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Between permissiveness and control: Community treatment and penal supervision

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  1. Similar proposals have been put forward, and more readily accepted, in relation to other ‘problem persons’. In particular, mental health reformers have long argued that the many mental patients do not require incarceration in asylums and mental hospitals, but can be better treated in the community — see M. Miller,Evaluating Community Treatment Programs (Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1977), and the more sceptical accounts of A. Scull,Decarceration: Community Treatment and the Deviant (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1977), and S. Cohen,Visions of Social Control (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985).

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  4. Quoted inReport of the Home Office Working Party on Habitual Drunken Offenders (London: M.H.M.S.O., 1971), para. 6.7.

  5. Report,supra n.5, at paras. 6.8–6.12.

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  8. Ibid..

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  14. Report of the Home Office,supra n.5 at para. 5.13.

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  20. Ibid., ch.2.

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  22. S. Moody,Drunken Offenders in Scotland (Scottish Office, 1979), 28.

  23. Cook,supra n.13.

  24. Cook,supra n.4, at 32. See R. Light, “Policing Skid Row: Criminal Justice and the Habitual Drunkard”,Policing 2/2 (1986), 151–59 for a more complete account of the origins and development of the term ‘skid row’.

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  29. Ibid. at para. 7.13.

  30. Ibid. at paras. 7.40–7.47.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Report of the Home Office,supra n.5, ch.10. This criticism was also targeted at ‘staff-directed’ hostels for homeless alcoholics; the paternalism of these hostels was seen as an obstacle to therapy.

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  36. Ibid., ch.10.

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  42. For a more comprehensive discussion of the social structure of the rehabilitation hostel, see Johnstone,supra n.11 at 160–172. A number of experimental hostels were established, such as Rathcoole House in May 1966. For accounts of its regime see B. Pollak, “Rathcoole House — An Experiment in Rehabilitation”, in Cook et al,supra n.7, at 109–114, and Cook,supra n.42, andsupra n.4, at 15–28. A second hostel, ‘Lynette Avenue’, was opened in 1968. Hostels for habitual drunkards are discussed, more generally, in the report of the Home Office Working Party, chs. 10 & 11.

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  48. Ibid. at 230. Cook,supra n.4, at 23, cites one resident of Rathcoole House as remarking: “I came here for sobriety not all this responsibility.”

  49. Report of the Home Office,supra n.5, at ch. 8.

  50. Ibid. at para. 11.26.

  51. Ibid. at para. 11.27.

  52. The reasons for the adoption of this rule are explained by Cook,supra n.42, andsupra n.4, at 17–20.

  53. Report of the Home Office,supra n.5, at 11.27.

  54. Ibid., ch.8.

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  56. Ibid. at 24.

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  62. Ibid., ch.14. See also Cook,supra n.4.

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  64. Cf. D. Garland, “Review Essay: Foucault's Discipline and Punish: An Exposition and Critique”, 4American Bar Foundation Research Journal (1986), 847–880.

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  1. Law School, University of Hull, HU6 7RX, Hull, England

    Gerry Johnstone (Lecturer in Law)

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I would like to thank David Garland for his comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

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Johnstone, G. Between permissiveness and control: Community treatment and penal supervision. Law Critique 2, 37–61 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01128437

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