"Governmentality" and governing corrections

do senior managers resist?

Alison Liebling

pp. 220-245

in: Leonidas K. Cheliotis (ed), Roots, rites and sites of resistance, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Abstract

Several criminologists have observed that the art of regulating and controlling penal practices from above has been transformed. There are new structures of power, and new rationalities, alliances and values, which change how punishment works, how it is experienced and how it is organized. New practices and programmes are introduced continually, all of which incorporate the discourse of success and failure. They specify the achievement of very specific goals (O"Malley, 1996: 196), some of which seem impossible for criminal justice agencies to realize. Their aspired accomplishment forms part of the political character of late-modern penality. New devices intended to give effect to this form of rule include performance measurement and testing, market testing and privatization, and service-level agreements. Such techniques represent a contractual form of management which Shearing and Sampson refer to as "nodal" and "contractual governance", respectively.