Controlling Measures: The Repacking of Common-Sense Opposition to Women's Imprisonment in England and Canada (From Criminal Justice and Political Cultures: National and International Dimensions of Crime Control, P 104-122, 2004, Tim Newburn and Richard Sparks, eds., -- See NCJ-204926)

• NCJ Number: 204930
• Author(s): Pat Carlen
• Date Published: 2004
• Length: 19 pages
• Sale Source: Willan Publishing
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Research (Theoretical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter explores the necessity of carceral clawback through an examination of recent attempts to introduce reforms in women’s imprisonment in Canada and England.

Abstract

The goal of the chapter is to assess the extent to which carceral clawback is a necessary feature of imprisonment and to analyze the cultural and political conditions that facilitate carceral clawback. The author argues that a carceral clawback is underway in England’s women’s prisons despite the appearance of reform. This carceral clawback is necessary in order for prisons to assert their legitimacy in the face of recent common-sense anti-prison discourses about women’s imprisonment in England. The similarities and differences in the Canadian and English experiences of carceral clawback are enumerated. The main similarity between the two countries is that the common-sense ideologies of optimistic campaigners fueled the necessity of carceral clawback and resulted in the ideological incorporation of reformist rhetoric into prison administrative discourses. The main difference between England and Canada in their experience of carceral clawback has been in the way it has occurred. Canada experienced carceral clawback as the institutional and self-exclusion of the most knowledgeable reformists, while England experienced carceral clawback as the financially coerced, inclusionary controlling measures over ontological knowledge about crime. The first section of the chapter discusses the attempted reform of the Federal Prison System for women in Canada. The following section extrapolates the formal logic of carceral clawback. The third section explores the differences between common-sense and theoretical discourses and analyzes the role they have played in the construction of recent official discourse regarding women’s imprisonment. The fourth section describes how theoretical discourses are transformed into common-sense discourses and how these common-sense discourses fueled a new official discourse within women’s prisons in England. Thus, the author has contended that carceral clawback is the logical reaction to the threat of prisoner emancipation. Yet optimism remains about the possibility of real prison reform. Notes, references