NCJ Number
243638
Date Published
2002
Length
319 pages
Annotation
This book identifies and discusses developments in the response to crime in America and Britain during the last 30 years, along with the social, cultural, and political forces that propelled them.
Abstract
The author of this book develops the argument that the explanation for some of the more puzzling aspects of contemporary crime control stem from the kinds of social organization and political culture that dominate Britain and America today. The prison, which had been discredited as a cruel institution destined for abolition has been reborn as a seemingly indispensable tool of late modern social life. It has gained this status because it is perceived as an uncomplicated, albeit expensive, means of segregating and controlling the problem populations created by today's economic and social structures. The sectors of the population excluded from the worlds of well-paying work, welfare benefits, and family stability - typically young urban minority males - are increasingly housed in prison or jail, which tends to disqualify them from future social and economic inclusion. Penal solutions are immediate, easy to implement, and can claim to "work" as a punishment for not abiding by laws that protect social and economic order. Further, it relieves the advantaged from guilt for avoiding the collective sacrifice and difficult reforms needed to improve the welfare of the disadvantaged. The author argues, however, that the current state of social and economic structures in America and Britain are not the inevitable future. We have gotten where we are through partly planned and partly unintended political, cultural, and policy choices; the choices could have been different, and they can still be rethought and reversed. Bibliography and index