1 research outputs found
Power to imprison: comparing political culture and imprisonment regimes in Ireland and Scotland in the late Twentieth Century
Penal politics and imprisonment in the English-speaking west are often presented as
having become increasingly harsh and exclusionary since about 1970. Yet, curiously
little attention has been given to Ireland and Scotland, two nations considered as
exceptions to these pervasive punitive trends, and this presents some considerable
gaps in our understanding of penal politics in this era. This thesis uses sociological
and historical research to provide an in-depth comparative analysis of political
culture and imprisonment regimes in Ireland and Scotland from 1970 until the
1990s. In so doing, the thesis also explores issues central to the history of
punishment and comparative penology, in particular the ‘punitive turn’ in the late
twentieth century. Using oral history interviews, archival research and
documentary analysis this thesis recovers the history of penal culture in these two
jurisdictions and examines how that changed and evolved over the latter part of the
twentieth century. It draws upon resources from cultural sociology,
governmentality studies and the sociology of punishment to develop the necessary
conceptual resources to illuminate and compare penal politics and the varied
practices which constitute imprisonment. Imprisonment regimes here are studied as
comprising kinds of places, sets of routines and practices. Political culture,
meanwhile, is understood as the working cultural symbols, passions, logic of
government, political categories, and perceived social origins of crime. While
providing grounded and detailed historical accounts of Ireland and Scotland these
cases show how generic and global concepts, such as managerialism, rehabilitation,
zero tolerance and incarceration intersect with their local social conditions and
political relations. This thesis demonstrates that the heterogeneity of imprisonment
regimes is a reflection of their political and social context. Therefore, the differences
we see in the uses of imprisonment cross-nationally will both reflect and
reconstitute their contrasting political cultures