Creating Criminals:
Prisons and People in a Market Society
By Vivien Stern
Black Point,N.S.: Fernwood Publications Ltd., 2006
It is always a an enriching professional experience (not to speak of the personal delight involved) to read an excellent book penned by an ‘engagée’ author who is devoted to a worthwhile cause and who is able to call in aid scholarly material, popular media writings and personal accounts to produce a well-written, insightful, and challenging account of a contemporary issue which is both daunting and far-reaching in its negative consequences. Professor Vivien Stern’s text, Creating Criminals Prisons and People in a Market Society, published in the context of the “Global Issues series” with a view to righting manifest wrongs, succeeds in making plain a number of the obvious concerns associated with the emerging and ever-increasing reliance on incarceration. Although my situation prohibits political commentary, it is not a violation of the duty of restraint which binds me in such matters to underline that the author, who holds a Senior Research Fellowship at the School of Law, Kings College London, has emphasized repeatedly in her text that this phenomenon is a direct result of our global market society, a conclusion which I will allow others to judge for themselves.
The book begins with a skilful introductory discussion by means of which the author traces quite ably the argumentation to be followed in the course of the six chapters that follow. I commend in particular the vivid illustrations of seemingly inexplicable sanctions and I invite interested readers to consider the fuller discussion of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders found in the text Incivilities Regulating Offensive Behaviour, edited by Andrew von Hirsch and A.P. Simester, [Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2006].1 In addition, I found the discussion of the relationship as between offending conduct and the disintegration of an offender’s community and home situation well introduced in these initial pages, and well developed throughout, notably on pages 95 and 123.2
Chapter 1 Professor Stern begins with a vivid analysis of the question of the injustices visited upon offenders as a result of the selection of a period of detention. Her account of penal justice in the present century, “as expressed by sending people to prison”, to track the language found on page 12, is both scholarly and wide-ranging, with notable references to non-English speaking jurisdictions, always a welcome element. Of particular merit is the forceful and oft-repeated view that not enough attention is paid to the harms visited upon both inmates and their supervisors in the custodial setting. In this vein, I think it useful to note a passage found in the autobiography of a former Texas Ranger, One Ranger: A Memoir, by H.J. Jackson and D.M. Wilkinson, [Austin, Tx: University of Austin, 2005]: in one amazing instance, Ranger Jackson describes how a prison riot was quelled by the Rangers who were led by their sexagenarian Captain who gave the inmates ten seconds to surrender and yet began to shoot indiscriminately at the count of three!
Of considerable value as well is the discussion found on pages 44-47, “What is American ‘Exceptionalism’?” Briefly stated, Dr. Stern explores how 25-year terms can be meted out in the United States to sanction the theft of razor blades, and the importance of publicity in the furtherance by politicians of what has come to be styled ‘penal populism’. In this regard, I commend Penal Populism and Public Opinion: Lessons From Five Countries, edited by J.V. Roberts et al, [Oxford University Press: 2003, N.Y., N.Y.]3 and Penal Populism, by John Pratt [New York: Routledge, 2007], with especial attention to pages 143-145.4
Prior to leaving this area, it will be of assistance to reproduce certain observations penned by Professor Micheal Tonry, the editor of Crime and Justice A Review of Research (Volume 34), [University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2006], in the course of his preface, on pages vii-ix:
American crime patterns and policies have been out of synch for most of the last forty years. Policies became steadily more punitive from the early seventies through the late nineties, after which they stabilized at historically severe levels. The number of prison inmates quintupled and continues to increase. Official crime rates rose from the late sixties through the early eighties, fell through 1986, climbed again through 1991, and have declined substantially since. […] Anyone predisposed (many are) to believe that severe crime control policies caused the clines in crime rates or that rising crime rates produced rising prison populations need look no further than across the border to Canada to see it isn’t so. Rises and fall in Canada’s crime rate have closely paralleled America’s for thirty years. A look across the Atlantic Ocean is similarly chastening. Crime rates everywhere rose steeply from the late sixties through the early to mid-nineties and have since fallen steadily. Imprisonment rates display every pattern imaginable, from steady increase (the Netherlands), through broad stability (Germany, most of Scandinavia, and Switzerland) and up-and-down gyrations (France and Italy) to steady decline (Finland). Go figure.
“Crime and Its Definition: How Just is Criminal Justice?” is the title of Chapter 2, perhaps the most balanced and certainly valuable of all six by reason the guidance found on the controversial notion of deterrence. Many questions are examined but they may be sub-summed with an inquiry as to the causes of crime and the reasons for increases in rates of criminality. As we read on pages 58-59, “Perhaps they rise when times are hard, because people need to steal to eat […]”5 The discussion surrounding domestic violence as a marked example of ‘hidden crime’ is also worth underscoring as is the issue of the poor and policing efforts. Not only does the author demonstrate how crime is often a matter of definition, but in establishing that investment in social justice may well bring about a decrease in the necessary allocation of funds directed at punishment.
Limitations of space dictate that I limit my review of Chapter 3, “Crime – A Good Business? The Impact of the Free Market” and “The ‘War on Drugs’ and Migration” to the expression of my admiration for the author’s achievement in amassing valuable academic material which is presented in a fashion most likely to be understood fully by those not conversant with advanced notions of social science. I would be remiss, however, were I to fail to note the useful discussion of the costs of imprisonments leading to the often bizarre result of offenders being released quite early on when they might have been subject to greater supervision had other penalties been selected. In this vein, I refer to Professor John Pratt’s text, Penal Populism, on page 150 in which he notes that the Governor of Kentucky was forced to release 1,000 prisoners when he ran out of funds to “pay for these levels of imprisonment.” I refer as well to the valuable review of the question of the merits of commercially run prisons on pages 113-116 and, finally, to the important debate surrounding “The Criminalization of Migration” on pages 145-149. Further valuable analysis is found in Chapter 9 of Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously, edited by Paddy Hillyard, Christina Pantazis, Steve Tombs et Dave Gordon [Fernwood Publishing, Black Point, N.S., 2004] entitled “The war on migration” by Frances Webber and to the contribution by Wendy Chan, “Undocumented Migrants and Bill C-11: The Criminalization of Race”, on pages 34-60 of What Is A Crime? Defining Criminal Conduct in Contemporary Society, edited by the Law Commission of Canada [UBC Press: Vancouver, B.C., 2004].6
Chapter 5 is entitled “’In the Name of Justice’: Is There a Better Way?” and it is devoted to the thorny issue of ensuring that penal reform not only not retreat, but that it continue to make progressive strides. The reader is provided with a coherent and compelling outline of the ills that pervade the prison system, and of the potential remedies found in organizational and individual efforts at reform, with a notable emphasis on the imperative need for a return to social intervention.
Finally, in a brief but no less successful final chapter, “Criminal Justice and Social Justice’, the author illuminates the path towards the achievement of a true balance involving the protection of society and the rehabilitation of punishment and of those who receive it. Professor Stern offers an evocative, ambitious and effective plea for the rights and needs of prisoners and of our society as a whole.
All in all, this is an effective and thought-provoking text which will certainly not garner universal praise given the radical ideas it contains. Nevertheless, those who believe in reform as well as those holding a brief for maintaining the status quo need to study its many lessons.
GILLES RENAUD
Ontario Court of Justice |
1 Refer as well to my book review in Criminal Law Quarterly, Vol. 52(3), May 2007, pp. 501-505.
2 In this respect, I commend as well Understanding Social Control Deviance, crime and social order, by Martin Innes, [Open University Press, Berkshire, England, 2003], reviewed by the writer in Revue générale de droit, 2005, Vol. 35(3), pp. 451-455.
3 Reviewed by the writer in (December 2003) Vol. 41(3) Alberta Law Review, pp. 797-799.
4 My review will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
5 Refer to Gilles Renaud, Les Misérables on Sentencing: Valjean, Fantine, Javert and the Bishop Debate the Principles [Sandstone Academic Press: Melbourne, 2007], in Chapter 7: “The pains of imprisonment and the future of prisons – there must be enlightened penology”.
6 See my review in (October 2005), Vol. 43:2 Alberta Law Review, pp. 489-493.
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