Big Ideas in Punishment and Society: Reboot

A year and a half ago, I had committed myself to writing a series on what I saw as the twelve big ideas in Punishment and Society. I did not followup. Now that things have settled down, and as we furiously finalize our syllabi for next semester/quarter, I thought this would be a good time to revisit the series. My previous post laid out the various caveats and biases I saw in my list, including their skewing to my interests and my training, which will likely lead to a slightly different list than others would create. As I was laying out a schedule for this series and revisiting my list of big ideas, however, I decided to change things up a bit by describing the ideas chronologically. This, then, triggered additional ideas about trends in the various big ideas. This post lays out these trends, while subsequent posts will discuss the ideas in turn.

My evolving list of 10 to 12 big ideas seems to fall into several periods of action, each of which has a theme:

1. 1940s-1960s: The Birth of Prison Sociology 
2. 1970s-1980s: Critical Looks at Punishment as Social Control, or the Futility of Reform  
3. 1990s-2000s: Understanding the New Normal 
4. 2010s: The Resurgence of General Theories of Penal Change 

These periods are not equally distributed. For example, in Period 1 (1940s-1960s), I basically combine the major concepts from prison sociology---inmate culture, prisonization, pains of imprisonment, and secondary adjustments---into one big idea. By contrast, Periods 2 (1970s-1980s) and 3 (1990s-2000s) have four or five distinct ideas in each. Period 4 (2010s) is difficult to assess because it is ongoing and I have yet to decide how much to discuss this period until we can better assess the long-term impact of these ideas, but it too is on the smaller side. 

I've never really thought about periodizing punishment and society research before, beyond a general cut-off around 1990 with the formalization of the field in the birth of our namesake journal and the publication of Garland's Punishment and Modern Society. I had always described punishment and society with a heavy leaning toward this more recent work: I would first say it's the field that generally treats punishment as a social institution, meaning it does not assume crime shapes punishment but instead describes how punishment and society are mutually constituted (or rather how society affects punishment and vice/versa)---borrowing heavily from my script for explaining law and society. I would then add that its main goal recently (for the last twenty-plus years) has been to understand the causes and consequences of the punitive turn, most notably the emergence of mass incarceration. This was always a little unsatisfying because it left out other studies that were clearly punishment and society, but I could never really articulate a way to link them together except by playing a few degrees of Kevin Bacon. 

When I taught punishment and society classes, I put the punitive turn at the center and set up the class to describe (1) what punishment was like before and what it's like elsewhere, and thus how the new approach is different, (2) what are the major components of the punitive turn, (3) what are its consequences, and (4) what do we think caused it (see this post). This seemed to me to be a pretty good representation of the field. (In an earlier version, I used the evolution of prison sociology to provide a window (problematic as it was) onto changes in doing time over time.) Certainly, I left out some things, but I got to teach these in my law and society class, my prison history class, or my org theory class. 

But thinking through the big ideas---thinking about what concepts or theories really left their mark and that we still see cited such that we can start to create a genealogy of the field (one that starts after Durkheim, Marx, and Weber)---helped me realize this longer periodization. It's also helping me to see  how ideas that might not really seem like they fit (e.g., classic prison sociology) do in fact fit together, but under the broader tent of punishment studies and how that field has evolved over time. In this case, the relationship between punishment and society is more flexibly defined and examined than the way I had conceived it. 

It's also interesting to think about how each of these periods responds to the major concerns of the time. In mid-century, a relatively consensus-heavy focus on society---and eventually membership in and exclusion from society. In the post-1969 period, the disappointment with society, the seemingly inevitable failure of reforms (for so many reasons), and the neo-Marxist approach are powerful. In the 1990s, we came to grips with one of the biggest changes in punishment---mass incarceration---and tried desperately to understand how it happened and what it means. Now that mass incarceration is no longer new and people are turning to new topics (including its future and the mixed attempts at reigning it in), and a new generation of scholars are emerging who were trained after the earlier backlash to general theories, we're starting to see people look beyond explaining the punitive turn and go back to making general statements about punishment---but with a twist, illustrating that they understand the problems with traditional general theories.  

When I turn to the individual posts, I will try to develop these themes more, but the main focus will be on the individual ideas themselves and, secondarily, how they relate to the general thrust of the literature at the time. 

The 12 Big Ideas in Punishment and Society - Teaser

From time to time, I've thought about teaching a special topics class, probably at the graduate level, on what I see as the Ten Big Ideas in Punishment and Society. As I define them, the Big Ideas are those that either generated much followup work by other scholars and/or enjoyed a very strong reception from folks. They are not always uncontroversial---I include the Prison Industrial Complex on the list despite major reservations about this phrase and how it has been used (for a great take down, see Wacquant's article on the subject)---but they are tremendously thought provoking and productive of further research (even if that research counters some of the claims in the original). While there are some biases in the list (see below), I have tried to shape the list according to what I think others also think are Big Ideas---there are some concepts I do not use in my own work, but I recognize that they are very influential for others in our field.

The Big Ideas on my list are skewed in two ways, and skirt what we might consider to be the boundaries of the Punishment and Society field.

First, the ideas are skewed towards studies of prison, because that is where my interests lay most strongly and the works with which I am most familiar. These Big Ideas, though, are not only drawn from micro-studies of the prison, but also macro-studies of society and the changes in the use of the prison---the kind of studies we perhaps most associate with Punishment and Society.

Second, the ideas are skewed towards those that I learned about early on. This is a subjective list: while I am trying to identify the most influential ideas, there is a lot of my own preferences and biases, implicit or explicit. For example, my former advisors appear on the list several times--I don't think it is a coincidence, but I do think of these as major works. They are kind of like movies from the 1990s---I enjoy thrillers from the 90s (and early 2000s). I watched these as a child/teenager, so they have a certain nostalgic appeal, in addition to the fact that I think they are great movies. However, someone who did not watch them growing up might not like them as much. I think there is a similar nostalgia at play for works I learned in undergrad and early grad school, which may have a greater appeal than they would otherwise. This is not to say these Big Ideas aren't good and it is only my bias at work. It is to say that it is a possible (likely) bias in the list; overall, I think it is a good list; but others will very likely have their own list that might differ in various ways.

Third, some of the ideas exist at the boundaries of punishment and society, and may or may not fit within the boundaries others draw. For example, the first item on the list--key concepts from prison sociology (inmate culture, prisonization, pains of imprisonment, secondary adjustments) might be considered by some as more properly designated criminology. Given the flurry of activity with these concepts lately in Punishment and Society, I would disagree, but again, these are subjective assessments on my part.

There are plenty of Big Ideas that do not make my list. For example, in this first post, I do not begin with Durkheim's collection of Big Ideas---the Collective Conscience, Social Solidarity, or the Two Laws of Penal Evolution. This is not because I do not like Durkheim's theory--it is actually my favorite by far of the classic social theories. In fact, I tried to resuscitate it in my first year of grad school (see here). His absence from the list does not mean Durkheim's theories are not Big Ideas or really important ideas; nor is it to say that they were not influential. I think many, if not most, punishment courses begin with a discussion of Durkheim. But it is not clear to me that scholars use Durkheim in the same way as they do others ideas on this list. I think his work has been integrated elsewhere--Kennedy's article on punishing the "monstrous," Erikson's Wayward Puritans, and Garland combines insights from Durkheim and others (especially Foucault) in Peculiar Institution. But Durkheim's theory does not strike me as the same kind of cottage industry that other items on the list do.

A few logistical notes about the list. First, some of the Big Ideas are really groups of big ideas along the same lines or that must be discussed together. If I was more disciplined, I could probably limit them to one, but I would rather discuss them together. Second, after careful consideration, I've decided to make the list 12 Big Ideas instead of Ten. At the end, I might also add a bonus prediction for what will be the 13th Big Idea if we jumped ahead five years.

Over the next few weeks, I will do a post on each Big Idea in which I describe the basic premise(s) and defend my choice of the Idea as a Big Idea. My next post will start with Key Concepts in Prison Sociology: Inmate Culture, Prisonization, Pains of Imprisonment, and Secondary Adjustments (Clemmer, Sykes, Goffman).

Update: I forgot to mention that I'll be really interested to see what people think of the list---what they think I left off or what they think doesn't belong.