Penal Culture and Hyperincarceration The Revival of the Prison [Hardcover]

What are the various forces influencing the role of the prison in late modern societies? What changes have there been in penality and use of the prison over the past 40 years that have led to the re-valorization of the prison? Using penal culture as a conceptual and theoretical vehicle, and Australia as a case study, this book analyses international developments in penality and imprisonment. Authored by some of Australias leading penal theorists, the book examines the historical and contemporary influences on the use of the prison, with analyses of colonialism, post colonialism, race, and what they term the penal/colonial complex, in the construction of imprisonment rates and on the development of the phenomenon of hyperincarceration. The authors develop penal culture as an explanatory framework for continuity, change and difference in prisons and the nature of contested penal expansionism. The influence of transformative concepts such as risk management, the therapeutic prison, and preventative detention are explored as aspects of penal culture. Processes of normalization, transmission and reproduction of penal culture are seen throughout the social realm. Comparative, contemporary and historical in its approach, the book provides a new analysis of penality in the 21st century.

Professor Chris Cunneen is a conjoint professor of criminology in the Faculty of Law of the University of New South Wales. He held the NewSouth Global Chair in Criminology at UNSW from 2006 to 2010. Until 2005, Professor Cunneen was the Director for the Institute of Criminology at the University of Sydney, a position held since 1995. He has been teaching Criminology at the University of Sydney Law School since 1990. Previously he held research positions with the Indigenous Law Centre at UNSW and the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. Professor Cunneen is a member of the Editorial Boards of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology (since 2010), Australian l3©