ABSTRACT
I n "The New Penology: Notes on the Emerging Strategy of Corrections and Its Implications" (Feeley and Simon 1992) and again in" Actuarial Justice" (1994), we identified three emerging features of the criminal process that together we termed the new penology. This chapter summarizes our account of these new developments, briefly examines some of the responses to the new penology, and then explores one of its anomalies-the growing gulf between penology on the one hand and public discourse about crime and crime policy on the other. Despite the rise of the new penology, contemporary crime policy, in the words of one perceptive observer, has "embraced ... the reliance of retribution as an articulated purpose of criminal punishment ... with a vengeance" (Cotton 2000:1313). Our purpose here is to reassess our claims about the rise of a new penology in light of this hypermoralistic, retributive movement that on the surface appears to conflict with the idea of the new penology.
