestionably necessary, even when in crisis. The
article concludes by suggesting that our emotional attachment and contemporary reli-
ance on punishment, and its manifestation in the perpetuation and expansion of insti-
tutions like the prison, are ultimately self-defeating and self-propelling.
Keywords
Crisis, hostility, prison, prisoners, punishment, punitiveness, reform, solidarity
Introduction
So today, I want to explain why I believe prison reform should be a great progressive cause
in British politics, and to set out my vision for a modern, more effective, truly twenty-first
century prison system.
My starting point is this: we need prisons.
(Prime Minister’s Speech, MoJ, 2016a: 1)
Corresponding author:
Henrique Carvalho, School of Law, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK.
Email: h.carvalho@warwick.ac.uk
Social & Legal Studies
2019, Vol. 28(1) 100–117
ªThe Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0964663918759820
journals.sagepub.com/home/sls
In the last couple of years,
1
prisons in England and Wales have received considerable
attention by media, politicians, independent inspectors and the wider public. Much of
this attention exposed what has been described as an ongoing but recently more promi-
nent crisis in prisons. Since 2015, various news and inspectorate reports, as well as
evaluations by campaigning organizations like the Howard League for Penal Reform,
have exposed the prison’s weak record in terms of safety and care for both its prisoners
and staff and unveiled disturbing conditions of violence, harm, corruption and disorder,
besides unprecedentedly high numbers of deaths in custody, increases in self-injury, high
rates of drugs misuse and, i n some cases, large-scale riots (HM Chief Inspector o f
Prisons, 2017; 2018; Howard League and Centre for Mental Health, 2016).
The present moment, which has been widely recognized as a ‘crisis’ in the prison
system, arguably represents the latest stage of a long period, at least since the start of the
present decade, in which prisons have become more prominent than usual in media and
political discourse (Mason 2006). In the past few years, a series of justice secretaries
have turned to the prison and given it relatively significant space in their political
narratives, promising reforms and ‘new’ approaches to the penal system at the same
time as they subjected the sector to stringent austerity cuts. Most of these reformist
visions promote a paradoxical and ambivalent mix in rhetoric: They reaffirm the by
now established ‘tough on crime’, law and order mantra while also emphasizing the need
for prisons to rehabilitate and reform offenders. This moment of heightened political
significance of the prison culminated, in February 2016, in the then Prime Minister
David Cameron announcing a reform agenda for a ‘revolution in the prison system’
(MoJ, 2016a: 15), noting that he was the first prime minister in 20 years to give a speech
focused exclusively on prisons. By May 2016, the Queen’s speech promised that these
plans for reform would constitute the ‘largest overhaul in prisons since Victorian times’
(Cabinet Office, 2016).
Since then, much has changed: Brexit has shifted the government’s priorities, and
consequently the plans to pass the Prisons and Courts Bill into law were abandoned.
However, even if the political will to enact changes through law has diminished, the
prison continues to make the news, usually under an unflattering light, and so reforms
continue to be promised – although, given the constant shift of justice secretaries and the
decaying conditions of the prison system, these promises are little more than rhetoric. An
emblematic example of this dynamic occurred on 18 December 2017, when the then
Justice Secretary David Lidington gave an optimistic speech at a conference organized
by the Reform think tank. This speech was delivered on the same day as a leaked
inspection report exposed appalling conditions, ‘the worst conditions ever seen’, at HMP
Liverpool (BBC, 2017a). Less than a month later, in January 2018, the chief inspector of
prisons issued an urgent notification to the now new Secretary of State, David Gauke,
demanding a public account on steps to be taken forward to address ongoing concerns
about failures at HMP Nottingham that have caused eight deaths in the past 2 years (HM
Inspector of Prisons, 2018).
This article offers an examination of the nexus of crisis and reform in English and
Welsh prisons, looking at how the promise and rhetoric of prison reform, rather than
geared at addressing the institution’s many problems, in reality serves to maintain and
perpetuate these problems. Part of this argument is not new: As Foucault (1979) has
Chamberlen and Carvalho 101
To continue reading
Request your trial