Militarism, Criminal Justice, and the Hybrid Prison in England and Wales

TLDR: Sudbury's analysis is theoretically stimulating and politically provocative in demanding a reappraisal of our thinking about prisons, particularly in the aftermath of September 11 and the war in Iraq.

Abstract: JULIA SUDBURY'S COMPELLING ARTICLE ANALYZES THE COMPLEX INTERRELATIONSHIP between militarism, the neoliberal globalization of capital, and the transnational expansion of the prison-industrial complex. The analytical connections she makes between multinational corporations, U.S. empire building and the devastated, criminalized lives of women in particular directly challenge the mystifying liberal fog that has descended on much of the academic debate around prisons. She also challenges critical scholars to think about developing new tactics, strategies, and links in order to repudiate the deeply embedded popular and political discourses that extol the prison behemoth as a mechanism of social defense operating in the public interest. These discourses mystify the institution's role as a place of punishment and pain for the poor and powerless, especially women, and black and other minority groups. Sudbury's analysis is theoretically stimulating and politically provocative in demanding a reappraisal of our thinking about prisons, particularly in the aftermath of September 11 and the war in Iraq. My response builds on the insights in the article to shed light on some recent developments in England and Wales. It does this by focusing on four areas: the expanding prison, the issue of private prisons, the militarization of the criminal justice system, and strategies of resistance. The Expanding Prison As Sudbury indicates, modern penal institutions are deeply implicated in the management of an inequitable and divided social order through detaining increasing numbers of the socially and economically marginalized. In England and Wales, the expanding prison is literally and metaphorically the big house of the poor while, as ever, the powerful operate beyond the law's reach as successive governments have pursued an anti-statist strategy with respect to the non-policing of their destructive and detrimental activities (Sim, 2000). The country is now the prison capital of Western Europe. This process began in the early 1980s when Margaret Thatcher's first Conservative government initiated the biggest prison-building program seen in the 20th century. This expansion continued over the next two decades (despite the occasional drop in the numbers inside), to the point that the average daily prison population reached an all-time high of 74,960 in March 2004. Projected figures indicate the population could rise to over 109,000 by the end of the decade (Prison Reform Trust, 2003). Other data provide further evidence of the stark reality of penal expansionism. In 2002, the courts sentenced 111,600 people to immediate custody and 186,500 to community punishments. Both figures were "the highest on record" (Home Office, 2004: 2). Taken together, they raise serious issues about "the continual recycling of the same individuals and groups between prisons and communities, [which] creates a damaging but self-sustaining process" (Matthews, 2003: Abstract). As in the USA, the prison in England and Wales has become a punitive space for the disproportionate detention of black people in general and black women in particular. In 2001, the incarceration rate for white people was 170 per 100,000 of the population. This compared with 1,140 per 100,000 for black people, 536 per 100,000 for Chinese and other groups, and 166 per 100,000 for South Asians (Home Office, 2003a: 106; 113). At the end of June 2002, 22% of the male population and 29% of the female population came from ethnic minority backgrounds. In addition, foreign nationals made up 11% of the prison population. In terms of drugs, and again running parallel with Sudbury's argument, 28% of sentenced female British nationals were imprisoned for drug offenses. This figure rose to 84% in the case of female foreign nationals (Home Office, 2003b: 114). Once confined, black and other minority groups experience a range of inequalities based on skin color (Commission for Racial Equality, 2003). …