What Works At One Arm Point? A Study In The Transportation Of A Penal Concept
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455050004700403 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
What
Works
At
One
Arm
Point? A Study
In The
Transportation Of
A
Penal Concept
The state of Western Australia, which has a Criminal Justice System
similar in many respects to that of England and Wales, has imported
and adapted the What Works orthodoxy developed in North America
and the UK. Drawing on exploratory research in this region, Anne
Worrall highlights the dangers of an ’international trade in penal
ideas’ which fails to take greater account of issues such as the loss of
traditional culture and breakdown of kinship systems in Aboriginal
societies.
&dquo;Effective rehabilitative ventures are
corrections has been pre-occupied with a
reflexive rather than directive; they
model
of
focused, accountable,
respond to situations as they unfold.
standardised intervention in the lives of
Their language is an innovative dialogue
offenders, based on the actuarial concept of
not
a prescriptive monologue. For these
risk assessment, the science of cognitive
reasons, successful interventions can
behavioural psychology, the morality of
seldom be categorised, cloned and
individual responsibility and the politics of
transplanted. To do so may be helpful to
restorative justice. At the same time,
researchers,
administrators
and
however, that world has seen an
politicians, because it tidies up a
unprecedented rise in the prison population
messy and idiosyncratic world but,
and a blurring of the boundary between
unfortunately, successful interventions
freedom
and
custody.
Offenders
do not seem to travel well.&dquo; (Pitts, 1992,
increasingly receive sentencing packages
p. 144)
that involve time spent both inside and
outside prison, and technology now makes
For those in the business of trying to
it possible for many of the restrictions of
keep as many people as possible out of
imprisonment to be visited on offenders in
prison for as long as possible, while
their own homes and communities. In
offering protection to the community, the
addition, practitioners are often overloaded
last decade of the 20th Century has been
with
the
bureaucratic
demands of
dominated by the doctrine of What Works
programme integrity and evaluation, and
(Vanstone, 2000). The English-speaking
find themselves with less and less time to
world of probation and community
consider the underlying values and
243
philosophy of their work, thus making
At One Arm Point the earth is bright
themselves vulnerable to the vagaries of
red, the bush is bright green, the sky is
crisis-driven law and order policy.
bright blue, the sea is bright turquoise - and
So how do we make sense of these
the temperature rarely falls below 25
developments in the context of the
degrees centigrade. The community of
globalisation of crime and punishment?
about 300 people is joined to the nearest
How do we take advantage of the insights
town, Broome, some 200km away by an
offered by global knowledge while at the
unsealed road open only to 4 x 4 vehicles.
same time taking account of national,
The community council has prohibited
regional and local diversity and difference?
alcohol but some of the men smuggle it in
How
can we
learn from each other without
from Broome anyway. When they are
being forced into adopting a bland and
drunk, some of the men become very
simplistic language which we think we all
violent, most frequently towards the
recognise but which may, in reality, mean
women. Aboriginal women are 45 times as
very little to any of us?
likely to be victims of what we would call
The globalisation of criminology has
domestic violence (a term not accepted by
revealed an international trade in penal
many Aboriginal communities) than are
ideas: restorative justice, family group
non-Aboriginal women (Ferrante et al,
conferencing, ’three strikes’ and ’honesty
1996). Although Aboriginal people make
in sentencing’ are but a few examples of
up less than 3% of the population of
ideas that have been imported and exported
Western Australia, just under half of all
through the English-speaking world. Little
cases of family violence reported to the
account, it seems, is taken of regional, let
police involve Aboriginal families. The
alone local differences of demography,
terms ’family fighting’ or ’feuding’ are
culture or economy. Based on exploratory
preferred by indigenous people because the
research in Western Australia (WA)
violence is multilayered and crosses the
between July and December 1998, this
boundaries between the public and
paper examines the importation by the WA
private/domestic violence spheres (Blagg,
Community Based Services of the What
2000). Its public, alcohol-related nature
Works agenda, and demonstrates how the
often results in both men and women being
penal concept has been adapted (or perhaps
charged with public order offences. All this,
subverted) to meet the needs of a vast,
many would argue, is the legacy of
sparsely populated state with a colonial
colonialism that stripped indigenous
legacy and unique racial conflicts.
Australians of their land and their dignity in
ways too various and complex to discuss in
this brief paper. As Margaret Smallwood
The Western Australian
says, &dquo;This violence is not our way&dquo;:
context
&dquo;The patriarchal attitudes of colonial
Australia...
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