The SAGE Handbook of Punishment and Society

Jonathan Simon, Richard Sparks, Jonathan Simon, Richard Sparks

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781473971387
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

The project of interpreting contemporary forms of punishment means exploring the social, political, economic, and historical conditions in the society in which those forms arise. The SAGE Handbook of Punishment and Society draws together this disparate and expansive field of punishment and society into one compelling new volume.

Headed by two of the leading scholars in the field, Jonathan Simon and Richard Sparks have crafted a comprehensive and definitive resource that illuminates some of the key themes in this complex area - from historical and prospective issues to penal trends and related contributions through theory, literature and philosophy. Incorporating a stellar and international line-up of contributors the book addresses issues such as: capital punishment, the civilising process, gender, diversity, inequality, power, human rights and neoliberalism.

This engaging, vibrantly written collection will be captivating reading for academics and researchers in criminology, penology, criminal justice, sociology, cultural studies, philosophy and politics.

PART I

Punishment and Social Theory

1

Punishment and Social Solidarity

David Garland

Punishment and society scholarship takes as its analytic starting point Emile Durkheim’s theory of punishment and social solidarity. It does so not because Durkheim was the first to write about criminal punishment in a sociological vein – Montesquieu (1762) and de Tocqueville (1833) initiated that project long before – but because Durkheim’s argument best encapsulates the fundamentals of the sociology of punishment and its distinctive approach to penal phenomena.

Durkheim’s foundational claim – that the punishment of offenders functions not to control crime but to enhance solidarity – is by now a familiar one. In the standard textbook formulation, it can appear somewhat glib and simplistic, but properly understood, Durkheim’s theory contains within it many of the conceptual issues with which the sociology of punishment has subsequently been concerned. I will set out the argument’s details in a moment, but first I want to explain why Durkheim’s analytical approach to punishment has served as a model for so much of the scholarship in this field.

Durkheim’s innovative move, his foundational contribution to this field, is to separate the sociological analysis of punishment from the conventional assumption that penal laws and penal practices are determined by the exigencies of crime-control-and to make this separation sharp and explicit.¹ In Durkheim’s view, punishment must be understood as a moral institution, shaped by collective values and social relationships rather than an instrumental one shaped by the demands of crime-control. No doubt criminal punishments do produce crime control effects – this is, after all, their manifest function.² But Durkheim insists that punishment works poorly as an instrumental technique, rarely succeeding in deterring crime or reforming offenders. The ‘true function’ of penal sanctions, whatever the perceptions of the public or the intentions of the authorities, is the ritualized re-affirmation of collective values and the reinforcement of group solidarity.³

Durkheim insists on the following counterintuitive claims: that punishment’s chief functions are not penal but social; that penal sanctions generally fail to inhibit offenders though they succeed in other, less apparent, respects; that the messages punishment communicates are aimed not at criminals or potential criminals but at law-abiding citizens; and that the forms and extent of punishment are determined not by crime control exigencies but by the social values, social reactions, and social organization of the group on whose behalf punishments are imposed.

Taken together, these ideas have supplied the foundations for punishment and society scholarship. Proof of this is that these basic ideas, or something very like them, find expression in all the theoretical traditions that operate within this scholarly field, even when the theories are otherwise at odds with Durkheim’s own. Marxists, Foucauldians, Eliasians, Weberians, Meadians, Bourdieuians (and of course, neo-Durkheimians) all utilize these same ideational tropes. And they all begin from the axiom that punishment’s forms, functions and transformations are to be understood not (just) as an instrumental response to crime but as a constitutive aspect of larger social processes. To make this observation is not to suggest that these theories are all, in some respect Durkheimian. It is to say that they are all, in some respect, sociological, and that Durkheim was the first fully to articulate the fundamentals of a sociological approach to this phenomenon.

Punishment is a social process with social causes and social effects, not – or not merely – a reaction to crime. The sociological insight here is that neither individual crimes nor aggregate crime rates determine the kind or extent of penal activity that a society undertakes. It is not ‘crime’ that dictates penal laws, penal sentences, and penal policy decisions but rather the ways in which crime is socially perceived and problematized, together with the political and administrative decisions to which these reactions give rise. Moreover, the whole apparatus of criminal justice through which this ‘reaction’ is administered – the specific forms of policing and prosecution, trial and punishment, condemnation and sanctioning, penal institutions and regime management, and so on – is shaped by social conventions and historical developments rather than by the contours of criminality. So even when penal systems adapt to changing patterns of crime and problems of crime control – and they certainly do adapt to some degree – they always do so in ways that are mediated by social norms, cultural conventions, economic resources, institutional dynamics and political forces.

Durkheim’s axiom is now so thoroughly taken-for-granted in the punishment and society literature that it is sometimes rendered in exaggerated versions. One occasionally reads, for instance, that punishment and penal policy are ‘unrelated to’ or ‘utterly disconnected’ from crime and crime rates. But this is an overstatement that transforms a sociological insight into an untenable claim. The phenomenon in question is, after all, the punishment of criminal offences and offenders, and the latter (offences and offenders) always operate in some relation to the former (punishment), and always exert some pressure on punishment’s character and extent.⁴

Durkheim urged us to think of punishment as ‘relatively autonomous’ of crime (to use a concept drawn from a different tradition). He taught us to think of it as being shaped by other forces, performing other functions, and never reducible to instrumental crime control. But he did not for a moment think that punishment and crime were unrelated. On the contrary, he defined crime as deviant conduct that violates social norms to the extent of being labeled ‘crime’ and punished with a criminal sanction. Crimes, for Durkheim, are wrongful acts that violate deeply felt social norms and provoke punitive reactions. There is no punishment without crime, just as there is no crime without punishment. The relationship is mutually constitutive.

DURKHEIM ON PUNISHMENT AND SOLIDARITY

Durkheim argued that the punishment of crime is, archetypally, a group phenomenon of great intensity; propelled by irrational, emotive forces which sweep up group members in a passion of moral outrage. These collective reactions are channeled into ceremonial rituals of condemnation and punishment in ways that reaffirm group solidarities and restore the sacred moral order violated by the offender.

The criminal act violates sentiments and emotions that are deeply ingrained in most members of the group. It offends them. It shocks their ‘healthy’ (i.e. well-socialized) consciences. This violation of group norms calls forth strong psychological reactions, even among those not directly involved. It provokes outrage, anger, indignation, and a passionate desire for vengeance.

Although Durkheim does not say so, it should be clear that this group reaction is itself an expression of an already-existing solidarity. Without such solidarity, reacting to crime would be the sole concern of the directly affected victim. But in strongly solidaristic groups, criminal acts provoke collective reactions. They do so for one of two reasons, depending on the character of the group and the prevailing type of solidarity. (I will have more to say on types of solidarity below.)

Either, there is a collective worship for sacred values such that all true believers are outraged any time these values are violated. (The model here is the religious sect reacting to a sacrilegious act.) Or else, the collective reaction occurs because social bonds link group members together directly, producing a conductivity that transmits the victim’s pain to like-minded, sympathetic others.⁵ The sympathy these others feel connects them to the victim, and to each other, and draws them into a collective response. (The model here is a modern, liberal society characterized by the humanitarian sentiments that Adam Smith [1976] described.) Either way, it is the prior existence of group solidarity that ensures the victim does not suffer alone, nor are victims left to pursue their own private efforts at retaliation. The prior existence of group solidarity is what provides the basis for a collective will to punish.

The solidaristic reaction to crime is, according to Durkheim, a passionate one, whichever kind of solidarity is involved. He tells us that ‘passion is the soul of punishment’ and that ‘vengeance’, albeit a somewhat altruistic, other-regarding vengeance, is the primary motivation that drives the punishment of offenders. Durkheim acknowledges that utilitarian purposes inform modern penal practice but he considers these instrumental efforts to be superimposed upon a core reality that is quite without calculative reason. The essence of punishment, he claims, is irrational, unthinking emotion driven by outrage at the violation of sacred values or else by sympathy for fellow individuals and their suffering.⁶

That this is a collective response – that it is felt by each member of the group and not just by the victim – means, as we have seen, that the punitive response is grounded in solidarity, in shared values, in sympathy for the victim, in social bonds.⁷ And, when these passionate responses are channeled into collective rituals of condemnation and punishment, the outcome, according to Durkheim, is the creation of a feedback loop that functions to strengthen the group and the solidarity that binds it together.

In these respects, punishment rituals are just one instance of a more general phenomenon of solidarity-producing processes, the general form of which was set out by Durkheim (1976) in his work on Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. In all such rituals, the group comes together to mark an important social event – a birth, a death, a marriage, a harvest, a religious feast, a holiday, a military victory, a newly appointed leader – and, in the process, to celebrate itself. Solidarity – group belonging – regenerates itself through focused group activity. The very process of coming together in this way promotes the mutual reinforcement of common beliefs, the submerging of individuality in group interaction, and the shared excitement that Durkheim calls ‘collective effervescence’. The paradigmatic case is the religious ceremony, but the same processes are at work in penal rituals too.⁸

In the public processes of prosecution, trial and punishment, members of the public are brought together – as witnesses, jurors, viewers in the public gallery, or merely as onlookers who participate via news reports and conversation – in collective rituals that function to uphold legal rules, sanction lawbreakers, affirm shared social values and celebrate the authority of the group. All of this, according to Durkheim, creates a psychological excitement that increases the ‘vitality’ of shared values and the sense of group-belonging experienced by participating individuals and onlookers. The result is that the challenge to group norms implicit in the offender’s crime is transformed into a process for the reinforcement of group solidarity. This, and not the control of crime, is for Durkheim, the real function of punishment. And this is what transforms an ‘irrational’, purposeless process into a socially useful one:

Although it proceeds from a quite mechanical reaction, from movements which are passionate and in great part non-reflective, [punishment] does play a useful role. Only this role is not where we ordinarily look for it. It does not serve, or else serves only quite secondarily, in correcting the culpable or in intimidating possible followers. From this point of view, its efficacy is justly doubtful and, in any case, quite mediocre. Its true function is to maintain social cohesion intact, while maintaining all its vitality in the common conscience. (Durkheim, 1933: 108)

We can thus trace a circular process of solidarity’s functional reinforcement, triggered by crimes and concluded by punishments. An initial solidarity of shared social values, cherished by well-socialized group members, is violated by a criminal act. This prompts wide-spread, visceral demands for vengeance which lead, in turn, to organized rituals of condemnation and punishment. The sanctions that result function not merely as retribution or deterrence but also as symbols of disapprobation to be read and appreciated by onlookers. These rituals of disapprobation – which uphold shared values in the process of condemning their violation – have a number of social effects. They re-instate the law and the imperative of normative compliance. They reassure law-abiding individuals that group values may not be violated with impunity. They uphold group authority. They bring together individuals in a process that generates collective effervescence, reinforces collective representations, and enlivens mutual involvement.⁹ All of which, Durkheim insists, has the overall effect of reinforcing social solidarity.

TYPES OF SOLIDARITY

Solidarity is the name that Durkheim gives to ‘the bonds that unite men one with another’ and with the groups of which they form a part.¹⁰ He took these bonds to be a fundamental condition for collective life and his whole research agenda revolved around the problem of how solidarity – which is to say, group-belonging and the order and cohesion that it brings to the group – could be achieved in modern, pluralistic, societies characterized by individualism and moral diversity.

Durkheim argued that the character and extent of social solidarity changes over time as societies become more developed and the division of labor becomes more complex. This change in the nature of solidarity leads, in turn, to changes in the character and extent of punishment. The key distinction he makes here is between ‘mechanical’ solidarity, which he takes to be a characteristic of simple societies, and ‘organic’ solidarity, characteristic of advanced societies.

Durkheim defined mechanical solidarity as a religiously charged ‘so...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Authors
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I PUNISHMENT AND SOCIAL THEORY
• 1 Punishment and Social Solidarity
• 2 Punishment and Political Economy
• 3 Punishment and the Political Technologies of the Body
• 4 Punishment and ‘The Civilizing Process’
• 5 Punishment and Meaning: The Cultural Sociological Approach
• 6 Punishment and Risk
• 7 Punishment and the Penal Field
• PART II MASS IMPRISONMENT AND INEQUALITY
• 8 Punishment and Inequality
• 9 Gender and Punishment
• 10 The Carceral State and the Politics of Punishment
• 11 The Social Psychology of Mass Imprisonment
• 12 Punishment, (Neo)Liberalism and Social Democracy
• PART III MODES OF PUNISHMENT 281
• 13 Prisons beyond the New Penology: The Shifting Moral Foundations of Prison Management
• 14 Capital Punishment in the USA: Prospects and Possibilities
• 15 Punishment in Society: The Improbable Persistence of Probation and Other Community Sanctions and Measures
• 16 Youth Justice: In a Child’s Best Interests?
• 17 The Punishment Debate in Restorative Justice
• 18 Monetized Justice: Money and Punishment in Consumer Societies
• PART IV NEW CONTEXTS 393
• 19 Punishment and Human Rights
• 20 Punishment and Migration Between Europe and the USA: A Transnational ‘Less Eligibility’?
• 21 Amnesties, Transitional Justice and Governing Through Mercy
• 22 Control Without Punishment: Understanding Coercion
• Index