In the last decade, perspectives from criminology, environmental psychology, healthcare studies, and human geography have offered new ways of understanding the prison environment and the ‘affective’ potentials of carceral space which foreground the connections between place, space and what it is to be human and to survive imprisonment. Drawing on these interdisciplinary perspectives, this chapter examines the extent to which the limits of punishment, rehabilitation, and hope may be understood in the context of prison architecture and design. Drawing on the author’s experience as a consultant advisor on the design of two new prisons at different ends of the penal spectrum (a maximum-security men’s facility in Auckland, New Zealand and a women’s prison in Limerick, Ireland), the chapter argues that claims that ‘people-change’ (that is, rehabilitating offenders through design of prisons) may be over-ambitious in the context of incarceration. However, ‘context-change’ (in the sense of offering people in prison an alternative context in which to imagine their futures) may be an achievable goal. Context-change also includes the society in which any new prison is conceived and built.
Chapter
40. Why prison architecture and design matter to our understanding of the limits of punishment and rehabilitation
Yvonne Jewkes
Chapter
24. Prison architecture and design: perspectives from criminology and carceral geography
Yvonne Jewkes and Dominique Moran
This chapter seeks to convey why the architecture and design of prisons is pivotal to a full and nuanced understanding of ‘prison studies’. Placing prison design in historical and geographical perspectives, the chapter considers how evolving penal philosophies have been manifested in the form and fabric of prison buildings over the last two centuries. The current policy context in the UK, as new prisons have been built in Scotland and are being planned for England and Wales and Northern Ireland, is discussed. It is argued that this represents a rare opportunity not only to build new facilities that are fit-for-purpose but to re-assess how their aesthetic and spatial design might be mobilized to support a different model of criminal justice than that which has dominated since the last major wave of prison construction in the 1960s. Finally, the relationship between prisons and the communities in which they are situated is considered, and it is suggested that recently built prisons are no less a manifestation of society’s attitudes to offenders than Pentonville was in the mid-1800s. It is suggested that it may be more effective in the long term to influence public opinion through humane prison design than it is to build new prisons based on assumptions about public expectations.
Chapter
10. Punishment and rehabilitation in the community
This chapter reviews the main options available to the sentencing court which do not entail immediate custody. It therefore deals with community orders as well as suspended prison sentences (see Chapter 7, section 7.5 for financial penalties). It discusses the tensions between imposing proportionate punishment and delivering rehabilitation programmes. It examines the policy aim of reducing reoffending through specifying in court orders requirements to control and rehabilitate the offender in the community, and discusses the theory and practice of rehabilitation that underpins these initiatives. However, because punishment and rehabilitation also take place in the community for those released from prison, this chapter examines supervision for prisoners released on licence. The chapter, therefore, covers the policy changes in relation to the work and remit of the Probation Service.
Chapter
38. Punishment in the community: evolution, expansion, and moderation
Gwen Robinson and Fergus McNeill
This chapter examines the development and expansion of community sanctions and measures in the UK since the introduction of probation and parole in the early twentieth century. After introducing the main types of punishment in the community (supervision; unpaid work; treatment and other activities; restrictions and prohibitions), it considers their evolution in relation to four main rationales: rehabilitation, reparation, management, and punitiveness. The chapter then reviews some key sociological perspectives on punishment in the community, focusing on work inspired by Foucault, Durkheim, and Marx. Finally, it provides an introduction to recent research on punishment in the community in other jurisdictions, particularly Europe and the USA. The chapter presents two main conclusions: firstly, that there is now substantial international evidence to suggest that the expansion of punishment in the community has failed to deliver reductions in the use of imprisonment; and secondly, that arguments for penal moderation should take into account the ‘painful’ character of community sanctions and measures.
Chapter
29. Rehabilitation of offenders
This chapter examines the rehabilitation of offenders. Much discussion of crime and criminality focuses on the culpability of the offender, the management and control of crime, and the nature and legitimacy of punishment. However, there is another strand of criminological inquiry (and practice) which is more concerned with understanding offenders, appreciating ‘what makes them tick’, and seeking out tools and methods for reintegrating them into society as conventional law-abiding citizens. In effect, such approaches are concerned with identifying the causes and consequences of criminal behaviour and developing interventions which will enable offenders to change their behaviours and thought processes to enable them to take advantage of legitimate opportunities and to live decent lives. The chapter explores some of the beliefs and assumptions which underlie this kind of approach to crime and criminality. It considers some of the implications in terms of criminal justice practices and evaluates the outcomes of rehabilitative approaches. Finally, the chapter reflects on some of the limitations of this perspective on crime, both empirically and theoretically.
Book
Susan Easton and Christine Piper
Sentencing and Punishment provides an accessible account of recent developments in sentencing and punishment from the standpoint of penal theories, policy aims, punishment practice, and human rights. It reviews changing ideas on what counts as ‘just’ punishment, and covers the key themes and topics studied on sentencing and punishment courses, New features of this, its fourth edition, include a focus on changes and continuities in penal and sentencing policy since 2010 as well as greater attention to sentencing guidelines and to the impact of the relevant sentencing provisions in force since the last edition, notably the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 and the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015. Material on dangerous offenders is also updated. In two new chapters—‘Instead of punishment?’ and ‘Impact on victims and offenders’—this edition brings together different, yet linked, areas of sentencing law and practice to provide new perspectives, and in restructured chapters on community punishment and young offenders, it focuses on such recent developments as the privatisation of the delivery of community penalties, the ‘rehabilitation revolution’, and the decreased use of custody for young offenders. This edition also gives more attention to the continuing influence of human rights law and jurisprudence and incorporates more material on the impact of the Equality Act 2010 on the treatment of different groups within the prison population. It also now includes case studies and discussion questions at the end of each chapter.
Chapter
39. Punishment in the community: Evolution, expansion, and moderation
Gwen Robinson and Fergus McNeill
This chapter examines the development and expansion of community sanctions and measures in the UK since the introduction of probation in the early twentieth century. After introducing the main types of punishment in the community (supervision; unpaid work; treatment and other activities; restrictions and prohibitions), it considers their evolution in relation to four main rationales: rehabilitation, reparation, management, and punitiveness. The chapter then reviews some key sociological perspectives on punishment in the community, focusing on work inspired by Foucault, Durkheim, and Marx. Finally, it provides an introduction to recent research on punishment in the community in other jurisdictions, particularly Europe and the USA. The chapter presents two main conclusions: firstly, that there is now substantial international evidence to suggest that the expansion of punishment in the community has failed to deliver reductions in the use of imprisonment; and secondly, that arguments for penal moderation should take into account the ‘painful’ character of community sanctions and measures.
Book
Susan Easton and Christine Piper
This book reviews the philosophical principles which underpin penal policy, sentencing and punishment, as well as examining the practical consequences of the legal principles enshrined in English law with an analysis of imprisonment and community punishment. The first part of the book covers the way sentencing law and guidelines are structured and discusses in detail retributivist and utilitarian justifications for punishment, as well as the current importance of public protection from risk and danger. It also covers those offenders and victims who can be dealt with differently, notably the mentally ill and children, together with ways of dealing with the offenders and their victims using restorative justice. Finally, Part A focuses on ways in which the impact of offending on victims and offenders can be reduced. Part B of the book covers in detail conditions in prison including the impact of the pandemic and the experience of imprisonment, especially in relation to women, BAME prisoners and other groups, where equal treatment is problematic. It also focuses on punishment and rehabilitation in the community, covering the available orders and the current approaches to rehabilitation. The civil and criminal orders available for use with those under 18 years of age, are also considered, as well as the way in which rights have been used to protect children in prison.
