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Understanding Prisons: The New Old Penology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 December 2018
Abstract
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- Review Essay
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- Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1991
References
1 Austin, James & McVey, Aaron David, The 1989 NCCD Prison Population Forecast: The Impact of the War on Drugs (San Francisco: National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 1989). James Austin & Aaron David McVey, The 1989 NCCD Prison Population Forecast: The Impact of the War on Drugs (San Francisco: National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 1989).Google Scholar
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3 Federal Bureau of Prisons, State of the Bureau 1988 (Washington, D.C.: Federal Bureau of Prisons, 1988).Google Scholar
4 For a range of expert views, see the symposium sponsored by the General Accounting Office (GAO) and published as “America's Overcrowded Prisons,” GAO Journal, No. 7, Fall 1989, at 22.Google Scholar
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9 For a general discussion, see John J. DiIulio, Jr., ed., Courts, Corrections, and the Constitution: The Impact of Judicial Intervention on Prisons and Jails (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) (“Delulio, Courts”).Google Scholar
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15 Beaumont & Tocqueville, Penitentiary System 28–29. They were especially fond of Superintendent Elam Lynde of Sing Sing and included parts of the transcript of their interviews with him in the book; see App. 11,” Conversation with Mr. Elam Lynde,” at 199–203. It should be noted, however, that they were not so favorably disposed to penal administrators who operated on a contract basis for profits; for example, see id. at 36–37.Google Scholar
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17 Id. at 59.Google Scholar
18 For example, see id. at 104–7, 125–30.Google Scholar
19 For example, see id. at 50–51, 59–60. On balance, they judged the Philadelphia system better at preventing corruptive relations among inmates and effecting spiritual reformation, and the Auburn system better at inculcating habits of work and obedience: “If it be so, the Philadelphia system produces more honest men, and that of New York more obedient citizens” (at 60).Google Scholar
20 For example, see their discussion of the Auburn system in id., at 4–8.Google Scholar
21 Id. at xviii.Google Scholar
22 For example, see id. at 44–47. They acknowledged that “the penitentiary system in America is severe” (at 47). But they noted that the use of corporal punishments (i.e., whipping or “stripes”) at Auburn was “not so frequent as is believed”; the Philadelphia system, they reported, made no use of the whip (at 46).Google Scholar
23 Id. at 48–49; also at 21–27.Google Scholar
24 Id. at 27.Google Scholar
25 Lawes, Lewis E., Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing (New York: Ray Long & Richard R. Smith, Inc., 1932).Google Scholar
26 Id. at 65.Google Scholar
27 Id. at 104.Google Scholar
28 Id. at 103–4.Google Scholar
29 Id. at 104.Google Scholar
30 Id. at 105.Google Scholar
31 Id.Google Scholar
32 Id. at 106–7.Google Scholar
33 Id. at 101.Google Scholar
34 Id. at 107.Google Scholar
35 Id.Google Scholar
36 Parts of the discussion that follow in this section are taken from DiIulio, Governing Prisons ch. 1 (cited in note 11).Google Scholar
37 Clemmer, Donald, The Prison Community (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1958; first published 1940).Google Scholar
38 Id. at xii.Google Scholar
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41 Id. at 314; emphasis added.Google Scholar
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62 Id.Google Scholar
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70 Id.Google Scholar
71 Irwin, Prisons at xxiii.Google Scholar
72 Id. at 124–26, 248.Google Scholar
73 Id. at 241.Google Scholar
74 Id. at 248.Google Scholar
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77 Id. at 214.Google Scholar
78 Among his many influential works, see Wilson, James Q., Thinking About Crime (rev. ed. New York: Basic Books, 1983), and (with Hernstein, Richard J.), Crime and Human Nature (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987).Google Scholar
79 See, e.g., James Q. Wilson, Varieties of Police Behavior (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986); Political Organizations (New York: Basic Books, 1973); The Investigators (New York: Basic Books, 1978); ed., The Politics of Regulation (New York: Basic Books, 1980); and Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It (New York: Basic Books, 1989).Google Scholar
80 For a general statement of that interest, see John J. DiIulio, Jr.,” Recovering the Public Management Variable: Lessons from Schools, Prisons, and Armies,”Pub. Ad Rev., March/April 1989, at 127–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
81 For one example, see James Coleman et al, High School Achievement (New York: Basic Books, 1982). For an overview, see Edward B. Fiske,” New Look at Effective Schools,”N.Y. Times. 15 April 1984, sec. 12. For a refinement of the “effective schools” literature, see Chubb, John & Terry, Moe, What Price Democracy? (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1990).Google Scholar
82 For a discussion of some of these studies, see DiIulio, No Escape (cited in note 10), and id., Brookings Rev. (cited in note 6).Google Scholar
83 For an overgenerous example, see William K. Muir, book review, 82 Am Pol. Sci. Rev. 1374 (1988). The research as reported in the dissertation won the American Political Science Association's 1987 Leonard D. White Award. The only reason I note that fact is that the award is given to a work in the field of public administration and policy studies.Google Scholar
84 For a short list of these reactions, see note 11 above.Google Scholar
85 Irwin, 34 Crime & Delinq. 335 (cited in note 11).Google Scholar
86 Crouch, Ben M. &. Marquart, James W., An Appeal to Justice (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989). For an analysis of the Texas prison system in relation to judicial intervention which juxtaposes the competing views of Crouch and Marquart, DiIulio, and Sheldon E land-Olson & Steve Martin, see DiIulio, Courts chs. 2, 3, 4, &. 11 (cited in note 9).Google Scholar
87 DiIulio, Governing Prisons ch. 6 (cited in note 11).Google Scholar
88 Id.Google Scholar
89 Useem, Corrections Today at 94 (cited in note 11). In addition to ch. 6 of Governing Prisons, I would highlight note 13 of that chapter and my 27 Sept. 1989 testimony before the House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee relating to “boot camp” facilities.Google Scholar
90 Among the systems where this is true, I would include (as of this writing) Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. On the last see John J. DiIulio, Jr., Barbed Wire Bureaucracy: Leadership and Administration in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 1930–1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar
91 Howard, Binda, “Effects of Increased Security on Prison Violence,” 3 J. Crim. Just. 33 (1975).Google Scholar
92 Lee Bowker, Prisoner Subcultures 115 (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Boos, 1977).Google Scholar
93 Id. at 125.Google Scholar
94 Sykes, Society of Captives 134 (cited in note 45).Google Scholar
95 Useem, Corrections Today at 94.Google Scholar
96 See DiIulio, No Escape 134 (cited in note 10).Google Scholar
97 See John J. DiIulio, Jr., Keeping the Balance: The Future of Corrections in Wisconsin (report to the Wisconsin Institute of Policy Studies, forthcoming).Google Scholar
98 For example, see Richard McCleery,” Authoritarianism and the Belief System of Incorrigibles,” in Cressey, The Prison 260 (cited in note 65).Google Scholar
99 For example, see George H. Grosser,” Introduction,” in SSRC, Theoretical Studies (cited in note 55).Google Scholar
100 For example, see Irwin, The Felon (cited in note 60), and Irwin, Prisons (cited in note 63).Google Scholar
101 For example, see Lombardo, Lucien, Guards Imprisoned: Correctional Officers at Work (Cincinnati, Ohio: Anderson, 1976; 2d ed. 1989).Google Scholar
102 For an inmate's view of the Walpole horrors, see Remick, In Constant Fear (cited in note 61).Google Scholar
103 John J. DiIulio, Jr.,” The Corrections Officer: A Study of Administrative Behavior” (unpublished, Department of Government, Harvard University, 1981).Google Scholar
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