ABSTRACT
The new penology has served a significant function in locking together some of the external factors impinging on the criminal justice system and in determining the prevailing responses of the system. A central feature of the new discourse is the replacement of a moral or clinical description of the individual with an actuarial language of probabilistic calculations and statistical distributions applied to populations. The new penology is neither about punishing nor about rehabilitating individuals. It is about identifying and managing unruly groups. The new objectives also inevitably permeate through the courts into thinking about rights. The new penology replaces consideration of fault with predictions of dangerousness and safety management and, in so doing, modifies traditional individual-oriented doctrines of criminal procedure. The new penology’s technique of aggregation has been incorporated in a number of sentencing reforms. Perhaps the clearest example of the new penology’s method is incapacitation, which has become the predominant utilitarian model of punishment.
