JORGE RODRIGUES SIMAO

Criminology Week 1: What is Criminology? What is Crime? Who Decides?

During the 1980s, the United States began to focus less upon offender rehabilitation strategies and increasingly upon the use of various get-tough imprisonment and other intermediate punishment measures, including home confinement, electronic surveillance, and daily reporting centers.

The increased reliance upon imprisonment and intermediate punishments resulted in major increases in the number and proportion of the base population subject to some form of penal control, despite general decreases in crime rates. In attempts to explain this escalation in penal control, a series of theoretical frameworks have been proposed. Among these are net-widening, carceral society, minimum security society, maximum security society, new penology, and most recently the culture of control.

Emerging from these various theoretical interpretations has been a general debate over whether these increasing penal control trends do, indeed, reflect the emergence of a postmodern or new penology or merely the continuation of trends associated with the modern or old penology.

In terms of a postmodern interpretation of contemporary penology, Feeley and Simon (1992) claimed that several distinct features have evolved to distinguish postmodern penology, or what they term the “new penology,” from modern penology or “old penology.” The authors contended that the old penology was focused upon offender rehabilitation, transformation, or people-changing, whereas the new penology is focused upon offender risk management.

Feeley and Simon elaborated that the differences in penal techniques involve a general shift from old penology’s reliance upon social technologies to change offender behaviors to new penology’s focus upon administrative technologies for offender-management: profiling, auditing, risk screening, and around-the-clock surveillance. Lemert (1993) took exception to Feeley and Simon’s claims that penology is in the midst of developing new strategies aimed at increasing control over particular groups of offenders through his examination of contemporary probation practices.

Lemert argued that current probation practices are largely unchanged from those practiced throughout the twentieth century. He elaborated that the deterioration in probation supervision that has occurred is because of patterned reductions in probation staff and major increases in caseloads.

The end result has been what Lemert called “bank loading,” an old practice with a new name that involves probation officers focusing their time and energy upon their most serious cases while largely ignoring the remainder of their caseloads.

Lemert concluded that Feeley and Simon’s contention “that probation realizes the claims made for it as a part of a new penology or indeed whether its changes have been undertaken as logical consequence of such penology must be doubted” (1993, 460).

Garland (2001) placed the old versus new penology debate into a broader context. He suggested that it is not so much a question of a new or an old penology but rather what has actually taken place in penology. It is in this regard that Garland claimed there has developed an increasingly strident and vindictive “culture of control.”

Garland elaborated that emerging from late modernity have been a series of social disruptions, dislocations, and disorder that, in turn, have led to an overriding public concern for stability and order. Garland concluded that the quest for stability and order has resulted in a series of penal policies and practices that together have resulted in a “culture of control.”

The end result is more offenders subject to both new and old penal practices and technologies. These previous theoretical interpretations of penal trends have been based largely upon fragmented, uneven, and discontinuous empirical documentation. Notably absent from the literature have been more broadly conceived empirical studies that address system wide practices, consequences, and trends over time.

As a result, whether penology has, in fact, moved from previous “old” practices into clearly “new” practices remains questionable. For example, is the previous focus upon offender treatment indeed dead? Is offender risk management the current and future foundation of contemporary penology? Or, alternatively, is there a more complicated blend of penal practices emerging that reflect the ever-continuing ambiguity and quest for crime control? In an effort to address these questions, this texts provides a case study of Florida’s penal practices, reforms, and consequences from 1970 to 2007.

Included in the texts introduction are efforts to reform Florida’s sentencing practices, use of imprisonment, use of community supervision, and the emergent penal control and crime incident-related trends. A salient finding that emerges from this case study is the documentation of a transition in Florida’s penal practices from an indeterminate offender rehabilitation focus that has been blurred over the past thirty-five years with an increasing emphasis upon offender risk management, imprisonment, and community surveillance. The end result is a lingering interest in certain offender treatment prospects coupled with a clear priority upon offender risk management, imprisonment, community surveillance, and control.

JRS. 19.11.2013