ABSTRACT

The two key findings on the emergence of penal identities and the use of barter revealed how the penal system has reacted to the dynamic of change following a long spell of exposure to several contemporary transformations in the wider ideological and economic culture. A further development that was introduced in Chapter 5 was that a political culture of harmonisation is impacting on prisons wherein a tension was identified between localised penal modes and global developments. I have referred to this period as the third occasion of penal identification which was the process whereby a body of knowledge loosely defined as ‘human rights’ is shaping and guiding the contours of imprisonment. This chapter and the concluding chapter focus not on individual failures in human rights but on some of the bigger ideological and systematic problems regarding its emergence.