{"title":"Lost in translation: The principle of normalisation in prison policy in Norway and the Netherlands","authors":"Jill van de Rijt, E. V. van Ginneken, M. Boone","doi":"10.1177/14624745221103823","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221103823","url":null,"abstract":"The principle of normalisation has gained more prominence in international prison law, with both the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules (UN SMR) and the European Prison Rules (EPR) promoting normalisation to the guiding principles. In general terms, normalisation refers to shaping life in prison in resemblance to life outside prison. However, it largely remains unclear what this principle entails for prison policy. The general formulation in the UN SMR and EPR leave much discretionary room to national prison authorities. By conducting a (comparative) policy analysis, this article aims to uncover the normative standards derived from the UN SMR and EPR and how the principle translates into national laws and policies of Norway and the Netherlands. The analysis shows that although the main provision is generally formulated, some detailed norms are provided in other provisions on how elements of life in prison should be shaped, including limits and restrictions. In Norway and the Netherlands, normalisation is not explicitly mentioned in law, but is (to a varied extent) incorporated in policy. It is shown that, in practice, normalisation is closely tied to reintegration, which has important implications for the principle itself and the norms that are taken as point of reference.","PeriodicalId":47626,"journal":{"name":"Punishment & Society-International Journal of Penology","volume":"25 1","pages":"766 - 783"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46335691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Robert Reiner, Social Democratic Criminology","authors":"David Brown","doi":"10.1177/14624745221101122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221101122","url":null,"abstract":"Clair arrived at the summary statement as a way of explaining why privileged clients had not cultivated any significant legal expertize and therefore deferred to their attorneys, but the passage reads as though privileged clients were simply too busy making all the right decisions in life—“going to doctor’s appointments” and what not—to get into trouble with the law, and by implication, Clair seems to be offering an indictment of choices made by disadvantaged clients. Again, Clair’s data does not support this claim. The privileged had plenty of run-ins with law enforcement, and as some of Clair’s clients explained, they benefitted from networks that included ties to influential legal officials, financial resources to purchase a better quality of defense, and white privilege. Chapter 4 deals with the complexities of criminal defense from the viewpoint of defense attorneys. This is my favorite chapter though my read is that too often Clair presented defense attorney perspectives in an uncritical way. Again, clients act; courtroom officials respond. Nevertheless, in chapter 4 we learn defense attorneys (a) take exception to being challenged by disadvantaged clients; (b) are as concerned about maintaining a professional identity in the eyes of judges and prosecutors as they are about using every legal strategy available to their clients; (c) determine legal strategies by judicial habits; and (d) sometimes give less effort in cases where they suspect the client may be facing too many of life’s problems to fully participate in their own case. In short, justice may take a backseat to courtroom culture and professional tensions, and “disadvantaged” clients may be justified in their legal cynicism and “withdrawal.” Chapter 5 is a conclusion with now customary policy recommendations. Overall, Privilege and Punishment makes some compelling arguments, and instructors should find the book useful in courses on courts, criminal justice inequalities, organizational culture, and professional-client relationships.","PeriodicalId":47626,"journal":{"name":"Punishment & Society-International Journal of Penology","volume":"26 5‐6","pages":"1159 - 1162"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41257398","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Parole, parole boards and the institutional dilemmas of contemporary prison release","authors":"Thomas Guiney","doi":"10.1177/14624745221097371","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221097371","url":null,"abstract":"The decision to release is a defining feature of the carceral experience: at once a necessary function of a dynamic penal system, and a highly contested form of symbolic communication where the anxieties and contradictions of contemporary penality begin to coalesce. In this paper I argue that the institutions we rely upon to make these determinations in a fair, consistent and efficient manner are under increasing strain. Drawing upon insights from historical institutionalism, I seek to show that the parole board model of discretionary decision-making that first emerged during the highwater mark of mid-twentieth century penal modernism has proved remarkably resilient to reform, but is slowly fracturing into a more complex, multi-layered prison release landscape. I explore the implications of this gradual historical transformation and conclude this paper with a call for new ways of thinking about prison release as an increasingly interconnected sphere of penal governance.","PeriodicalId":47626,"journal":{"name":"Punishment & Society-International Journal of Penology","volume":"25 1","pages":"621 - 640"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46100072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Secondary registrants”: A new conceptualization of the spread of community control","authors":"Chrysanthi S. Leon, Ashley Kilmer","doi":"10.1177/14624745221094255","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221094255","url":null,"abstract":"U.S. policies influence worldwide responses to sexual offending and community control. Individuals in the U.S. convicted of sex offenses experience surveillance and control beyond their sentences, including public registries and residency restrictions. While the targets are the convicted individuals, many registrants have romantic partners, children, and other family members also navigating these restrictions. Findings from a qualitative study using written and interview responses from a hard-to-reach group—family members of registrants (n = 58)—reveal legal and extra-legal surveillance and control beyond the intended target. We argue that family members are “secondary registrants” enduring both the reach of sex offense policies into their personal lives and targeted harms because of their relationship with a convicted individual, including vigilantism and a “sex offender surcharge.” Family members engage in advocacy work to ameliorate sex offense restrictions to counteract their own stigmatization and social exclusion. Conceptually, secondary registration captures the unique and expansive reach of policy, state surveillance, and coercion on registrant family members and raises new concerns about spillover harm. Secondary registration demonstrates an understudied example of the neoliberal penal practice of de-centering the state but with the addition of deep stigmatization and the spread of sovereign and vigilante violence onto families.","PeriodicalId":47626,"journal":{"name":"Punishment & Society-International Journal of Penology","volume":"25 1","pages":"641 - 664"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47945628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Enemy parole","authors":"Netanel Dagan","doi":"10.1177/14624745221092983","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221092983","url":null,"abstract":"Pushing and expanding the boundaries of the ‘criminology of the other’ and ‘enemy penology’ to the post-sentencing phase, this study aims to analyse parole for terror-related prisoners. For doing so, the study thematically analysed 207 decisions of the Israeli parole board for individuals labelled as ‘security prisoners’. It found that for security prisoners, the parole board employs a distorted version of the more discretionary-individualised logic that applies to ordinary prisoners. When performing such ‘enemy parole’ – and overwhelmingly denying parole to security prisoners – the parole board uses three conflicting discourses: security-group logic, responsibilisation and resentencing. Through these discourses, the parole board negotiates the categories of self/other and citizen/enemy in order to suspend the reintegrative components of ‘citizen parole’. In conclusion, ‘enemy parole’ is constructed as an exclusionary, punitive and exceptional process disguised as inclusionary, equal and legitimate.","PeriodicalId":47626,"journal":{"name":"Punishment & Society-International Journal of Penology","volume":"43 6","pages":"600 - 620"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41299462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Marion Vannier, Normalizing Extreme Imprisonment: The Case of Life Without Parole in California","authors":"Christopher Seeds","doi":"10.1177/14624745221092639","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221092639","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47626,"journal":{"name":"Punishment & Society-International Journal of Penology","volume":"25 1","pages":"1153 - 1156"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45325015","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Matthew Clair, Privilege and Punishment: How Race and Class Matter in Criminal Court","authors":"Michael Lawrence Walker","doi":"10.1177/14624745221090496","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221090496","url":null,"abstract":"underscoring: the death penalty is one among other factors that contribute to the development of life without parole. This is not only to say that there is more to LWOP’s story than capital punishment but also to recognize that what occurs outside the strict confines of the death penalty field can nevertheless influence the field and therefore matters for how researchers interpret what abolitionists do and say. To acknowledge this broader scope is not to take away from the book’s accomplishments, but it is to note that there are historically significant aspects of LWOP’s development that an account looking solely at capital punishment will not be able to show. Underplayed here, for example, is how for much of the twentieth century life without parole was not a punishment so certain to end with death in prison; its practices and meanings have changed over time. As it begins, the book ultimately returns to the words of people serving LWOP, drawing on 299 letters from incarcerated men and women, as a source for interpreting how the punishment is experienced. The letters shed light on LWOP’s cruelties, its pains, and bring to the study a gravity that documentary sources and elite interviews alone could not. It is one of the book’s unique contributions: to juxtapose the acts and rhetoric of California lawmakers, abolitionist organizers, and litigants—who by turns downplay and accentuate LWOP’s severity in a struggle for votes and legal victories —with the effects on those for whom the punishment is not a matter of strategy or politics, but of everyday life.","PeriodicalId":47626,"journal":{"name":"Punishment & Society-International Journal of Penology","volume":"25 1","pages":"1156 - 1159"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43909663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Penal diversity, penality and community sanctions in Australia","authors":"A. Freiberg, L. Bartels","doi":"10.1177/14624745221090495","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221090495","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores Australian penal diversity, through the lens of community sanctions. We first examine what is meant by ‘community sanctions’ and suggest that the problem of definition provides one of the reasons for the dearth of comparative studies on their use, compared with prison studies. The article then examines the concept of punitiveness, ‘penal reach’ or ‘penal load’. This is followed by examination of the use of community corrections (CC) in Australia and differences between jurisdictions and over time. We consider the relationship between imprisonment and CC rates and attempt to explain these differences. Our analysis suggests there is a need to expand the notion of punitiveness, to include non-custodial sanctions. Further exploration of Australia's trends in the use of CC and interjurisdictional variation is required. However, we suggest that becoming less fixated on imprisonment, as the primary measure of punitiveness, and instead understanding how the various community sanctions operate – not as alternatives to imprisonment, but as independent sanctions appropriate to a wide range of less serious offences – may enable us to better understand the true penal impact of a jurisdiction's criminal justice system and consequently craft more effective and appropriate penal policies.","PeriodicalId":47626,"journal":{"name":"Punishment & Society-International Journal of Penology","volume":"25 1","pages":"577 - 599"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48469582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transformational learning and identity shift: Evidence from a campus behind bars","authors":"Amy E. Lerman, Meredith Sadin","doi":"10.1177/14624745221087702","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221087702","url":null,"abstract":"Identity-driven theories of desistance provide a useful model for understanding change in a carceral context. However, these theories often are not grounded in specific programmes or practices that might catalyze identity shift, and tend to focus narrowly on recidivism as the sole outcome of interest. In this study, we examine the role of prison higher education in identity-driven change through the process of transformative learning. Using administrative information on college-level course completion and an original longitudinal survey of prison college students, we show evidence of both between- and within-subjects shifts in individuals’ sense of self-efficacy, as well as their broader civic orientation. We further explore the role of identity using a survey experiment that randomly assigns individuals to a “student” versus “prisoner” identity label. We find that identity labelling has significant effects on both confidence in accomplishing one's goals and perceived likelihood of recidivism. We supplement these quantitative findings with qualitative interviews of prison college alumni. Our study suggests that access to higher education can be consequential for those in prison, and provides a broader framework through which to analyze the effects of prison programming that extends beyond recidivism.","PeriodicalId":47626,"journal":{"name":"Punishment & Society-International Journal of Penology","volume":"25 1","pages":"683 - 706"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46324169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}