ABSTRACT
The new penology is found among criminal justice practitioners and the research community. Even the seemingly coherent command of legislatures and governors to "lock 'em up" leaves much unsaid about how to do it with existing resource allocations. The new penology has helped fill that gap even as it competes with crime control and other options as a master narrative for the system. This the new penology is not a theory of crime or criminology. Its uniqueness lies less in conceptual integration than in a common focus on certain problems and a shared way of framing issues. This strategic formation of knowledge and power offers managers of the system a more or less coherent picture of the challenges they face and the kinds of solutions that are most likely to work. This chapter explores the contours of some of the new patterns represented by the developments, and suggests that the enterprise is by relatively well established.
