Against Imprisonment

David Scott

Description

Provides a compelling analysis of the failings of imprisonment. Sheds new light on this pressing topic. Explains why prisons do not work for most offenders.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Prison

Informations

• Publié par: Waterside Press
• Date de parution: 28 février 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781910979532
• Langue: English

Extrait

Against Imprisonment
An Anthology of Abolitionist Essays
David Scott
With a Foreword by Emma Bell
Copyright and publication details
Against Imprisonment: An Anthology of Abolitionist Essays
David Scott
ISBN 978-1-909976-54-2 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-910979-53-2 (Epub E-book)
ISBN 978-1-910979-54-9 (Adobe E-book)
Copyright © 2018 This work is the copyright of David Scott. All intellectual property and associated rights are hereby asserted and reserved by the author in full compliance with UK, European and international law. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, including in hard copy or via the internet, without the prior written permission of the publishers to whom all such rights have been assigned worldwide.
Cover design © 2018 Waterside Press by www.gibgob.com
Printed by Lightning Source.
Main UK distributor Gardners Books, 1 Whittle Drive, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN23 6QH . Tel: [phone]; [e-mail] ; www.gardners.com
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Cataloguing-In-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.
e-book Against Imprisonment: An Anthology of Abolitionist Essays is available as an ebook and also to subscribers of Ebrary, Ebsco, Myilibrary and Dawsonera.
Published 2018 by
Waterside Press Ltd
Sherfield Gables
Sherfield on Loddon, Hook
Hampshire RG27 0JG.
Telephone [phone]
Online catalogue WatersidePress.co.uk
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Table of Contents
Copyright and publication details ii
Acknowledgements vi
About the author viii
The author of the Foreword viii
Foreword ix
Preface 13 Against Imprisonment 21
The penal utopia (or how we learn to stop worrying and to love the prison) 23
The penal dystopia (or punishing the poor with a good conscience) 29
The point is to change it (or act upon a bad conscience) 33 Walking Among the Graves of the Living 41
Learning from the chaplains 46
Bearing witness to denial 55
Contradictions, tensions and abolitionist praxis 60 Escaping the Logic of “Crime” 65
Ontological reality 67
People in glass houses should not throw stones 72
Responsibilities for the Other 78
Confronting the logic of “crime” 80 Justifications of Punishment and Questions of Penal Legitimacy 83
Consequentialism 84
Retributivism 92
Abolitionism 98
The magician’s trick 104 The Changing Face of the Prison 107
Less eligibility and the treatment and training ideology 109
The crisis of containment 111
The end of an era 112
The liberal penological consensus 114
The Woolf agenda 119
Back from the future 123
Coming full circle 128
From “Rehabilitation Revolution” to “Safety and Reform” 132
Riding on the penal merry-go-round 136 Problematising “Common-sense” Understandings of Prison Violence 139
Constructing the narrative 141
Prison safety and reform 145
Always report assaults 157
Contextualising the past: beyond agnosis, silencing and denial 161 Contesting the Spirit of Death 163
Civil death 165
Social death 167
Corporeal death 172
Contesting the spirit of death 173
A matter of life and death 182 Saying NO to the Mega-prison 185
HMP Hindley: The worst prison in the country 188
Sentencing the poor to a life of misery 190
Welfare cuts and prison bruises 193
The toxic mega-prison 195
Invest in communities, not prisons 200 Unequalled in Pain 203
Economic and social inequalities 205
Tough talk, suitable enemies and the punitive trap 210
Conclusion: What is to be done? 216
Bibliography 231
Index 255
List of Tables
Table 1: Social Background of Prisoners in England and Wales in 2016 31
Table 2: “Criminal Justice” or Restorative Justice Values? 100
Table 3: Proportion of Sampled Articles Including Prison Officer Voice 143
Table 4: Number of Staff in 143 prisons in 1835 149
Table 5: Fatal and Serious Accidents and Occupations in 1923 154
Table 6: Examples of Prison Rates in the Most Deprived Areas 192
Table 7: Examples of Prison Rates in the Least Deprived Areas 192
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all of my excellent friends and colleagues at the Open University for their encouragement, especially Avi Boukli, Victoria Canning, Mary Carter, Vickie Cooper, Linda Copeland, Lynne Copson, Deborah Drake, Julia Downes, Ross Ferguson, Samantha Fletcher, Jacqui Gabb, Sian Hamlett, Kier-Irwin Rogers, Gabi Kent, James Mehigan, Gerry Mooney, Adam Nightingale, Alison Penn, Abigail Rowe, Steve Tombs, Amanda Vaughan, Louise Westmarland and Nicola Yeates. Many thanks are also due to my friends and family for their constant encouragement and helpful distractions, especially Fabrice Andrieux, Michelle Denham, Neil Denham, Ian Nickson, Emily Nickson, Kim Nickson, Michael Parkin, Richard Wilbraham, Sue Wilbraham, Eric Wilbraham, Doug Wilbraham, Helen Maher, John Roland Scott, Ben Scott and Ian Scott.
I would also like to thank all the activists engaged in struggles against inequalities and the penal industrial complex in the United Kingdom — I salute you for your commitment, solidarity and direct engagement. Finally I would also like to say a special thank you to all my friends in the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control. In particular, thank you Chris Allen, Kym Atkinson, Anne Alvesalo-Kuusi, Giles Barrett Alana Barton, Anette Ballinger, Vanessa Barker, Andrea Beckmann, Monish Bhatia, Michelle Brown, Tony Brockovich, Tony Broxson, Tony Bunyan, Bree Carlton, Eamonn Carrabine, Mick Cavadino, Kathryn Chadwick, Gilles Chantraine, Becky Clarke, Roy Coleman, Deborah Coles, Mary Corcoran, Janet Cunliffe, Tom Daems, Marion Dammit, Pamela Davies, James Deane, John Dennison, Anita Dockley, Andrew Douglas, Anne Egelund, Yarin Eski, Billy Frank, Peter Francis, Stratos Georgoulas, Joanna Gilmore, Barry Goldson, Helena Gosling, Fabrice Guilbaud, Penny Green, Sarah Greenhow, Simon Hallsworth, Emily Luise Hart, Anne Hayes, Andrew Henley, Paddy Hillyard, Jim Hollinshead, Antoinette Huber, William Jackson, Janet Jamieson, Andrew Jefferson, Robert Jones, Elton Kalica, Laura Margaret Kelly, Sarah Lamble, Alessandro Maculan, Margaret Malloch, Thomas Mathiesen, Simon Mackenzie, Maureen Mansfield, Maeve McMahon, Will McMahon, John Moore, Linda Moore, Wayne Morrison, Bepe Mosconi, Ida Nafstad, Martin O’Brien, Christina Pantazis, Georgios Papanicolaou, Justin Piché, Hannah Pittaway, Scott Poynting, Paddy Rawlinson, Rebecca Roberts, Mick Ryan, Simone Santorso, Alvise Sbraccia, Holger Schmidt, Sebastian Scheerer, Phil Scraton, Joe Sim, Ann Singleton, Paula Skidmore, Ragnhild Sollund, Faith Spear, Carly Speed, Lizzy Stanley, Rene van Swaaningen, Sarah Tickle, Katherine Tucker, Waqas Tufail, David Tyrer, Francesca Vianello, Reece Walters, Steve Wakeman, Tony Ward, Lisa White, David Whyte, Patrick Williams, Tunde Zak-Williams and Per Jorgen Ystehede.
Despite all of the help of the above I take responsibility for any errors that lie within.
About the author
Dr David Scott works at the Open University where his research interests include the ethical and political foundations of penal abolitionism; the relationship between abolitionism, human rights and social justice; critical social theory and the concept of “crime”; and critical approaches to poverty, prisons and punishment. He is a former editor of the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice and the co-founding editor of the European Group Journal Justice, Power and Resistance . He also worked at Edge Hill University, the University of Northumbria at Newcastle, the University of Central Lancashire and Liverpool John Moores University.
The author of the Foreword
Emma Bell is Professor of British Politics at the University of Savoie, France. She is the author of Criminal Justice and Neoliberalism (Palgrave, 2011) and is a former coordinator of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control.
Foreword
Emma Bell
There is currently little public debate about the rights and wrongs of punishment. Save in the case of the fight against terrorism, even the theme of “ law and order” has found itself at the margins of political debate and was not even considered as one of the public’s top five concerns in the last general election in the UK (British Election Study, 2017). The Labour party manifesto sidelined the issue of punishment to focus on police numbers and police practice, notably promising to fight against racial bias (Labour Party, 2017). At a time when the political “heat” is off, and the public appear to be more concerned about the looming Brexit and the effects of austerity on their daily lives, those of us who are concerned about promoting a radical new non-penal agenda need to work towards putting the issue back in the spotlight on our own terms. In the following collection of essays, David Scott provides us with a roadmap of how to do this.
Scott systematically dismantles widely-accepted justifications for punishment on ethical, political, philosophical and practical grounds, forcefully demonstrating that the only clear purpose of imprisonment is the infliction of pain and suffering on all those who come into contact with the prison place, whether as detainees or staff. He provides us with fascinating glimpses from his own ethnographic research into what he describes as “modern-day cathedrals of pain”. Turning the utopian myth that “prison works” on its head, he invites us to imagine “real utopian” non-penal alternatives to punishment that respect human dignity and deliver genuine social justice.
In order to take up this challenge, it is necessary to combine abolitionist theory with abolitionist praxis. For Scott, this entails becoming abolitionists in our everyday lives and learning to deal with harm differently. It means engaging wit