315021 PNSC TAKE HOME TEST: a) Section One 2.

What is the main point of Stanley Cohens argument about emerging patterns of social control? Community corrections (CC), a non-custodial alternative mechanism of social control proposes to restrict and reduce the amount of people entering the system. However, CC has been found to be supplementing and expanding the system as increasing numbers of diverse offenders enter the system. This is because, soft-enders who are usually not process by the system are now identified and drawn into the system and placed in CC and hard-enders and reoffenders receive heavier sanctions and are imprisoned. Hence, instead of being an alternative to imprisonment, its diversion effects are overwritten.

Also, instead of disciplinary power exercised by the state in institutions, it is executed by the state in the community as effective rehabilitation of offenders need to occur in their natural environment. With dyadic participation of offenders and community, labeling of individuals as deviant are removed, allowing normalization and reintegration. This removed the stigma often associated with imprisonment where deviants are removed and hidden behind prison walls. However, CC removed the walls that separated the deviant from normal populations and made the penal systems practice of control even more invisible. These blurred boundaries made community and prison space indistinguishable, enabling the state to exercise its power in greater dimensions and depths.

The dispersal of discipline and control was embedded in the structure of community. Disciplinary institutions (family,school) in the community that are part of

315021 the caceral continuum should play an active role in maintaining social control by shaping conduct of individuals (obedient to social norms). The presence of community functions as a form of surveillance that produces disciplinary control as they guides offenders to self-regulate because their behaviour is constantly observed, judge and corrected when necessary. 3. What would be the main changes in the form of social control in a society as disciplinary control was augmented or gradually superseded by strategies of biopolitical control? As populations increase, the constitution of society and organization networks increase in diversity and complexity. This impaired the previously effectiveness of disciplinary power in governing (controlling) all parts of society, and so, the ideology of bio-power was construed. Consequently, new approaches were taken by the penal system to produce social control. Power was diverted from the state to society. The state reduces its responsibilities of maintaining order by delegating it to society. As it is believed that the population will achieve order naturally through regulation based on self-interest and the states function is to provide guidelines and incentives that promote this behaviour, unlike the states implication of punishment (strict regimes, routines) in the disciplinary model to produce social control (order). Social control is achieved using themes of crime prevention and public safety. As crime is an inherent component of society, it cannot be normalized nor eradicated. Hence, penal goals are no longer to rehabilitate and reintegrate individuals but to effectively manage deviant groups by minimizing risks. Risk assessments classified individuals into risk classes (high, medium, low) and they will receive treatment as a totality, unlike the individualistic model of disciplinary control. Under crime management models, high risk classes (disadvantaged, minorities)

315021 in the population are targeted, treated punitively and are likely to be imprisoned, to segregate deviants from normal society, effectively managing crime. Low risk classes however, are treated less punitively and are less likely to be excluded from society, reflecting biasness in the system against specific classes . Whereas, offenders received sentencing and treatment proportionate to the offence under the disciplinary model. b) Section Two We have talked throughout this subject about rising imprisonment rates and the emergence of what some have called mass imprisonment. Writing no more than 500 words, discuss how the work of one of the theorists considered in the second half of the course has changed your understanding of the reasons and causes of this imprisonment binge. Prisons are used as a border that separates the delinquent from the conventional. With public safety as one of the main penal objectives, it is essential then that the state fulfills its role in ensuring citizens security. Also, as crime is believed to be an inherent part of society that cannot be eradicated, the states only alternative is to prevent and manage crime by segregating and excluding (Garland 1996). This way, prisons become a symbol of power where the state executes discipline and justice and used as a tool to achieve social control by regulating crime. Consequently, booming imprisonment rates. Also, reduced confidence in rehabilitation effectively means that since individuals cannot be fixed, they need to be identified and removed from society to prevent their infectiousness. This originates from Garlands (1996) argument that societies can selfregulate because of self-interest, and those who deviate, need to be removed from society so its state of normality is not affected, spotlighting prisons as the resolve. However, instead of being reformed in prison through receiving individualized

315021 treatment, individuals are deskilled and dejected because they are expected to be responsible for their own rehabilitation, creating a propensity reoffending upon release, creating a revolving door phenomenon. (Garland 1996).

Furthermore, management of social classes according to risk profiles means that the marginalized (minorities, disadvantaged), often labeled as high risk are targeted. Labels imposed upon them construct deviance instead of producing social control because with labels, come identities and stigmas. So, under a system of domination, deviant classes are denied participation in society and excluded, placing them in an even more disadvantaged position economically and politically, driving criminality (Garland 1996). Also, as they are under close scrutiny, crime is easily detected and because of their high risk labels, even petty crimes receive heavy sanctions, behind the mask of the prevention of crime because crime can be calculated, and is thus, avoidable (Garland 1996).

Moreover, Garland (1996) argues that crime management can be attained by applying responsibilization where individuals and institutions in society play an active role in crime prevention. However, the increased participation of the community means an increased inclination towards retribution, which propels punitive orientation of the system, resulting in the incapacitation of the deviant groups in society because isolation is viewed as a means of social control (Garland 1996). The state reacts by constructing laws that target these groups specifically, such as war on drugs, which caused a surge in imprisonment rates because this behaviour was criminalized. To support public safety, the system extends itself to detect and incapacitate these deviant groups, seen in mandatory sentencing laws.

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In conclusion, the states intention of maintaining social order by managing deviant groups produced adverse effects because the system is structured in such a way that disadvantaged and targeted marginalized groups. The application of the riskmanagement model also increased the reliance of the system on prisons. Higher recidivism rates signaled that the system was working because it is detecting those high risk groups, but this broke the homeostatic flow of imprisonment because those who are released, are reentered into the system, contributing to the imprisonment binge.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Garland, D. (1996). The limits of the sovereign state: strategies of crime control in contemporary society. British Journal of Criminology, 36, 445-471.