Coercive normalization and family policing : the limits of the psy-complex in Australian penal systems

Much contemporary social and historical research on problem children and families focuses on the different kinds of power deployed in a complex of legal and non-legal settings. This paper reviews socio-legal studies in Europe, Australia and the UK, and additional archival evidence in Victoria, Australia, in relation to a shift towards positivist and welfarist approaches to the problem of child criminality and family regulation from the turn of the 20th century. The aim is to assess the applicability for Australia of trends in European social theory that emphasize non-coercive, non-legal correction of families, a productive rather than repressive form of power which incites families to seek to align their conduct to social norms. The paper argues that coercive normalization - systems of knowing and acting upon children and families arising from the penal system and Coercive normalization and family policing Final Draft to Social and Legal Studies May 2006 p. 1 images of threat is a significant presence in the complex of power relations that make up a genealogy of family and child regulation in Australia

Psy-knowledges and the sociology of law: the case of juvenile justice

This article examines the application of the psy-sciences to the conduct of juvenile justice in Victoria in the period from 1940-1980, in order to reassess assumptions in contemporary sociology of law concerning psy-knowledge and judicial administration, welfare and justice, and their relations to liberal or conservative political mandates. It seeks to understand the implications of shifts in the production of knowledge of the child in the justice system, by reporting on analysis of both clinical and administrative files of the Children’s Court Clinic in this period. The study documents how particular kinds of offenders became know in order to be properly managed, and questions the extent of separations between science and juvenile justice administration

Bio-child: Human sciences and governing through freedom

This article provides an account of the rise of a bio-politics of governing families and children in\ud Australia and its relations with liberal political reason. Drawing on Foucault’s lectures on Security,\ud Territory, Population it maps out the ways in which forms of liberal governing seek to define the\ud nature and scope of norms and freedoms in a population through the practices of the human\ud sciences. Bio-politics is shown to introduce new ways of calculating and intervening upon certain\ud parts of the population and to create normalizing tensions with sovereign or judicial forms of\ud governing