Vol. 6, No. 3 (March,1996) pp. 62-64
PUNISHMENT AND SOCIAL CONTROL: ESSAYS IN HONOR OF SHELDON L.
MESSINGER by Thomas G. Blomberg and Stanley Cohen (Editors) New
York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995. 318 pp. Cloth $46.95 (text
adoption price on ten or more copies: $27.95)
Reviewed by Todd R. Clear, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers
University
This FESTSCHRIFT is a collection of sixteen original essays
published to mark the retirement of Sheldon L. Messinger. The
topics covered are central to the study of formal social control
theory and practice; the authors include some of the foremost
contemporary critics of social control, writing on subjects for
which they are well known.
That this is an impressive volume is due in large part to the
stature of the contributors and the importance of their chosen
topics. Among the writers and their topics are David Rothman on
the modern history of justice reform, Gresham Sykes on
imprisonment, Egon Bittner on policing, David Garland on penal
postmodernism, David Matza on drug policy, Richard Berk and
Richard Freeman on the measurement of crime, and Alfred Blumstein
on punishment trends. The other contributors are as able and
well-known. The result is a valuable and original set of essays
that will be enjoyed by student and established scholar alike.
The versatility of this collection will recommend it as a
supplemental text to undergraduate classes on various topics of
crime control. The sophistication of many of the papers means the
book will also serve the well as a graduate-level text. It is
unusual to find a book with such broad usefulness, but this
anthology accomplishes the difficult trifecta of coverage,
creativity, and depth.
Some of the selections are closely related to previously
published work. Gary T. Marx's assessment of undercover policing,
Andrew von Hirsch's commentary on the future of proportionate
sentencing, Alfred Blumstein's revisit to the stability of
punishment hypothesis, and Jonathon Simon and Malcolm Feeley's
critique of the new penology fit into this group. Each is an
extension of previous work, offering palatable refinements to
well-developed arguments. Scholars will find these selections
reliable extensions, while students will be stimulated to ponder
more thoroughly the contributions they augment.
In a volume of valuable essays, three stand out as remarkable,
for quite different reasons: Garland's commentary on
postmodernism, Berk and Freedman's exposition on crime
measurement, and Gilbert Geis's account of the demise of the
School of Criminology at Berkeley.
Garland writes with his usual easy confidence, putting into
theoretically accessible order the hodge-podge of trends and
programs that has been our modern penal experience. He links
together with a critical eye the managerial frame of reference of
correctional administration, the risk-management technologies of
line practice, and the politicization of penal policy to argue
for a POSTMODERN view of penality. He then criticizes the
accuracy of this conclusion. One detects a hint of whimsical
romanticism about the good old days of "rehabilitation"
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MODERNISM, a subtext that is not only curious, given his earlier
writing, but also a bit annoying. (Compare it to Pat Carlen's
complaint immediately following that penal policy about women
uses repressive ideologies of "rehabilitation" to
reconstruct the women into models acceptable to male hegemony.)
Yet the treatise holds together, placing today's penal knowledge
into a broader theoretical paradigm dominant in the social
sciences and philosophy.
Berk and Freedman's essay on the statistical assumptions
underlying the measurement of crime is a delightful exposition on
selected analytic problems in the mathematics of crime. The paper
discusses various statistical concerns: assumptions about the
nature of the sampling population, spatial interdependence,
dependence in sampling probabilities, correlated error terms, and
aggregation biases. They are better at pointing out the problems
than at suggesting solutions, but in a volume dedicated to
ethereal considerations of social theory, this frank, grounded
side-trip into the numerology of quantitative crime research is
refreshing and noteworthy.
Geis's chronology of the demise of the Criminology School at
Berkeley is at once gripping story-telling and shocking stuff. He
describes the way the political activity of faculty at Berkeley
became linked to the electoral politics in California and led
eventually to the dismantlement of the School. By naming names,
he gives substance to a distressing violation of academic
freedom. The story -- which he admits may be disputed in some of
its particulars by persons named in his story -- puts us all on
notice as to the ease with which circumstances can conspire to
overcome precious freedoms of the academy. Scholars can use being
reminded of this fact, and students will be the wiser for knowing
the tale.
What binds this varied collection together is its thematic
interest in social control contradictions: policies devised as
ways to protect the rights of individuals or communities result
in their further subservience to the state; new programs
conceived as alternatives to formal social control succeed in
strengthening the apparatus of control; interventions developed
to prevent crime become institutionalized despite their proven
insignificance in this regard; crime measures designed to inform
us inevitably reinforce biased understandings of crime and social
control; the exercise of freedom contains the kernels of its own
demise.
We are reminded that the study of social control systems is
largely a meditation on the socio-political functions of
contradiction. This is an important, enduring lesson, one ably
brought to bear by these worthy advocates and scientists.
My only quibble is a nagging concern about the audience of such a
volume. In the advertising notes, Professor Emeritus James Short
(current President of the American Society of Criminology) says
the book should be on the bookshelf of every politician and
indeed every citizen. I am left to wonder, "Why?" For
one thing, the language in most of the selections is technical,
jargonistic, or both, with special usages of ordinary terms such
as "modern" or "narrative," and the recurrent
reliance on in-group terms such as
Page 64 follows:
"representation, "penality," and
"discourse." Our penchant to speak in tongues to one
another tends to create a side-show to the main event going on
around us, and it ensures that any lessons we believe we may have
to impart will remain closely guarded, as though a type of
inviolable wealth to be hoarded.
It is also convenient. The fact that our unremitting criticism of
the actions of the world can never make it into the action and
language of the world protects us from accountability. Social
control becomes something "they" do and "we"
remark upon. So as much as I liked this volume, I am also tempted
to wonder why it was necessary and whom it helped.
Aside from the fact that Sheldon L. Messinger deserves so richly
these accolades.
Copyright 1996