NCJ Number
129283
Journal
Policing and Society Volume: 1 Issue: 2 Dated: (1990) Pages: 141-158
Date Published
1990
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This article considers the work during the 1970s of Michel Foucault and Michael Igntieff which challenged the earlier, somewhat optimistic general analysis of French and British penality during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Abstract
Foucault and Igntieff were correct in their view that a new structure of control was established between 1775 and 1850, although it did not operationally apply the evangelical or associationist psychological concepts upon which it theoretically was based to the extent suggested. The prison system depended predominantly upon classical notions of uniform, defined, deterrent punishment that was publicly ordered by sentencers, despite a tendency towards moral reformatory strategies in the 1840s and 1850s. Their accounts constituted a major revision of this subject, and in the early 1980s there was a counter revisionist critique of their work. During the mid-1980s, the dispute between revisionists and counter revisionists was informed further by the work of David Garland and Radzinowicz and Hood in relation to British penality during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Revisionist and counter revisionist analyses both offer important insights into the actual historical development of the English prison system between 1775 and 1939. 54 references (Author abstract modified)