The new penology argues that an important new language of penology is emerging. This new language, which has its counterparts in other areas of the law as well, shifts focus away from the traditional concerns of the criminal law and criminology, which have focused on the individual, and redirects it to actuarial consideration of aggregates. This shift has a number of important implications: It facilitates development of a vision or model of a new type of criminal process that embraces increased reliance on imprisonment and that merges concerns for surveillance and custody, that shifts away from a concern with punishing individuals to managing aggregates of dangerous groups, and that affects the training and practice of criminologists.

/pdf/the-new-penology-notes-on-the-emerging-strategy-of-3w9dj9gzz1.pdf

The New Penology : Notes on the emerging strategy of corrections and its implications

This paper explores the genesis of sadistic behaviour in men and its relationship to crime Sixteen male special hospital patients, each with a diagnosis of psychopathic disorder, formed the basis of this descriptive study In only three cases were the crimes explicable in terms of external circumstances and personality traits The offences of the remaining 13 cases became comprehensible only when the offender's internal circumstances were explored: investigation revealed repetitive sadistic masturbatory fantasies which had spilled over into overt behaviour because the patients had felt impelled to seek and create increasingly dangerous in vivo 'try-outs' of their fantasies The paper discusses the crucial link between sadistic fantasy and behaviour

Sadistic fantasy, sadistic behaviour and offending.

The decade of the 1990s witnessed unexpected but welcome large declines in homicide and serious firearms violence. Yet, despite these declines, rates of firearms crime in the United States remain high compared to other western democracies and impose significant costs to society generally and to specific communities particularly. One promising approach to gun crime emerged in Boston during the mid‐1990s. This approach combined face‐to‐face communication of a deterrence message to youth gang members with social service outreach and crackdowns on several gangs. Boston then experienced very significant declines in youth gun crime. This approach was later repeated in Minneapolis with similar promising results. This paper presents the results of a study of a similar gun‐crime‐reduction effort in Indianapolis. Time‐series analyses suggest a significant decline in homicide similar to those observed in Boston and Minneapolis. Comparisons to six similar Midwestern cities revealed that Indianapolis was the only city...

Reducing Homicide through a “Lever‐Pulling” Strategy

Despite three decades of study and a nationwide quasi experiment of unprecedented scale, it is still uncertain how large an effect prisons have on the crime rate. Researchers have learned some things along the way. We no longer use cross-sectional data sets because they make it impossible to separate simultaneous effects; we no longer use national time-series data and ratio variables because they produce inflated estimates. Better methods have improved the validity and narrowed the scope of recent estimates. Most studies show that doubling current U. S. prison capacity would reduce Index Crime rates by 20-40 percent. Nevertheless, some problems persist: simultaneity (just as prison affects crime, so does crime affect prison, and it is difficult to isolate one effect from the other); specification error (especially left-out variables); and difficulties in comparing among states (since different states use their prisons very differently). Perhaps most important, the range of estimates itself falls in an awk...

What Recent Studies Do (and Don't) Tell Us about Imprisonment and Crime

Sexual sadism in sexual offenders: An elusive diagnosis

Examines the development of criminal justice programs designed to concentrate on the conviction and imprisonment of especially dangerous criminals.

Daniel McGillis

Papers

Dangerous Offenders: The Elusive Target of Justice

2. Dangerous Offenders