ABSTRACT
In Britain in recent times the penal realm has been an arena of marked contention and political controversy. During the 1990s the passions and anxieties that surround the punishment of offenders have often been apparent in acute forms. At first sight there is nothing new in this, nor exclusive to that country. The politicisation of punishment is an antique and recurrent, even in some versions of the argument a cyclical, phenomenon. However, as I will seek to show here with reference to a particular sequence of events that seem to me to crystallise and condense some contemporary concerns quite illuminatingly, each such iteration or recycling also includes new elements that are more specific to their time and circumstances. Thus while the story that I relate in this paper concerns one of the most ‘classic’ varieties of prison controversy, namely a series of dramatic escapes, their representation and reception within the public culture of Britain in the 1990s also betrays some particular features of the surrounding conceptual and ideological environment. Among these figurations are two that are expressly marked as ‘new’ in much current commentary, namely the so-called ‘new penology’ and the ‘new managerialism’ (or ‘new public sector management’).
