ABSTRACT
Scholars in the US and elsewhere have drawn considerable attention to the rapid changes that have occurred in crime control, and especially penal policies, over the past decade. These changes have been variously referred to as the ‘get tough’ or ‘penal harm movement’ (Cullen et al 2000), the ‘new penology’ (Feeley and Simon 1992), ‘penal modernism’ (Garland 2001) and the ‘new punitiveness’ (Pratt 2000). The explanations for these shifts have been at least as wide-ranging as their appellations, referencing changes in public opinion and values that are increasingly intolerant of offenders and, concomitantly, tolerant of prison expansion (Jacobs and Helms 1996; Caplow and Simon 1999). Changes in the actual governance of convicted offenders has also been the subject of scholarly inquiry. Prison authority is thought to be increasingly centralised and encompassed in a new discourse that stresses risk and probability, identification and management, and classification and control (Feeley and Simon 1992; Simon 1993; Adler and Longhurst 1994; Irwin and Austin 1994).
