The case for a postmodern penality

Abstract

Rising prison populations and the return of punitively orientated ‘ostentatious’ forms of punishment (Pratt, 2000) have led a number of theorists to consider whether key defining characteristics of western penal modernity have been abandoned and replaced with something entirely different. The question has been raised: Are we witnessing the rise of a postmodern penality qualitatively different in form than that which prevailed in the modern era? While this question has tentatively been answered in the affirmative by Simon (1995) and, more recently, Pratt (2000), a number of criminologists have argued a contrary case (see Garland, 1995; Lucken, 1998; O’Malley, 1999). There is, they suggest, no such thing as a postmodern penality, or if there is, evidence for it is very slight. Such theorists have also sought to question both the utility and validity of the discourse of modernity and postmodernity as a framework in which to locate an understanding of contemporary penal development. This article questions this critique and does so by addressing the criticisms that have been raised against those who have challenged the validity of this framework of analysis and by reaffirming the case for seeing the rise of certain new penal trends as indicative of an emergent postmodern penality.