Citation

Gray GC, Salole AT. Br. J. Criminol. 2006; 46(4): 661-679.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Publisher Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/bjc/azi057

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

We begin our ethnographic study of a young-offender facility in Canada by analysing a macro-level theoretical debate that began when Pat O'Malley (1999) critiqued David Garland's (1996) well known British Journal of Criminology article, The Limits of the Sovereign State'. We then use O'Malley's competing New Right Penality' thesis as a theoretical bridge and a starting point for our own theoretical arguments on the role of criminal justice worker discourse in the local culture of punishment. Throughout our ethnography, we demonstrate that in order to fully understand the practice of punishment, one must see how punishment is locally constructed, experienced and interpreted.