Towards the 'Decivilizing' of Punishment?
| Date | 01 December 1998 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466399800700402 |
| Published date | 01 December 1998 |
| Author | John Pratt |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
TOWARDS
THE
’DECIVILIZING’
OF
PUNISHMENT?
JOHN
PRATT
Victoria
University
of Wellington,
New
Zealand
ABSTRACT
This
article
examines
the
cultural
significance
of
some
new
’signs
and
symbols’
of
punishment
that
are
to
be
found
taking
place
(albeit
in
uneven
measure)
across
English-based
jurisdictions
at
the
present
time.
What
I
want
to
suggest
is
that
these
developments
may
be
pointers
to
the
emergence
of
a
new
penal
culture,
which
makes
possible
a
set
of
arrangements
and
strategies
that
are
different
from
those
which
had
been
in
the
forefront
of
the
modernist
penal
framework.
Some
of
the
values
on
which
this
structure
had
been
founded,
particularly
during
the
welfare
era
of
the
20th
century,
bear
correspondence
to
trends
seen
by
Norbert
Elias
(1939;
1982)
as
central
to
the
’civilizing’
of
modern
Western
societies.
For
him,
the
’civilizing’
process
was
not
a
naturally
occurring
phenomenon,
but
a
social
construction
based
on
contingent
historical
developments -
which
at
any
time
could
be
thrown
into
a
’decivilizing’
reverse
by
such
phenomena
as
war,
natural
disaster
and
economic
collapse
(Garland,
1990).
Under
such
circumstances,
there
is
likely
to
be
a
resurrection
of
practices
and
behaviour
from
different cultural
eras
(Mennell,
1990).
This
theoretical
framework
will
be
used
here
to
analyse
current
penal
trends
and
their
implications.
PUNISHMENT,
CULTURE
AND
THE
CIVILIZING
PROCESS
’
ODERN
SOCIETIES
like
to
think
of
themselves
as
belonging
to
’
’the
civilized
world’.
This
is
not
only
an
important
cultural
signifier
1
of
their
own
identity
but
it
also
helps
to
set
them
apart
from
other
non-modern
and
thereby
’uncivilized’
societies.
The
claim
to
be
’civilized’
and
thereby
part
of
the
modern
world
can
be
established
in
a
number
of
ways:
mortality
rates,
levels
of
health
care,
average
annual
incomes -
and
the
way
in
which
a
particular
society
punishes
its
offenders.
In
contrast,
say,
to
the
gallows
and
whips
of
pre-modern
societies,
and
the
gulags
of
the
former
Eastern
bloc
(all
perceived
as
the
lack
of
civilization
in
such
societies),
the
penal
framework
of
modernity
has,
at
least
until
recently,
obeyed
a
different
SOCIAL
&
LEGAL
STUDIES
0964
6639
(199812)
7:4
Copyright ©
1998
SAGE
Publications,
London,
Thousand
Oaks,
CA
and
New
Delhi,
Vol.
7(4), 487-515;
006255
487-
488
set
of
rules
which
thereby
gave
it
a
particular
cultural
quality:
it
was
’civil-
ized’.
To
make
such
a
claim
is
not
to
deny
or
overlook
the
revisionist
histories
of
punishment
of
the
last
two
decades,
with
Foucault
at
their
forefront,
which
have
insisted
that
modern
penality,
beneath
its
at
times
humanitarian
gloss,
ushered
in
new
and
more
pervasive
systems
of
control
and
surveillance:
what
was
at
work
was
a
different
economy
of
punishment,
not
a
different
quality.
Even
so,
there
have
clearly
been
limits
and
parameters
to
the
forms
that
punishment
has
been
able
to
take
to
achieve
such
ends.
Cultural
values
have
been
one
such
determinant.
Indeed,
it
can
be
argued
that
these
strategies
have
not
only
given
effect
to
modern
strategies
of
penal
control
but
they
have
also
helped
to
legitimate
them,
precisely
because
they
produce
a
penal
materiality
that
corresponds
to
the
dominant
values
of
those
societies
which
like
to
think
of
themselves
as
civilized -
in
much
the
same
way
that
the
penal
arrangements
of
the
non-modern
world
were
a
signifier
of
the
uncivilized
nature
of
such
societies.
I
am
not
of
course
claiming
that
the
modern
penal
framework
was
in
itself civilized,
in
the
common-sense
usage
of
the
term:
rather,
it
can
be
seen
as
incorporating
those
values
underlying
Elias’
concept
of
the
civilizing
process.
What
were
these?
On
the
one
hand,
an
increased
sensibility
to
the
suffering
of
others;
on
the
other,
the
privatization
of
disturbing
events
(Garland,
1990).
These
values
came
to
be
influential
in
the
development
of
the
modern
penal
framework,
even
if
they
frequently
produced
very
’unciv-
ilized’
effects.
Indeed,
as
David
Garland
has
suggested
(p.
236),
this
has
actu-
ally
been
made
possible
by
the
privatizing
of
punishment.
For
example,
the
well-documented
history
of
suffering
for
a
century
and
a
half
to
be
found
in
prisoners’
own
accounts
has
been
largely
silenced
beneath
the
weight
of
official
documentation
from
those
bureaucratic
organizations
which
have
administered
punishment
according
to
the
values
of
so-called
civilized
societies,
and
which
have
come
to
assume
the
power
and
authority
to
define
the
reality
of
prison
life:
a
definition
which,
however
distorted
it
is
from
the
brutally
uncivilized
realities
of
prison,
has
come
to
dominate
public
and
governmental
perceptions
of
this
reality.
Furthermore,
the
insistence
on
conformity
and
uniformity
that
came
to
dominate
prison
governance
for
much
of
this
period
made
the
sufferings
of
minority
groups
of
prisoners
who
stood
outside
the
mainstream
even
more
acute.
Irish
political
prisoners,
for
example,
were
from
the
late
19th
century
onwards
(see
Report
of
the
Committee
of
Inquiry
on
Prison
Rules
and
Prison
Dress
1889)
denied
political
status
and
were
subjected
to
the
same
conditions
as
the
male
criminal
population
at
large.
Similarly,
the
masculinist
penal
framework
that
was
constructed
in
this
process
was
imposed
on
women
pris-
oners
who
for
much
of
this
period
received
less
food
(not
being
engaged
in
outdoor
physical
labour
like
men),
were
locked
up
for
longer
during
the
day,
performed
even
more
demeaning
tasks
(cleaning
and
mending
prison
uni-
forms,
which
also
brought
additional
health
hazards
such
as
blindness,
the
product
of
endless
work
in
thin
artificial
light)
and
were
denied
medical
con-
sideration
for
gender-specific
complaints.
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