The Contentious Prison: From Rehabilitation to Incapacitation in New South Wales and Pennsylvania, 1965-1990.

Abstract

This dissertation explores the re-emergence of imprisonment as a major social policy in New South Wales, Australia and Pennsylvania, USA during the late twentieth-century. It focuses on three themes: (1) the increasing visibility of prisons; (2) transnational relationships in penal reform; and (3) the flow of penal knowledge. The introduction of rehabilitation after World War II proved to be very contentious with prison staff and the broader public and they encouraged greater criticism from prisoners. These reforms coincided with the formation of a transnational, prisoners’ rights movement, which attempted to redefine the status of confined people. Penal authorities struggled to explain the efficacy of their policies and increases in crime and prison unrest. These problems engulfed the penal system in both states in controversy and created a vacuum of control within prisons. Staff resorted to more control strategies, like segregation and officials imported practices, like classification, from other jurisdictions, and build new prisons. By the 1990s, prison populations in both states grew rapidly, but there was little agreement on what prisons should do other than incapacitate people.