Abstract
Rob Canton’s most recent book, simply entitled ‘Punishment’, explores familiar territory associated with the aims and ethics of punishment, its relationship to social order and how it is organised within penal systems. But Canton also weaves into his analysis exploration of why punishment matters, of the crucial (and often neglected) role played by emotions, of punishment’s politicisation and its legitimacy and of the relationship between what it promises in theory and what it delivers in practice. Somehow, he manages this while delivering a highly engaging, relatively short and punchy book (as we have come to expect of Routledge’s ‘Key Ideas in Criminology’ series). The book runs to just 206 pages; the last 40 of these detail the references on which Canton’s erudite and compelling analysis is built.
For those not already familiar with Rob Canton’s previous work, his writing style is crisp and clear; he advances his arguments step-by-careful-step, always taking care to bring the reader with him. As is necessary in a book of this nature (and for this series), the priority is to map the field and help the reader make interesting connections – as well as to direct them to other sources (which is why the assiduous referencing is so important and valuable), rather to dwell at length on detail. Having used the book in my own teaching last year (to a class of 35 postgraduate students from 4 continents and 11 countries), I know that both teachers and students will value these qualities highly.
Between the book’s relatively brief introduction and conclusion, we find five substantive chapters, on the meanings of punishment, theories of punishment, the institutions and practices of punishment, being punished and the ends of punishment. The first chapter considers definitions of punishment and how and why they are contested, as well as focusing on punishment’s meaning and on how it degrades (or ‘lowers’) those punished. In Chapter 2, Canton goes on to introduce a range of theories of punishment; in other words, theories that try to explain why punishment is as it is. As well as looking at familiar sociological accounts of punishment’s evolution as a social institution, and at how it therefore differs in different times and places, he pays particular heed to the role of attitudes and emotions in framing both punishment itself and penal politics. Here, he discusses anger, fear and disgust, but also, importantly, sadness, care and compassion. Canton makes a compelling case for analysing the role of these powerful emotions in punishment’s legitimation and de-legitimation.
In Chapter 3, the analysis moves on to considering institutions and practices of punishment. For once in a penology book, the account offered is not overly centred on the prison. Readers of this journal will, I am sure, be delighted to see carefully attention being paid to community sanctions and measures, to electronic monitoring and to financial penalties. Canton stresses that all of these forms of punishment matter; as does how they are represented to and perceived in wider society.
Chapter 4, however, focuses on a different constituency, considering how punishment is experienced by those subject to it and implemented by those practising it, noting that their ‘penal subjectivities’ are of obvious important if we are at all concerned with what punishment communicates and/or fails to communicate. Once again, Canton attends not just to the perspectives and subjectivities of prisoners and prison staff but also to those of people subject to community sanctions and measures and to electronic monitoring, and of practitioners in these contexts. He concludes that these experiences are highly variegated. Though they always involve pain and suffering of one sort or another, this does not mean that they cannot and do not sometimes also produce benefits. The extent to which punishment hurts and/or helps, he notes, is affected not just by the shifting currents of penal policy but also by the dispositions, attitudes and behaviours of practitioners which are themselves situated within and shaped by changing social, legal and organisational contexts.
The last of the substantive chapters – Chapter 5 – considers ‘the ends of punishment’. The chapter title is a deliberate play on the double-meaning of ‘ends’, which can refer to the termination of a process but also to the purposes we pursue. Thus, Canton explores processes of leaving prison, of resettlement and reentry, of desistance and/or reoffending, before considering the conclusion of punishment and, crucially, the possibility of and conditions for reconciliation between the punished person and their society.
The book’s brief conclusion reaches further. Recognising the glaring gaps between how punishment is justified in theory and how it operates in practice, he engages with debates about abolitionism and ultimately asks whether and under what conditions a society has the right to impose punishment, particularly on some of its most disadvantaged members. As he writes in the final sentence, ‘Punishment promises to advance… [all sorts of]… social goods and, in its most usual forms in Western societies, accomplishes none of them’ (p164).
In sum, this is a different kind of book about punishment – and an exceptionally important contribution to our field. Its originality and significance lie in the skilful and ever-thoughtful ways in which Canton weaves insights from different disciplines and perspectives, bringing them into dialogue and using them to clarify, illuminate and contest each other’s claims. For anyone who wants to understand punishment better and to engage in the more challenging task of imagining a better path to reconciliation, safety and human flourishing, this book will be an invaluable resource.