Constructing the Durable Penal Agent: Tracing the Development of Habitus Within English Probation Officers and Scottish Criminal Justice Social Workers: Table 1
Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: In contrast to prison personnel, practice cultures of penal agents charged with delivering ‘community punishment’ are surprisingly under-researched. Recent evidence from Scotland and England suggests that community-based penal agents demonstrate strong capacities for resistance against state-level punitive discourse. This indicates that despite several turns in penal policy, successive UK Governments have failed to produce tougher systems of community punishment as intended. By deploying Bourdieu’s conceptual tools of habitus and field, and referring to evidence from empirical studies, this article will attempt to show that penal agents possess durable and deeply embedded dispositions that not only protect them from punitive field conditions, but also guide and underpin their everyday practice with offenders. By doing so, this article offers a conceptual starting point for an emerging sociology of community punishment.
DOI: 10.1093/bjc/azv075
Author: Scott Grant
Institutions: University of Dundee, Glasgow Caledonian University
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2307543073