ABSTRACT
Imprisonment provokes profound questions of justice to the extent that the use of penal institutions provides a stark barometer of the condition of democracy in any society.This point has long been recognized, for as de Tocqueville observed in the 1830s while ‘the United States gives the example of the most extended liberty, the prisons of that same country offer the spectacle of the most complete despotism’ (Garland, 1990: 11). Prisons continue to be the most controversial institutions in modern penal systems and occupy a central place in popular sentiment and political rhetoric on punishment, even though in no jurisdiction in the world are the majority of convicted offenders actually sent to prison (Sparks, 2002: 202). Imprisonment is a social practice that generates deep-seated disputes, and there is considerable consensus that the penal system in England and Wales has been in a state of ever-deepening crisis since the 1960s.
