Assessing the Penal Harm Movement Francis T' Cullen

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Assessing the Penal Harm MovementFrancis T.
Cullen

• May 23, 2001

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Imprisonment Binge

• Although the promise of reform had built the
  asylums, the functionalism of custody perpetuated
  them (56).
• The prison system has always been in crisis.
  The response to that crisis differs significantly
  across historical periods.

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Response to the Crisis

• 1870s New Penology
• A group of correctional thinkers developed a
  declaration of principals that included
• Rehabilitation through character education
• They felt that inmates could be changed through
  treatment
• Rejected vengeance in favor of reformation
• 1990s New Penology
• The philosophy of corrections has changed
• Emphasis on efficiency
• Mean Season

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Penal Harm Movement

• Penal Harm (Clear)
• planned governmental act, whereby a citizen is
  harmed, and implies that harm is justifiable
  precisely because it is an offender who is
  suffering.
• Increasing The pains of Imprisonment
• Between 1973 and the beginning of the 1990s, the
  number of prisoners increased by 332.
• The incarceration rate per 100,000 citizens
  doubled during this period.

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Penal Harm

• Three major movements were a result from this
  phenomenon
• Decline of rehabilitation
• The abolition of parole release
• Proliferation of three strikes legislation
• Hasnt it always been the point of prisons to
  make offenders suffer?
• Arent prisoners better off than they were 20
  100 years ago?

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Counterpoint

• DiIulio
• Argues that prison is a revolving door
• The system has failed because predatory criminals
  have not been locked up.
• The only neglect follows from the increased
  community risk that they offenders represent.
• Argues that incarceration rates went through a
  drought in the 60s and 70s and now we are
  finally recovering.

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Differential Effects of Penal Harm

• Tonry
• Penal harms are inequitably distributed among the
  racial and ethnic populations.
• He argues that the increased penal harms
  experienced by African Americans after 1980 were
  the foreseeable effects of deliberate policies
  spearheaded by the Reagan and Bush
  administration.
• War on Drugs

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Managing Penal Harm

• Simon
• The goal of his piece is to link the meaning and
  practice of parole to the wider material
  conditions of the disadvantaged
• Parole phases
• Disciplinary parole late 1800 1950s
• Prisoners had to work on parole
• Rehabilitative discipline
• Clinical parole little success
• Hardening of urban poverty
• Increased legal controls on parolees
• Increased fear of violent crime

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Managing Penal Harm (cont.)

• Parole Phases
• Risk Management 80s and 90s
• The goal of this model is not to help individuals
  reintegrate into the community instead it
  serves to control behavior and discern what
  individuals should be reincarcerated.
• Risk classification systems
• Drug testing
• Computerized databases
• Tether

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Discussion Questions

• Should we improve the barrel or just take out the
  bad apples?
• What is the primary detriment of the penal harm
  movement (from a liberal standpoint)?
• If we keep on locking people up, why do we have
  such a crime problem?
• What role should the government play in solving
  neighborhood social problems?
• Society is judged by the way they treat their
  worst off.
• What does the prison say about us as a society