Punishment and Prisons

In Punishment and Prisons, Sim seeks to contest recent histories of penal policy that, read together, suggest that the rehabilitative ideal of the 1950s and 1960s has been eclipsed by a new punitive system of punishment focusing on ‘managing the dangers and risks posed by feral collectivities’ (p. 2). Sim's argument is framed by four interconnected themes: (1) continuity and discontinuity; (2) the role of reform and welfare discourses in prison; (3) contestations and resistance to penal power; and (4) the question of abolitionism. These themes are introduced in Chapter One and are developed in the book's subsequent chapters. Regarding the first of his four themes, Sim argues that the new penology fails to fully capture the continuity and discontinuity of recent penal policy, reflecting what another writer has described as the ‘depressing sense of inevitability’ characterizing much of this writing. The new penology, Sim claims, has constructed a straw version of the past, underplaying tensions and conflicts, and is in serious danger of presenting an optimistic view of penal modernism. Reminding the reader of the penal excesses associated with the mid-nineteenth century, Sim argues that there is nothing particularly late-modern about penal excesses

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