David Garlands Culture of Control Thesis - Essay Example

How far does David Garland’s ‘Culture of Control’ thesis (2001) help to explain Recent Criminal Justice Policies and Practices? Introduction David Garland thesis (2001) is a presentation of the history of penological advancements in the present United States’ and Britain in the late modern time. The thesis is a presentation of a composite argument about the emergency of a schizophrenic crime control complex that according to Garland is the feature of late modern form of punishment. Culture of control gives important contribution to discussions on the emergence of punitiveness in modern western nations, the conflicting nature of justice policy of the 21st century and the political good constricted within this process, to draw attention to how justice policies on both sides of the Atlantic obtained their modern-day shape (Protagoras, 2003, p.2). The thesis presents one of the most striving and comprehensive examination of the fine distinctions distinguishing modern-day crime control policy from those that ruled in the 20th century. According to Garland, the modern-day crime control in both United States and Britain represent a “...reconfigured complex of interlocking structure and strategies that are themselves composed of old and new elements, the old revised and reoriented by a new operation context...” (Garland, 2001, p.23). There exists a sharp contrast between the post World War II justice and penalty programmes and the recent developments in the same. The recent developments in penalty programmes are accompanied by policies such as rehabilitation of offenders, community based solutions to crime problems, tailor made solutions to deviants’ unique qualities and policies on indeterminate sentences. Garland is of the argument that ‘penal welfarism’ that featured in the criminal justice system in the late 19th century to late 20th century have been gradually destroyed (Owen, 2007, p. 3). Recent Criminal Justice Policies and Practices as explained by David Garland For the last twenty years of the 20th century numerous changes have taken place concerning crime control. Criminological considerations can be attributed to these changes as well as the historical forces that changes economical and social life of many people during the mid twentieth century. There are two forces of transformation that can be attributed to the changes of the mid-twentieth century. The first force is the social, economic and cultural changes features of late modernity (Garland, 2001, p. 158). These changes were experienced by all individuals within various degrees of extent. After WW II, Western industrialized democracies became very popular especially from the period of 1960s onwards. The other force is political alignments and policy initiatives that developed in response to the social, economical and cultural changes. These political realignments and policy initiatives also developed as a reaction to the supposedly United States and Britain welfare state experienced from the late 1970s. The social-economic-cultural changes had been experienced in other states such as New Zealand, Australia and Canada. However, the changes were experienced in a more thoroughgoing form in Britain under Britain Prime Minister Thatcher in 1981 t- 1992, John Major’s conservative government of 1992 – 19997 and Tony Blair’s New Labour government from 1997 onwards. In America, the changes took their most detailed form during Reagan and Bush administrations from 1981 to 1992 and even in a more knotted form during Bill Clinton’s New Democrat administration from 1993 to 2000 (Garland, 2003, p. 11). The impacts of these developmental changes can be summarized again as under the two forces. Under the first force: social, economic and cultural forces, it resulted into transformation of some of the political and social conditions upon which the modern crime control field relied on (Garland, 2001, 77). New problems of crime and insecurity were experienced and the effectiveness and legitimacy of welfare institutions were challenges by the first force. In addition, the force which is associated with the coming of late modernity placed new restrictions on the powers of the nation-state. The impacts of the second force: political realignments and policy initiatives resulted into production of new set of class and race associations and a principal political block that identified itself in resistance to old style of welfarism and all the social and cultural ideas that supported the old style. The second set of forces is referred to as a period of politics of post-welfarism. Even though historical changes had little to do changes in criminal justice, they did not prevent criminal justice from being largely significant in its criminological effects. New political context were born out of changes in demography, stratification and political allegiances. This resulted into changes in attitudes towards many policies by the important sections of the middle and working classes. At this time, welfare policies for the poor were beginning to gradually be represented as expensive luxuries that the hard-working tax payers could not afford anymore. As a result, penal-welfare measures taken for offenders started being depicted as absurdly indulgent and self-defeating (Matthews, 2006). According to Garland, the two forces which swept across societies in the twentieth century can be summarized as, “the dynamic of capitalist production and market exchange, and the corresponding advances in technology, transport and communication; the structuring of the family and the household; changes in the social ecology of cities and suburbs; the rise of the electronic mass media and the democratization of social and cultural life” (Garland, 2001, p.78). All these changes altered the touch of development of the world in the 20th century which included global market systems and national-state systems, and on the other hand, the daily lives and psychological issues of families and individuals. As a result, the above can be related to the late modern changes upon crime and welfare as discussed below. These changes or transformations had pronounced effects in the following two decades after 1960. During this period, major rapid and sustained rise in crime rates were recorded in Britain and in United States as well as in other western industrialized nations. In England, the number of crimes recorded by police doubled from half a million to one million per annum between 1955 and 1964 and doubled again from one to two million annually between 1975 and 1990. In the United States, sharp crime rates were recorded from 1960 onwards. By 1980, it had reached a peak point where it was recorded that U.S. crime rate was three times more of that recorded in the past twenty years (Garland D (2001) Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society, 2010). This enlarged vulnerability to crimes is not inevitable or inexorable by any means in the late modern life. In Japan and Switzerland for instance, they maintained effective and high informal levels of controlling crimes while other were able to find techniques of stemming the rapidly increasing tides of crime. However, the first impact of late modernity was directed towards making the rapid rises in crimes much more plausible as an explicit result of the new social and economic arrangements that it brought along with (Owen, 2007, p. 12). Garland (2001, p.90) explains that this increase in crime was due to the consumer boom in post-war decades which led to a decrease in situational control as shops became self-service stores; the heavily populated areas were replaced by extensive suburban tracts and mysterious tower blocks. Down parts of many towns became entertainment areas replacing residential houses while at the same time better stocked houses emerged but were usually left empty during the day as both husband and wife went to work and the children were taken to school. These also created great avenues of crimes. The coming of motor vehicles also helped in creation of a mobile society which was accompanied by more spread-out of people (Garland, 2001, p.91). With a few years after the discovery and introduction of motor vehicles, they were widely spread out and this brought into existence of new and highly attractive target for crimes. With the vehicles available in all streets both during the day and night, left unattended to resulted into increased cases of thefts of and from motor vehicles. Soon, motor vehicle related crimes became the largest category of property crime. In the 1960s, there was a rapid increase in gang of teenage who were prone to criminal behaviours. Due to changes in social and cultural aspects in the society, teenagers were able to enjoy longer periods outside their family and work life (Garland, 2010). They were able to enjoy more material comfort and mobility as compared to their counterparts in the earlier generations. Teenagers were able to spend more time in their sub cultural setting s such as cafes, discos, clubs and street corners subject to no adult supervision. It is in this period when the baby boom generation was experienced. It was exposed to more universalistic commercial culture. The baby-boom generation experienced new levels of desires and expectations such as indulgence and supply of recruits who were involved in crime-boom that followed in its existence. Garland continues to explain that during this period, a lot of relaxation in informal controls such as families, schools, neighbours and the streets was experienced partially due to consequences of social changes and partially because of emergency of new social ecology. These informal control structures became more stretched out, more mysterious and less supervised thereby giving space for criminal attempts and opportunities (Garland, 2001, p.92). At the same time, as the informal control institution became distant and unsupervised, the norms governing conducts of sexuality and drug abuse became relaxed too. Child rearing styles became more permissive. In many sections of population, especially the ones which were inhibited by emergence of new teenage culture; deviation was seen as the symbol of freedom and compliance was a sign of dull and normalized oppression (Williams, 2010). As a result groups like hippie and other were formed whereby old types of crime and criminal behaviour became less apparent in their behavioural situation and less absolute in their moral force. When all these social trends are taken together, they had a distinct effect on crime policies and practices. These social changes precipitated the high crime rates of 1960s and 1970s in both United States and Britain. If more sociological thought are put into this, “the sharply increased crime rates were an emergent property of the converging social and psychological changes of the post-war period. The new social and cultural arrangements made late-modern society a more crime-prone society, at least until such time as new crime-control practices could be put in place to counter these structural tendencies” (Garland, 2001, p.92) In his thesis ‘culture of control’, Garland states that emergence of late modernity also had direct practical implications for the institutions of crime control, (both formal and informal) and criminal justice which were quite distance from the effect that higher crime rates would eventually have. In the 1960s, there was a shift to what is called ‘911 policing’ by American. This policing came out of emergence of automobiles, telephones and social space stretching in the 60s. “911 policing’ was a reactive policy which “took police officers off the streets and out of communities, placed them in patrol cars, and concentrated on providing a rapid response to emergency calls” (Garland, 2001, p.92). Garland further explains that the universalizing of claims by the democrats, rise in mass media and emergence of the politics of mass society as referred to by Edward Shils, were responsible of establishing new rules and forms of accountability concerning criminal justice authority. As a result, balance of power prison officials and prisoners, or/and between policemen and criminals was modified to some extent in favour of the latter. In addition, institutions of justice were exposed to more legal inspection and media publicity. Moreover, the social respect and ignored moral authority that strengthened the idea of doing rehabilitation work with children and teenagers, in prisons and on probation stopped to be readily available (Garland D (2001) Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society, 2010). As the appeal of moral duties and ethic work was lost, the idea of moral consent was gradually destabilized. This was accompanied by instances where the thought of state worker correcting deviants came to be seen as dictatorial and unsuitable rather than self-evidently humanitarian. In the current context, Garland is of the opinion that the surly, entrenched resistance that working-class offenders and minority communities had always shown to the representatives of the penal-state, now took on a direct and ideological feature that made law enforcement and punishment much more difficult. In addition, lack of availability of work for ex-criminals after 1970s added more to the impossibility of the entire correctional plan. Garland attempts to answer the question of ‘how did the social changes of late modernity came to impress themselves upon the field of crime control and criminal justice?’ He is of the opinion that the impact of these social changes on criminal justice policies and practices was “through a series of accommodations and adjustments undertaken by various agencies in response to the specific pressures, problems or opportunities that these agencies experienced” (Garland, 2001, p.103). At times, Garland views that these stimuli were generates from forces outside the justice system while at other times, these stimuli were generated from forces within the justice system itself. However, as the social relations and responsiveness of late modernity became absorbed into crime control institutions both formal and informal, the difference between outside and inside stimulus became difficult to understand. Organization ideas about crime and punishment, and justice and control were changed by the late modernity and new politics. Similarly, the same brought about changes in operation of justice institutions. According to Garland, “the last quarter of the twentieth century saw emergence of non-correctionalist rationales for crime control-new criminology’s, new philosophies of punishment, new penological aims, and objectives” (Garland, 2003, p.9). Over the same period there was also an attempt on the part of politicians and others to improve the fit between crime policy and the new political and cultural context in which it operates-to invent new and more effective mechanisms of crime control as well as new ways of representing crime and justice” (Garland, 2001, p.103). Garland says that the attempts to readjust crime control institutions by making them to relate well with the new social surroundings was just a mere patchwork repair and short-term solution. He says that any significant challenge on the arrangement of a society’s institutions results into real trouble and worries to the people served by the institution, and leaders and staff of the institution too. During the period between 1980s and 1990s, the field of crime control experienced continuous fermentation and improvement. This can be attributed to development of novel ideas, programmes and new reform ideas which came up as the old ways of administering justice control relaxed and started collapsing. Despite the fact that saying that the criminal justice system collapsed in the mid 1970s, penal-welfarism for institutional arrangement, and institutional arrangements for modern criminal justice can be said that they were damaged and troubled during this period (Owen, 2007). The criminal justice system was interrupted as well as the criminological structure that was attached on it. Therefore, in the years that followed policy ideas and new programmes which were proposing new institutional aspirations and objectives, new policing, new formation of crime problems and its solutions flooded forth. In the recent past, U.K. and U.S. had been formulating justice related policies in the wake of changing set of forces and restrictions. According to Garland, “the two nations have had to reorient their practices in the wake of internal development, such as the critique of correctionalism; adjust to changes in adjacent fields, such as the decline of work and welfare; and accommodate to the newly dominant political currents of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism, however much these currents pulled in different directions or went against the grain of their own beliefs. Above all, however, they have had to face a new criminological predicament – a new and problematic set of structural constraints that formed the policy horizon within which all decisions must be made” (Garland, 2001, p.105). The results of these sticky situations faced by the two nations can be attributed to two major facts of the 20th century which include acknowledgement of the limitation of the criminal justice state and normalization of the high crime levels. From the normalization point of view, just like other Western industrialized societies, crimes became a normal fact of life in U.K. and U.S. during the post-war period. As the level of property crime escalated in the 1960s and despite some levelling off being experienced in 1990s, the society has developed around the complex phenomenon of crime (William, 2010). The society has had to live with pervasive fear of crime, extensive media and cultural representations, regular avoidance behaviours, and generalized crime consciousness attitude. In respect to this, high crime rates have and responsive measures to it have become an everyday life organizing principle, a basic part of social organization. Therefore due to existence of such attitude of crime being a normal everyday life experience, the recent criminal justice practices and policies are also taken in the same normalized way just like other occurrences such as road traffics. As earlier mentioned, the recent predicaments in criminal justice practices and policies, according to Garland, can also be attributed to limitation of the criminal justice state. This related almost similar to normalization of crime rate as it looks at how the public views the criminal justice system as well as the views of the political authorities and justice institutions’ personnel to crime. “If the 1970s is the period in which the normality of high crime rates began to be recognized as a fact, even by those with reason to resist this interpretation, it is also the period in which the criminal justice system came to be viewed primarily in terms of its limitations and propensity for failure rather that its prospects for future success” (Garland, 2001., p.107). Limitation in criminal justice state cannot be attributed to the idea that rising crime rate in U.S. and U.K. did not raise any issue of concern to criminal justice or the idea that it never presented any problem to justice system. The high level of crimes has been a problem since the WW II but the 1960s justice institution were able to absorb the challenges of rising crime rates and were able to turn them into their own advantages. In 1964, United Kingdom government published White Paper – The War against Crime, which recognized that there had been an increase in crime and criminal behaviour that had persisted unabated since mid-1950s but at the same, it acknowledged that there was no need to question the penal-welfare structure to which it remained wholly dedicated. There have been more limitations to criminal justice and since the mid 1980s, it has become common in government policy documents, police commissioners reports and in other government agencies related to criminal justice that they cannot succeed in controlling crime. Therefore, the current criminal justice policies and practices are based on the same ideology of limitation of criminal justice state Garland, 2001, p.104). Conclusion Garland’s thesis on culture of control depicts that the current criminal justice policies and practices can be traced from the mid-1960: the post-war period which was characterized by numerous economic, social, cultural and political forces. These forces were responsible for many changes that occurred in the justice formal and informal institutions. Economic forces brought inventions in the economic system which created opportunities for crimes. These inventions included introduction of self-service shops and introduction of automobiles. In Cultural context, institutions which were responsible of controlling justice became weak and were unable to control behaviour norms among teenagers who during baby-boom period were involved in lots of criminal activities. In summary, the economic, cultural and social changes that took place during the industrialization period contributed greatly in shaping the current criminal justice policies and practices. REFERENCES Garland, D. 2001. Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Retrieved November 23, 2010, from http://ivythesis.typepad.com/term_paper_topics/2010/05/garland-d-2001-crime-and-social-order-in-contemporary-society-a-book-review.html Garland, D. 2010. Anthropology, Archeology and Sociology. Retrieved November 23, 2010, from James Cook University Australia: http://www.havenscenter.org/files/Garland_1_garland4.pdf Garland, D. 2001. David Garland: The Culture Control. In Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society, pp. 76-228. Garland, D. 2003. The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. In Canadian Journal of Sociology Online , 1-13. Matthews, R. 2006. Managing Modernity: Politics and the Culture of Control. International Journal of Crime, Media and Culture , 113-115. Owen, T. 2007. Culture of Crime Control: Through a Post-Foucauldian Lens. Internet Journal of Criminology , 1-13. Protagoras, P. 2003. Incarcerate or Exterminate? Contemporary Application of Punishmnet and Deterrence Theory. Introduction to Criminology , 1-9. Williams, K. 2010. The Culture of Control: David Garland. Retrieved November 23, 2010, from crime and social order in contemporary society Read More