Q) Prisons are mostly warehouses for containing the surplus labour of the working classes, they are incapable

of reforming individuals. Discuss. Approaching the question of prisons capacity to reform individuals this paper agrees with the contention that prisons are mostly warehouses for containing the surplus labour of the working class. The decline in the rehabilitative ideal and entrenchment of the penal system is demonstrated with reference to Feeley and Simons New Penology (1992) Houchin (2005) is cited to illustrate the overrepresentation of economically or socially deprived individuals and groups incarcerated in the penal system. The concentration of targeted criminality in the deprived areas of Scotlands inner cities is remarkable and Houchin has managed to highlight a systemic association between social deprivation and imprisonment showing that at all levels of prosperity the probability of imprisonment increases with increasing deprivation Houchin (2005: 17). Steven Box (1983) gives us a framework for understanding the differential enforcement of criminal codes to the detriment of the less powerful members of society. Once this is understood classic criminological theories including the rational choice model; Mertons structural strain theory (1938); Cloward & Ohlins (1960) theory of opportunity structures; and Youngs relative deprivation (2003) are used to conceptualise the problems of return to the community and opportunities for desistance which require serious redistribution of opportunities to facilitate adequate reform. Rusche and Kirchheimer (1939/2003) approaching the questions of penology and from a historical materialist tradition argued that specific forms of punishment are related to modes and methods of social organization. Economic relationships in their account are formative in defining the particular punishments used at any given time. To understand particular manifestations of punishment it is necessary to break out of the crime punishment paradigm. In Rusches account punishment is neither a simple consequence of crime, nor the reverse side of crime, nor a mere means which is determined by the end to be achieved (Rusche and Kirchheimer 2003: 5). Rusche notes different penal systems and their variations are closely related to the phases of economic development (2003: 8). Thus Rusche links the increased use of capital and corporal punishment in Feudal Europe to social conditions which meant an excess of criminal labour had to be reduced and repressed. Similarly the humanitarian principles of the legal reforms taking place in the 18th century were only made practicable because they fitted with the economic necessities of the time. Today we live in a capitalist society in a period of full scale globalization. Rusche states quite correctly: it is the labour market that structures the normal conditions of the working class as well as structuring the sanctions used against them if they resort to crime or political resistance to improve their lot in life (2003: 87)

It is in light of this analysis that the contention that prisons have come to be mostly warehouses for containing the surplus labour of the working class, incapable of reforming individuals takes on its most convincing aspect. To understand todays penal system and the prospects for individual reform it is necessary to explore the changes in cultural and systemic responses to crime which signal the decline in the rehabilitative ideal. Understanding the differential enforcement of criminal codes is central to understanding how the market shapes the use of criminal sanctions and explaining how the economically and socially underprivileged come to be disproportionately represented in todays Scottish prison system. Also of key importance is how social structures economics and labour markets in particular limit the effectiveness of reform strategies. Delineating a shift away from the 1895 Gladstone Committees purported aim of trying to send prisoners out better men and women, both physically and morally, than when they came in Vivian Stern (1989) noted the most fundamental change in the culture of penal institutions is the complete loss of the original rationale. The idea of reforming prisoners through incarcerating them is quite dead. (Stern 1989: 14) Indeed this shift appears almost complete. A 1959 White Paper drawing on Gladstone said the constructive function of our prisons is to prevent the largest number of those committed to their care from offending again thus signaling reduced recidivism rather than individual social moral and health betterment as an aim and possible practical test of prisons efficacy. (Stern 1989: 15) Politically the rehabilitative ideal in terms of institutional success in reducing recidivism appears in very bad health. In March 1988 Home Secretary Douglas Hurd declared Our current aim is to hold an offender at the necessary level of security while preventing a deterioration in his attitudes and doing whatever is possible to prepare him to return to the community.(Stern 1989: 15) The stress in Douglas Hurds statement is on the individual but we can see the cultural justifications and purported aims surrounding control and the use of prisons have thus drifted from one of positive reformation primarily towards order and securing society against the risks presented by criminal populations. Feeley and Simon (1992) remarking on shifts in institutional rationale and penal techniques from individual reform to risk management and control as the dominant concerns in criminal justice praxis argued these represent the emergence of a New Penology. A central feature in their account is the replacement of the language of morality in criminal administration and legal circles with an actuarial language of probabilistic calculations and statistical distributions applied to populations. Increased technical and managerial proficiency and in particular the continued targeting of policing and justice resources to problem areas accounts for what Feeley and Simon record as a recent and rising trend in both European and American penal strategies to

target categories and subpopulations rather than individuals (Feeley & Simon 1992: 434). Alongside the shift in the spheres of criminal justice discourse from rehabilitation towards control Feely and Simon observed a somewhat more alarming shift marking a growth in emphasis on the systemic and formal rationality of the penal enterprise itself. High rate offenders and career criminals are examples of criminal categories defined by the distribution of interventions and punitive sanctions. The test of penal efficiency is often thus turned in on itself: High rates of parolees being returned to prison once indicated program failure; now they are offered as evidence of the efficiency and effectiveness of parole as a control apparatus (Feeley & Simon 1992: 434). This is troubling not only because it signals an entrenchment of control thinking in penology but because it lessens considerations of individual offenders social needs in terms of promoting opportunities for social inclusion and desistance. This systemic focus is most prevalent in the managerial perspectives arising through the 1970s and 1980s and in administrative criminology, exemplified by work emanating from the Home Office in the UK. Clarke R. V. (1997) presents one such work which reasserts the rational choice model as a framework for understanding offenders, the motivation to crime, and methods for its reduction. This approach can best be described as skewing concerns in favor of law and order and efficiency over criminal justice. As Hudson (2001) remarks justice is now very much less important than risk as a preoccupation of criminal justice/law and order policy (Hudson, 2001:144) To understand the failure of reform, in terms of crime recidivism and the attempt to return to the community with the prospects of a good and useful life it will be useful to situate that community. Today an examination of the communities which many of Scotlands offenders come from can easily lead the layman to believe in the Scottish Penal Postcode Lottery. As of June 2003 59.7% of prisoners home addresses given in the Glasgow City were type H housing on the ACORN scale holding the six numerical bands which represent the poorest council estates. 23% of prisoners in Aberdeen; 31% of those from Dundee and 35% from Edinburgh came from type H housing (Houchin 2005: 14). Of the 1222 local government wards in Scotland one quarter of the prison population comes from 53 of those wards; put more clearly one quarter of the prison population comes from wards in which 7.03% of the general population live (Houchin 2005: 15). This reflects a serious concentration of offenders incarcerated across some of the most deprived areas of Scotland. Using the Scottish Indices of Multiple Deprivation Houchin charted the male imprisonment rate against the average SIMD score for each of the local authority wards contributing to the prison population. This reveals a systemic association between social deprivation and imprisonment showing not simply that the most deprived are most at risk of imprisonment but that at all levels of prosperity the probability of imprisonment increases with increasing deprivation (Houchin 2005: 17).

So how can this come to be? As Rusches analysis reminds us we must step outside the crime and punishment paradigm to examine how the labour market structures the lives of the working class as well as the sanctions used against them. A possibility of increased occurrence of actions legally defined crime within these communities may not be enough to explain this disparity in incarceration though many theories and studies attest to the criminogenic nature of these deprived communities. Differential policing and differential punishment or justice must also be taken into account. Steven Box (1981; 1983) reminds us the codified law when presenting an appearance of universality with equal recourse to and treatment before the law is an illusion. The straight link between crime and punishment does not exist on the universal level. In the criminal law, definitions of murder, rape, robbery, assault, theft and other serious crimes for example are so constructed as to exclude many similar, and in important respects, identical acts, and these are just the acts likely to be committed more frequently by powerful individuals. (Box 1983: 8-9) Non physical coercion to sex is a possible crime which the socially or economically empowered can commit with assumed social decency or within a cloak of secrecy not always available to the un-empowered. Many other types of violence are not classed as assault and when they are they are processed differently; to this day no one has ever been prosecuted for corporate manslaughter in the UK (Box 1983: 10-11). Law is about delineating the public from the private; the places times occasions and acts which society and the state have a need and a right to legislate on, restrict, and possibly punish. The question of social spaces can not be underestimated in terms of understanding the effects of the penal sanction. The economically and socially disadvantaged do not only have trouble accessing legitimate incomes but also do not have easy access to legitimate recreational spaces and private areas where legislation and policing cant reach. Beyond the criminal code Differential deployment (focusing on high crime areas) and methodological suspicion in policing and plea-bargaining and judicious judicial decisions at prosecution and sentencing result in discretionary justice. Social background and ties to the job market can be very powerful in this regard as judges and penal administrators consider a stable social situation including job and family ties as indicators of low risk. Not only does this differentially enforced justice mean the powerful are better able to secure favourable outcomes than their less powerful counterparts but that a persons market position in terms of work and family ties are of concern in defining their penal experience (Box 1983: 10-11). As Schmitt (1921) notes there is a system of dual justice in which modern forms of formal law exist side by side with discretionary legal gaps primarily employed against the socially underprivileged. (Schmitt 1921: ??)

The process of law enforcement, in its broadest possible interpretation, operates in such a way as to conceal crimes of the powerful against the powerless, but to reveal and exaggerate crime of the powerless against everyone. (Box 1983: 5) This mystification could account for the blinkered eye of justice and go some way to explaining the disparity in incarceration rates across society. Stern (1989) suggests that broadly speaking the use of reform ideologies and penal sanctions can in practice mean taking people, usually from the least advantaged backgrounds, putting them in close confinement for some weeks or months with others from similar circumstances and then turning them out, stigmatized and dependant, into an unfriendly world (Stern 1989: 15). It can be hard to argue with this assessment. The council estates of inner-Glasgow marked by economic deprivation and crime, social problems such as drugs, with a high deployment of methodologically suspicious police enforcing a code already skewed against the powerless and property-less must indeed be a hostile place. In such a community the problems presented by serious notions of legal re-integration can be massive. One of the greatest problems faced by many in their return to the community may be the attainment of adequately paid legitimate work. Many classical criminological theories hypothesized a negative relationship between aspects of employment and crime or recidivism. Mertons structural strain theory (1938); Cloward & Ohlins (1960) theory of opportunity structures; Youngs relative deprivation (2003) and the rational choice model backing, up deterrence theory and situational crime reduction (Clarke.1997), all help conceptualise a market society bereft of job opportunities and the income and prestige they bring as a criminogenic environment. In the sphere of corrections and reform employment and markets role in forming both individuals pre-imprisonment and correctional biographies, and community crime histories are well known (Bossler 2001; Krienert & Fliesher 2001; Currie 1985). What these studies also show is markets affect in limiting the success of rehabilitation and reintegration. Problems of providing adequately rewarding work or the skills to access existing opportunities as opposed to well paid illegitimate incomes restrict the success of individual and aggregate reform. Success in this field requires a change in the distribution of opportunity structures outside of prison. Sadly the success of individual and institutional reform appears subsumed in questions of social order due to ties to the restricting problems of real material resources via the distributing structures of the market economy and community interaction. Remarking on the rise of mass imprisonment in the USA Garland stated: Particularly troubling is the way in which penal exclusion has been layered on top of economic and racial exclusion, ensuring that social divisions are

deepened, and that a criminalized underclass is brought into existence and systematically perpetuated (Garland 2001: 6) Excusing questions of scale and replacing notions of racial exclusion with the cultural exclusion prevalent in Scotlands inner cities Garlands analysis seems entirely apt. Today there appears no great shortage of cheap labour to be employed in the Scottish factory system and as such the somewhat static nature of penal institutions and the economically and socially deprived communities that fill them seams perfectly logical. It is within this framework that the decline in the rehabilitative ideal also seems most understandable. In spite of the challenges posed by mass imprisonment, daily efforts are made to reform prisoners, at least some successful. The political engineering of popular punitive attitudes limited resources and the scope of the reform project mean the space for reforming individuals is highly limited. Though it may appear the function of prisons is economic control and coercion of surplus labour it may be more correct to envisage prisons as spaces in which to contain individuals constituting problem groups while the reconfiguration of economic and social geographies continues outside. In the absence of any coherent and successful integrated policy of reform and social re-integration they are currently left maintaining social exclusion and in the main performing a sanitary function and a role in economic containment.

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