Book Review: Duguid, Can Prisons Work?

Stephen Duguid.
Can Prisons Work? The Prisoner as Object and Subject in Modern Corrections.
University of Toronto Press, 2000, 298 pp.
$CDN 24.95 paper (0-8020-8350-1), $CDN 70.00 cloth (0-8020-4811-0)

Ever since Martinson’s indictment of prison treatment programs, researchers, activists, and thinkers of all kinds have explored the vexing problem of (re)habilitating offenders. Some studies examine how the structure of prisons engenders tense relations between staff and inmates; guiding theories of criminality contribute to negative prison culture, both of which make treatment difficult. Other studies show the small ways that treatment can work, how certain programs can reduce recidivism in particular circumstances. And still others give an historical overview of theories and attitudes about the nature of offending and its treatment. Can Prisons Work? is a compelling contribution to the field insofar as it combines all of these. The book is an eclectic journey into the more fundamental dilemmas-- philosophical, epistemological, and practical—of offender rehabilitation. And while there are oodles of studies that demonstrate how and why rehabilitation is problematic, this book is unique in some ways. First of all, Duguid’s analysis is fairly comprehensive, beginning with a discussion of the puzzle that is the nature of criminal behavior, extending to the logic of prison rehabilitation. Duguid aims to show how prison treatment objectifies inmates in a context wherein offenders’ choices are limited and their subjectivity reduced. The author uses a few case studies of offenders to demonstrate the complexity of life histories, the mire of predicting individual risk for recidivism, and the trouble with assessing how or if treatment “worked” in individual instances.

Duguid lays out the shift between the medical model of rehabilitation, based on notions of illness and pathology, and the later “opportunities model” that envisioned offenders more as rational actors. Clearly, the popularity of various treatment programs vacillates with the prevailing models of the time. Duguid suggests that the currently popular “cognitive skills” model is a modernist project still concerned with predictive models and scientific interventions. The focus on cognition represents a kind of hybrid of the medical model and the opportunities model—in other words, criminality is a bit of nature and a bit of nurture. The reader comes away with a real sense of how this hybrid reflects the lack of clarity in correctional thought as to what could work, and how and why they might. From the case histories of treatment programs, it becomes apparent how we ended up here in the rage that is cognitive skills. What the reader gets is a “history of the present,” as Foucault would deem it; in other words, a descriptive, conceptual analysis of how the past led us to the present.

Most compelling about Duguid’s analysis is his portrait of various programs from the early 1970s to the 1990s: the NewGate programs in the (mostly western) U.S., the University of California at Santa Cruz’s education program at the California Women’s Institution, the Barlinnie Special Unit in Scotland, and the University of Victoria’s prison education program in British Columbia. In selecting these diverse examples across three countries, Duguid demonstrates the consistency of correctional thought and the similarity in its epistemic trajectory in the western world. In various ways, each program considered if and how inmates could benefit from higher education. That there were tensions between correctional personnel and the university interlopers was no surprise. But Duguid reveals the subtext of the resistance of prison personnel to be a fundamental disagreement about the nature of criminality and the wisdom of giving inmates certain skills. For example, the question is: can a humanities education provide habilitation to inmates? And if so, how does it work? Do the skills provided by university education, such as critical thinking and written and verbal competence, offer inmates a glimpse of a different way of communicating? Or do the core texts of a humanities curriculum provide a moral education of sorts? A powerful piece of what Duguid does is to pose these kinds of questions, while demonstrating the various ways that any kind of prison education threatens correctional management. Duguid lays bear the essence of the paradox of corrections-sanctioned rehabilitation; and in doing so, various operating theories about criminality are brought into relief.

Duguid details how the projects worked, and what the tensions and structural constraints were. What comes through loud and clear is the sheer irony of measurement: other than recidivism rates, how would one, indeed how could one, measure benefits of the program? And how would these benefits vary by type of offender? Duguid goes into considerable detail about how the University of Victoria program could indicate and describe success, how this kind of documentation is interpreted and used by correctional administrators, and how they impact and interact with risk assessment tools. What he finds is that success was not predictable in the assumed ways; some offenders fared better post-release than others, in spite of their risk status. Duguid argues that greater levels of engagement in the post-secondary British Columbia program predicted greater degrees of success. He tries to get at how and why the program worked this way and concludes that educational programs (or other kinds of programs) can expect better results if their curricula are somewhat democratic, and treat inmates respectfully as “subjects” rather than objects for derision and/or top-down correction. Typically prison life is so debasing that is difficult for students to incorporate the moral lessons, such as empathy, they’ve learned; experimental programs that allow students to practice these lessons experience more successes. Here Duguid exposes the essential paradox in program treatment: how can we teach notions of justice, fairness and reciprocity in an environment that nurtures none of these?

In the final analysis, Duguid delves into weighty subjects, wondering how transformation can occur within prisons, how radical criminologists should think of the objectification (no matter how positive the effect) that happens in prisons, and how one can reconcile “treatment” with a politics that respects inmates as subjects. The author could have expounded a bit more on the subject/object dichotomy, going into greater discussion of Foucault’s take on this relationship in Discipline and Punish, for example, and in his work on governmentality. However, Duguid utilizes classic texts on prison life, as well as wisdom from authors as diverse as Plato, Lasch, Rousseau, Jefferson, Marx, and, of course, Dostoevsky. He covers a range of empirical subjects; no book can include everything for every reader. Yet, Duguid makes an immensely thoughtful and far-reaching contribution. Along with classics by Garland and Ignatieff, this is a book I wish I had written.

Kathryn J. Fox
Department of Sociology
University of Vermont
Kfox@zoo.uvm.edu

Kathy Fox, associate professor of sociology, received her Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley in 1994. Her research topics have included punk youth, an AIDS prevention organization, and a cognitive therapy program for violent offenders in prison. She is beginning a new project on truancy prevention in schools.



		Canadian Journal of Sociology Online March - April 2002 Stephen Duguid. Can Prisons Work? The Prisoner as Object and Subject in Modern Corrections. University of Toronto Press, 2000, 298 pp. $CDN 24.95 paper (0-8020-8350-1), $CDN 70.00 cloth (0-8020-4811-0) Ever since Martinson’s indictment of prison treatment programs, researchers, activists, and thinkers of all kinds have explored the vexing problem of (re)habilitating offenders. Some studies examine how the structure of prisons engenders tense relations between staff and inmates; guiding theories of criminality contribute to negative prison culture, both of which make treatment difficult. Other studies show the small ways that treatment can work, how certain programs can reduce recidivism in particular circumstances. And still others give an historical overview of theories and attitudes about the nature of offending and its treatment. Can Prisons Work? is a compelling contribution to the field insofar as it combines all of these. The book is an eclectic journey into the more fundamental dilemmas-- philosophical, epistemological, and practical—of offender rehabilitation. And while there are oodles of studies that demonstrate how and why rehabilitation is problematic, this book is unique in some ways. First of all, Duguid’s analysis is fairly comprehensive, beginning with a discussion of the puzzle that is the nature of criminal behavior, extending to the logic of prison rehabilitation. Duguid aims to show how prison treatment objectifies inmates in a context wherein offenders’ choices are limited and their subjectivity reduced. The author uses a few case studies of offenders to demonstrate the complexity of life histories, the mire of predicting individual risk for recidivism, and the trouble with assessing how or if treatment “worked” in individual instances. Duguid lays out the shift between the medical model of rehabilitation, based on notions of illness and pathology, and the later “opportunities model” that envisioned offenders more as rational actors. Clearly, the popularity of various treatment programs vacillates with the prevailing models of the time. Duguid suggests that the currently popular “cognitive skills” model is a modernist project still concerned with predictive models and scientific interventions. The focus on cognition represents a kind of hybrid of the medical model and the opportunities model—in other words, criminality is a bit of nature and a bit of nurture. The reader comes away with a real sense of how this hybrid reflects the lack of clarity in correctional thought as to what could work, and how and why they might. From the case histories of treatment programs, it becomes apparent how we ended up here in the rage that is cognitive skills. What the reader gets is a “history of the present,” as Foucault would deem it; in other words, a descriptive, conceptual analysis of how the past led us to the present. Most compelling about Duguid’s analysis is his portrait of various programs from the early 1970s to the 1990s: the NewGate programs in the (mostly western) U.S., the University of California at Santa Cruz’s education program at the California Women’s Institution, the Barlinnie Special Unit in Scotland, and the University of Victoria’s prison education program in British Columbia. In selecting these diverse examples across three countries, Duguid demonstrates the consistency of correctional thought and the similarity in its epistemic trajectory in the western world. In various ways, each program considered if and how inmates could benefit from higher education. That there were tensions between correctional personnel and the university interlopers was no surprise. But Duguid reveals the subtext of the resistance of prison personnel to be a fundamental disagreement about the nature of criminality and the wisdom of giving inmates certain skills. For example, the question is: can a humanities education provide habilitation to inmates? And if so, how does it work? Do the skills provided by university education, such as critical thinking and written and verbal competence, offer inmates a glimpse of a different way of communicating? Or do the core texts of a humanities curriculum provide a moral education of sorts? A powerful piece of what Duguid does is to pose these kinds of questions, while demonstrating the various ways that any kind of prison education threatens correctional management. Duguid lays bear the essence of the paradox of corrections-sanctioned rehabilitation; and in doing so, various operating theories about criminality are brought into relief. Duguid details how the projects worked, and what the tensions and structural constraints were. What comes through loud and clear is the sheer irony of measurement: other than recidivism rates, how would one, indeed how could one, measure benefits of the program? And how would these benefits vary by type of offender? Duguid goes into considerable detail about how the University of Victoria program could indicate and describe success, how this kind of documentation is interpreted and used by correctional administrators, and how they impact and interact with risk assessment tools. What he finds is that success was not predictable in the assumed ways; some offenders fared better post-release than others, in spite of their risk status. Duguid argues that greater levels of engagement in the post-secondary British Columbia program predicted greater degrees of success. He tries to get at how and why the program worked this way and concludes that educational programs (or other kinds of programs) can expect better results if their curricula are somewhat democratic, and treat inmates respectfully as “subjects” rather than objects for derision and/or top-down correction. Typically prison life is so debasing that is difficult for students to incorporate the moral lessons, such as empathy, they’ve learned; experimental programs that allow students to practice these lessons experience more successes. Here Duguid exposes the essential paradox in program treatment: how can we teach notions of justice, fairness and reciprocity in an environment that nurtures none of these? In the final analysis, Duguid delves into weighty subjects, wondering how transformation can occur within prisons, how radical criminologists should think of the objectification (no matter how positive the effect) that happens in prisons, and how one can reconcile “treatment” with a politics that respects inmates as subjects. The author could have expounded a bit more on the subject/object dichotomy, going into greater discussion of Foucault’s take on this relationship in Discipline and Punish, for example, and in his work on governmentality. However, Duguid utilizes classic texts on prison life, as well as wisdom from authors as diverse as Plato, Lasch, Rousseau, Jefferson, Marx, and, of course, Dostoevsky. He covers a range of empirical subjects; no book can include everything for every reader. Yet, Duguid makes an immensely thoughtful and far-reaching contribution. Along with classics by Garland and Ignatieff, this is a book I wish I had written. Kathryn J. Fox Department of Sociology University of Vermont Kfox@zoo.uvm.edu Kathy Fox, associate professor of sociology, received her Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley in 1994. Her research topics have included punk youth, an AIDS prevention organization, and a cognitive therapy program for violent offenders in prison. She is beginning a new project on truancy prevention in schools. http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/cjscopy/reviews/prisons.html April 2002 © CJS Online