This thesis explores recent Scottish penal culture through the biographical narrative
accounts of retired judges. Insights from the sociology of punishment are used to
develop a more fully cultural approach to the judiciary and to sentencing practice.
This entails a view of the judiciary as a complex institution whose practices reflect
tension and compromise, and which recognises judges as bearers of penal culture
through their sentencing practices. The aims of the research are twofold: to provide
insight into the changing conditions of judging in Scotland and into the judicial role
in criminal justice. Narrative research methods were used to interview retired judges
and gain contextual accounts of judicial life and practice. This approach focuses on
subjectivity and on individual responses to experiences and constraints. Reflecting
the judicial role in punishment, an interpretive position based on the hermeneutics of
faith and suspicion is used to evaluate and interpret these narrative accounts.
This conceptual and methodological framework is used to explore aspects of judicial
occupational culture including training and early experiences, the status of criminal
work, judicial conduct, collegiality, the influence of criminological research on
sentencing practice, and the relevance of the ‘master narrative’ - judicial
independence - to sentencing. It is also used to explore the frameworks of meaning
and vocabularies of motive which judges bring to penal practice. What emerges from
these judicial narratives is firstly the entanglement of individual life histories and
organisational imperatives. Secondly, a picture emerges of a judicial habitus that
includes complex motivations, some openness to new approaches, and capacity for
reflecting on the conditions which structure and constrain criminal justice practice.
This suggests the reflexive judge may be an important vector of penal change and
there are implications for judicial training, penal reform and for the dissemination of
criminological and criminal justice research