In the decades prior to the financial crisis, as Jonathan Simon writes
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I wholeheartedly agree, Eric. Thanks for the link. And, yeah – the introduction to the book frames humonetarian discourse using two alternative (or complementary) stories: A retreat from political punitivism, or a direct corollary of managerial/actuarial justice (we’re still managing people, albeit with less resources.)
Posted by: Hadar Aviram | Sep 4, 2012 12:32:35 PM
I think you are right to see a move from the politics of penal outrage to the politics of fiscal responsibility as a false dichotomy. In particular, Simon’s earlier work co-authored with Malcolm Feeley advances a “new penology” of “actuarial justice” (to quote two article titles) that emphasizes regulatory risk management of categories of offenders separated into groups by broad criminogenic factors. Add to that David Garland’s concept of responsibilization, in which private agents take up the onus of crime prevention, and apply it to the offenders themselves, and you get a strategy whereby many low-level offenders are required to undergo careful surveillance and management in programs deemed to reduce recidivism as the major measure of rehabilitation (note, not reduced offense, but abstinence from crime, produced by abstinence from alcohol and drugs and hanging around with other criminal types). A further feature of the responsibilization strategy is to require the offender to pay for her punishment, sometimes pretrial as a condition of bail or diversion (under what Justice Ginsburg terms, in Shelton v Alabama, “pretrial probation.”). The programs serve the purpose Feeley and Simon identify as the goal of crime management: to supervise and even incapacitate (depending upon how time intensive they are) offenders in the community. But the programs also serve the purpose (at least in theory) of transforming the offenders into fiscally and socially responsible managers of their own well-being, rather than burdens on the welfare state or the fiscally overtaxed criminal justice system. For a flavor of my take on responsibilization through the court process, see my Drugs, Courts, and the New Penology, 20 Stanford L. & Policy Rev. 417 (2009).
Posted by: Eric J. Miller | Sep 4, 2012 12:27:23 PM