Ii. the Sociology of Punishment 57 Iii
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Imprisonment in the Contemporary Imaginaries in the UK: Nihilism, Innovation and the Performance of Introspective Normativity Yi You Ph.D. thesis University of Edinburgh 2014 Table of Contents Declaration Acknowledgements Abstract Chapter 1 Introduction and Overview Chapter 2 Methodology Chapter 3 Liberal Imaginaries of Imprisonment Chapter 4 Populist Imaginaries of Imprisonment Chapter 5 Risk-oriented Imaginaries of Imprisonment Chapter 6 Re-normalising Imaginaries of Imprisonment Glossary of Key Terms Bibliography i Declaration vi Acknowledgements vii Abstract viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW 1 I. Introduction 1 i. Background 1 a. Declining prospects for the universal ideal of imprisonment 1 b. A Kafka-like pursuit: practicality-directed prison reforms 11 c. Post-welfarist imaginaries of imprisonment and their normative performances 13 ii. Aims and Objectives 18 iii. Structure of the Thesis 27 II. Imprisonment and Its Challenges: An Overview of the British Case 29 i. Structures and Organisations 30 ii. Inmates 32 iii. Aims and Objectives 36 iv. Surroundings and Maintenance of Order 41 v. The Political Context 44 vi. Key Challenges for Practices of Imprisonment in the UK 46 a. Challenge of imprisonment scale 46 b. Problems about prison conditions and good order 47 c. Controversies about institutional aims 47 d. Penal rationality vs politicised punitiveness 47 vii. Supplementary Discussions 48 CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY 50 I. Challenges and Objectives 50 II. Two Existing Approaches to Normative Penological Understanding 51 i. The Normativist Approach 51 ii. The Sociology of Punishment 57 iii. Discussion 67 ii III. The Method of Examining the Performance of Introspective Normativity 68 i. Durkheim’s Social-historical Hermeneutics: the Methodological Source 68 a. Why Durkheim? Positivist sociologist versus moral philosopher 69 b. Directing social studies towards moral reconstruction: Durkheim’s strategies 75 c. Social-historical hermeneutics and rationalised morality 77 ii. Developing Durkheim’s Methodological Thoughts to Serve A Different Context 89 iii. Our Methodological Scheme: Introspective Normativity and its Four Analytical- evaluative Patterns 96 a. Hermeneutics centred on introspective normativity 96 b. Penal imaginaries as the materials to be examined 99 c. Strategies for examining contemporary imaginaries of imprisonment 102 d. Four analytical-evaluative patterns of introspective normativity 104 CHAPTER 3 LIBERAL IMAGINARIES OF IMPRISONMENT 110 I. Introduction 110 i. Three Representative Forms of Penal Imaginaries within the Imprisonment Field 110 ii. About Liberal Imaginaries of Imprisonment 112 iii. Contents of the Chapter 115 II. Overview 115 i. Liberal Imprisonment Agendas in the Post-Welfarist Phase 115 ii. Penal Moderation Proposal 119 iii. Liberal Imaginaries of Imprisonment and Universal Normativity 121 III. Four Approaches to Normative Construction in the Contemporary Liberal Imaginaries of Imprisonment 123 i. The Exterior Normativity Approach 124 ii. The ‘Limits’ Acknowledgement Approach 127 iii. The Cultural Identity Approach 131 iv. The Penal Consumption Approach 135 IV. Discussion 139 CHAPTER 4 POPULIST IMAGINARIES OF IMPRISONMENT 142 I. Introduction 142 iii II. Overview 146 i. Sources and Dynamics 146 ii. Populist Imaginaries of Imprisonment in the Mass Media 149 a. The prison environment and its routines 149 b. Prisoners: ‘us and them’ 151 c. Prison staff 153 d. Purposes and reformative future 153 iii. The Sociological Aspect of Populist Imaginaries of Imprisonment 155 a. The role of mass media 156 b. Multi-agent involvement in constructing populist imaginaries 158 c. Consequences of populist imaginaries of imprisonment 161 iv. The Normative Dimension of Populist Imaginaries of Imprisonment 162 III. A ‘Handicapped’ Normative Pursuit: Populist Imaginaries in the Perspective of Introspective Normativity 166 i. Stereotypes, Narratives Construction and Normative Certainty 166 ii. Oblivion of the Predicament of Universal Normativity 168 iii. Possibilities of Normative Innovation 170 IV. Conclusion 172 CHAPTER 5 RISK-ORIENTED IMAGINARIES OF IMPRISONMENT 174 I. Introduction 174 II. Some Conceptual Issues 177 III. Overview 180 i. Prison as An Instrument for Managing Crime Risks 183 ii. Risk and the Rehabilitation of Prisoners 187 iii. Risks to the Prison and Prisoners 194 IV. Evaluating the Performance of Introspective Normativity 197 i. Subordination of A Holistic Normative Perspective 198 ii. Risk as An Ideological Shelter 200 iii. Re-creation of Isolated Normative Reality 202 V. Nihilism and Innovation: Conclusion 204 iv CHAPTER 6 RE-NORMALISING IMAGINARIES OF IMPRISONMENT 209 I. Introduction 209 II. Escaping from Being Normative: Assessing the Contemporary Imaginaries of Imprisonment in the UK 209 i. Liberal Imaginaries of Imprisonment 210 ii. Populist Imaginaries of Imprisonment 211 iii. Risk-oriented Imaginaries of Imprisonment 213 iv. Handicapped Normativity: Outlining the Challenge of Imprisonment Imaginaries 215 III. Re-normalising Imaginaries of Imprisonment: Social Conditions and Innovative Approaches 218 i. Social Conditions Correlated with Nihilistic Introspective Normativity 219 ii. Re-normalising the Mainstream Forms of Imaginaries in the Imprisonment Field 221 IV. Normative Innovation in the Field of Imprisonment: An Enriched Cosmopolitan Imaginary 228 i. Encountering Strangers in A Divided world: The Perspective of Cosmopolitanism 228 ii. The Cosmopolitan Imaginary of Imprisonment: Enriched in the Light of Introspective Normativity 230 iii. Imagining Imprisonment in A Cosmopolitan Spirit 234 a. Ideological transformation 234 b. Sentencing rationale and guidelines 237 c. Incarceration settings 239 d. Community and societal transformation 240 iv. Discussion 242 V. Conclusion 243 GLOSSARY OF KEY TERMS 246 BIBLIOGRAPHY 250 v Declaration I declare that this dissertation was composed entirely by me and that no part of it has been submitted to this, or to any other university, as part of a degree. Yi You World count: 89316 vi Acknowledgements The completion of this thesis owes a lot to the support of my supervisors Lesley McAra and Neil Walker, both of whom have devoted much of their time to supervising my research and encouraging me to develop my ideas. I benefited greatly from their constructive opinions and their patience and good-humour. And I am very grateful to both of them. Many colleagues in Edinburgh Law School also gave me great support and inspirations in my process of completing this thesis. I am thankful to all of them. And I wish to express my gratitude to the criminology reading group and the legal theory reading group at Edinburgh Law School, whose colourful academic activities inspired me a lot in my research progress. I am also thankful to the College of Humanities and Social Science, Edinburgh University. Without its financial support, this research would not have got off the ground. Yi You April, 2014 vii Abstract Over the past few decades, the large scale of imprisonment and the heavily-adopted punitive approach as a way of responding to crime have engendered widespread concerns among the public and academia in the UK. Whereas there have been a good number of studies that have investigated their underlying sociological causes and elaborated a variety of accounts of how such phenomena are historically configured and how they may be moderated or reversed, the normative dimensions of the current imprisonment complex have not yet received sufficient examination. This particularly regards the understanding of the tensions between the aspiration for a universal ideal of imprisonment and the reality of highly diverse and fragmented post-welfarist approaches in the incarceration field. This thesis tries to uncover and account for the dilemmas and problems in the normative sphere of incarceration in the UK. In doing so, it elaborates the analytical- evaluative framework based on the concept of introspective normativity. viii Chapter 1 Introduction and Overview I. Introduction i. Background a. Declining prospects for the universal ideal of imprisonment About half a century ago, there were widespread expectations among criminologists in the UK and the US that the prison would be improved materially with the progress of positive social science and would ultimately become a rationalised institution within the criminal justice system. Many of them - including Norval Morris (1965: 268), one of the leading American criminologists - then believed that the old form of prison would become extinct, and would be replaced by ‘quite different social organizations’ which are more effective and morally defensible in responding to crime and