Ideology and Penal Reform in the 1990s

The article shows that in the face of world economic crisis, similar national strategies (austerity "adjustment" policies with IMF support) were adopted in Communist Party-led governments in the East and by military dictatorships, other authoritarian governments, and their successor democratic governments in the South, while in the West social democratic and conservative governments alike abandoned Keynesian economic policy promises in favor of monetarist policies. In short, against the will of their respective electorates and despite the disparate ideological orientations of the national leaderships, all these governments followed essentially the same economic policies in the face of the same material economic circumstances. Ironically, although almost everyone now agrees that "existing socialism" as an economic system is a failure, few have ventured to say that "existing capitalism" has similarly failed despite its abysmal -- and worsening -- economic performance in most of the South.

Is Frank leading us into an economic-determinist trap with this logic? The social movements themselves must answer that question. To be sure, Frank is always careful to add that the struggle must continue, only today without a reliance on "isms." Such ideological models, it is argued, impede and obscure the analysis of real world-economic development and the real, rather than ideal, alternate choices of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Perhaps to the dismay of some, Frank also concludes that to call the world-system structure and/or process of political-economic competition "capitalist" adds little to our understanding of the real world system or its past, present, and future operation.

"Managing Consent: Canada's Experience with Neoconservatives," by Ken Hatt, Tullio Caputo, and Barbara Perry, implicitly supports Frank's analysis. The authors review the leading theories that differentiate the rise of the Right in Canada from Reaganism in the U.S. and Thatcherism in Britain, with their dual reliance on austerity capitalism and ideological manipulation in the form of law-and-order campaigns, morality, and "legitimate repression." Given Canada's low crime rate, neoconservatives have had little basis for invoking law-and-order campaigns. Indeed, the Right has been unable to establish a cohesive national agenda in Canada. The authors suggest that while the federal government manages consent, provincial governments are engaged in managing crises. Canadian neoconservatism does resemble that of Britain and the United States in the economic sphere, where the emphasis has increasingly been on fiscal and monetary policies aimed at rolling back the welfare state -- a policy implemented by both social democratic and conservative federal governments.

In the United States, the conservative agenda successfully exploited the issue of crime to influence the legislative agenda in the direction of mandatory minimum sentences, accelerated prison construction, the promotion of incarceration over treatment in the War on Drugs, the increased use of the death penalty, and a greater reliance on imprisonment while alternatives were downplayed. Two articles in this issue, "The Cost-Benefit Analysis of Imprisonment," by David Greenberg, and "Electronic Incarceration in Massachusetts," by Alexander Esteves, examine the implications of these policies in terms of the need for prison reform. (See also the report on prison discipline in our "Bulletin Board" section at the end of the journal.) With more than one million people in jail or prison, either awaiting trial or serving time, the United States imprisons a bigger share of its population than any other nation on earth, surpassing South Africa and the Soviet Union (San Francisco Chronicle, 1991). A report by The Sentencing Project states that 426 of every 100,000 U.S. residents are incarcerated, at an annual cost of $16 billion. For Black American men, the rate is 3,109 per 100,000. In contrast, South Africa -- which has the world's second-highest imprisonment rate, with 333 people imprisoned per 100,000 residents -- has an incarceration rate for Black males of 729 per 100,000. The Soviet Union has the world's third-highest imprisonment rate, with 268 per 100,000 residents.

Although the U.S. crime rate is higher than in many countries, and the nation's murder rate is at least seven times higher than in most European countries, the overall U.S. crime rate has fallen 3.5 percent since 1980, while the nation's prison population has doubled. Greenberg's article points out that critics of this unprecedented expansion have long argued that the expansion of the incarcerated population is a terribly inefficient way of reducing crime rates. Pointing to the high cost of building and operating new facilities, these critics have called for shorter sentences and/or greater use of alternatives to incarceration for many persons who are now sent to prison. According to The Sentencing Project report, alternate punishments are less costly than imprisonment. A 1989 Delaware study found that the annual cost of imprisoning a criminal was $17,761; putting the person on probation cost only $569 a year. As Greenberg notes, however, the anti-expansionist critics have recently been challenged by Edwin Zedlewski, a staff economist at the National Institute of Justice, who concluded that prisons are a highly cost-effective method of reducing crime, one whose use should be greatly expanded. Zedlewski's recommendations fit well with President George Bush's proposed one billion dollar increase in the federal budget to pay for the addition of 24,000 beds to the federal prison system -- a 77% increase in capacity -- and with former Drug Czar William J. Bennett's call for even larger increases. Greenberg's systematic review of Zedlewski's methodological procedures shows them to be invalid. He also discusses the use of cost-benefit analyses in criminal justice policy-formation.

In "Electronic Incarceration in Massachusetts," Alexander Esteves adds another dimension to the debate on prison reform. Although the author tends to emphasize the more Orwellian aspects of this alternative to imprisonment -- and there are potentially serious infringements of rights by an intrusive government inherent in it --Social Justice would like to provoke discussion on addressing the serious overcrowding at all levels of U.S. penal institutions and to discuss alternatives to further prison construction. This article is a case study that outlines the future necessity and practicability of the present and emerging alternatives to prison incarceration in Massachusetts and their effects on the state's efforts to solve the dilemma of prison overcrowding. Probably the largest and the most rapidly emerging alternative to prison incarceration in Massachusetts is the electronic incarceration program ("EIP"). Called "house arrest," the "anklet," or the electronic monitoring program, the EIP has become an increasingly popular alternative to confinement for offenders who have been convicted of nonviolent crimes. Despite its popularity, the EIP has been controversial. If electronic monitoring is used properly, it can result in tremendous savings when compared with building new prisons, and studies show that both the recidivism and escape rates for EIP participants are quite low compared to those offenders who are sentenced to regular probation or parole programs. However, some have argued that the money could be better spent on rehabilitative programs.

As a continuation from our last two special issues, we are pleased to offer "Women, Crime, Feminism, Realism," by Pat Carlen. The primary purpose of the article is to assess the potential of realist criminology to inform analyses of women's lawbreaking and criminalization and campaigns and policies aimed at redressing the discriminatory wrongs that women presently suffer in the courts and prisons. Carlen examines the contributions and limits of feminism in relation to women, crime, and criminology; explores the limits and potential of realist criminology in relation to women, crime, and social policy; and outlines an agenda for the realization of attainable ideals both in the deconstruction and theorization of "women and crime" questions, and in the development of policies designed to ensure that the penal regulation of females does not further increase their oppression as unconventional women, as Black people, and as poverty-stricken defendants.

The "Book Review" section includes many interesting contributions that touch on the theme of ideology and penal reform in the 1990s. "America in the King Years," by David Dodd, reviews Taylor Branch's history of the Civil Rights Movement and beyond, which is structured around Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, ascent as a national leader. The review addresses the unique dilemma of being Black in a white society, a dilemma that Frantz Fanon defined as arising from the situation in which the (Black) Self is confronted by the difficult task of trying to construct an authentic identity while remaining subject to the (white) Other's power to define it in some version of his own, thus ensuring the (Black) Self's continued captivity.

Philip Agee's review of Rita Maran's book, Torture: The Role of Ideology in the French-Algerian War, exposes France's systematic use of torture against Algeria's anti-colonial National Liberation Front (FLN) as well as against people who were not suspected of revolutionary activities. The review explores the contradictions inherent both in Muslim Algerians who could shout Vive la France!, as happened, while undergoing torture at the hands of Christian French police and soldiers, and the contradiction on the French side as well. Maran's book seeks to reveal whether there might be an ideological basis behind France's justification of its flagrant and continuous violation of formal international commitments against the use of torture; she concludes that France's motive and rationale for fighting the war was its historic mission civilisatrice, i.e., the transfer through colonization of French culture, language, religion, values system, education, and administration in the name of progress and modernization. (Fanon, of course, also directly analyzed and participated in the Algerian struggle [see his Toward the African Revolution, 1967: Chapter 2, "Algeria Face to Face with French Torturers"], thus providing the world with a scientific account of the situation of the colonized.)

Michael Welch's review of Crimes of Obedience, by Herbert Kelman and Lee Hamilton, is a timely examination of the headlong rush toward a renewed nationalism and spirit of patriotism in the U.S., with its undercurrent of obedience, which is subject to exploitation and manipulation. The book under review discusses many crimes of obedience, including the Holocaust, the My Lai Massacre, Watergate, and the Iran-Contra Affair. Much of this material exposes the ugly underbelly of U.S. foreign policy, and recalls the disbelief of Americans in the face of photographic documentation of U.S. soldiers involved in the Vietnam War-era My Lai Massacre of 1968, in which victims of this search-and-destroy mission were unarmed old men, women, and children -- a mass execution with an unofficial body count as high as 500. Currently, the nation could benefit from this analysis of blind obedience to presidential insistence on the use of force as an instrument of foreign policy, whether in Southeast Asia or in the Middle East.

Cynthia Mahabir's review of David Price's book, Before the Bulldozer: The Nambiquara Indians and the World Bank, details the complicity between the World Bank and the Brazilian government in the 1980s that has resulted in the pillaging of the environment of Fourth World peoples in the Amazonian rain forest, and the societal breakdown and near extinction of the native peoples in the area that followed. The book details the racist assumptions underlying the Brazilian governments actions and the process by which the native people were reduced to animal-like status so that Brazilians would not have to extend human rights to them. According to Mahabir, the criminality of the World Bank and the Brazilian government goes beyond both "state criminality" and "corporate crime" as we know it today, for it not only condones the destruction of irreplaceable ecosystems, it also facilitates the genocide of native peoples. Consequently, she calls for the elaboration of a "green criminology."

Finally, "Two Books on the Death Penalty," by Robert M. Bohm, explores how the harm produced by the death penalty is not confined to the condemned, but extends to all the many participants in the ritual of state-imposed execution, including the society that allows it.

We hope that you will benefit from reading this issue as much as we have in putting it together. Again, we would encourage you to send us your comments on any of the themes or articles in this issue.