Nesta Devine. Draft. Prison education in a ‘modern’ context.
Prison education in a ‘modern’ context.
Nesta Devine
University of Waikato.
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Institute of Education, University of London, 5-8 September 2007
Abstract:
Prison education might be held to represent the limit case of education under a neo-liberal regime, since in this situation, the state is all powerful, and can implement its theories without let or hindrance. In most countries those who are in prison represent, in disproportionate numbers ethnic minorities, the poor, the dispossessed, and the rebellious. These are, in the terminology of the day, those who make, and continue to make ‘the wrong choices’, and governments, apparently, must heed the demand that they must be held ‘accountable’.
However, using a Foucaultian methodology, those who inhabit prisons become the visible targets of laws which are meant to implement the reversed Clausewitz axiom that diplomacy is war by other means. To Foucault law is the continuation of warfare, through peaceful mechanisms which are not the less violent.
I argue that schools are complicit in this characterisation of the unruly: it is by rejecting the visibly insubordinate that schools reassure parents that their classrooms are ‘nice’. In this period, in New Zealand, the state which has picked up most quickly and in its purest form the neo-liberal ethos, schools have expelled students in record numbers, and prison musters have risen at unprecedented rates.
In this context, education is seen as an externality, that is, as a private investment, and is no longer seen as a means of civilising, extending or improving the person. Consequently, prison education has been reduced from a general commitment to provide benefits to the prison inmate to those programmes which will (at least in theory) keep society ‘safe’.
The abandonment of education in the prison context is of both theoretical and practical interest from the educational point of view. If education has any role other than that presupposed by Human Capital Theory, then prisons provide a theoretical context in which to demarcate such a role.
Modernity in context of prisons and prison education
I was struck in reading the policy documents, particularly speeches by the Minister of Corrections, by the use of the word ‘modern’. In my investigation of prison education I had found a number of things to disturb me, and started to question, to what extent the decline in prison education in New Zealand could be attributed to the understandings which are implicit in the term ‘modern’ and ‘modernization’.
Let me say at the outset that I am not making any assumption that the prison systems of New Zealand and Britain have more in common than their common history. New Zealand is increasingly influenced by the United States, both in public passions and in organisational structures. I suspect that this means that the Calvinism of the British 17th century simply comes back to bite us in unexpected ways, and that the humanitarianism of the British nineteenth century is bypassed, but this would be a hard hypothesis to engage, and I do not propose to try it.
I need to consider two major matters here: the meanings of the term modernization, and the characteristics of prisons and prison education in New Zealand, as I try to establish the links between modernization and prison education.
Modernity.
Modernity, to most people is not a problematic term – at least not in the way that ‘post-modernity’ is. It is generally assumed to have meaning, and that the general meaning is not a great deal different to the technical historical or philosophical one, although historians do distinguish between different periods of an era known as ‘the modern period’. So it makes sense, in a historical context to talk about the ‘early modern ‘period, and ‘late modernity’. In this context, ‘modernity’ seems to be a very innocent means of naming periods of time.
In its philosophical context, ‘modern’ is contrasted with ‘mediaeval’, and the great exponents, like Kant, are symbolic of the abandonment of religion as the primal source and purpose of philosophical thinking. . None of these purely temporal definitions of ‘modern’ seems quite to capture the essence of the term ‘modernity’ as it is used in policy discourses. Here, ‘modernity’ is variously understood as being what is up to date, what is opposed to the old-fashioned, what is solidly of the minute, but not, in general avant-garde or ‘risky’, a kind of middle of the road contemporary acceptableness.
‘Modern’ can mean simply ‘modish’, that which is up-to-date, of the present time, contemporary. But even in art, architecture and interior design, the term ‘contemporary’ is now preferred for such purposes, and the ‘modern’ is understood to reflect design of a previous period. ‘Modern’ is almost synonymous with ‘retro’ as representing for instance Swedish design of the 1950s and 60s, the use of orange and large loud patterns. The word contains a minefield of historical, artistic and philosophic confusion. But it continues to crop up in official statements associated with prisons, as in the Minister of Corrections claim that now that the modernisation of the prisons, i.e. the building programme, was nearly complete, the Service could turn its attention to other matters (Straight Thinking is not enough, O’Connor. ). In another instance of the use of the word ‘modern’ a regional manager of the prison service said:
(The visit of the 2003 Prison Study Conference is )
a great opportunity to showcase the work of the Public Prisons
Service, modern offender management and how it¹s progressing in the 21st century.(Department of Corrections press release, 16 October, 2003)
The insistence on ‘21st century’ drives home the notion here that ‘modern’ is up to date, and links this up-to-dateness with the idea, in itself, irreducibly modern, that up-to-dateness is logically associated with ‘progressing’ .
By the modern I understand, with Derrida and Foucault, those forms of thinking which are intrinsically a reaction against the thought of mediaeval philosophy and practices of feudal and Church government. Assuming, very crudely, that the modern period begins, philosophically with Kant, and his attempt to instate reason for religion, man for God, universal ethics for Church fiats and so on, I understand modern ways of thinking as being ones which rely on reason and logic, on universalist premises, and on the prioritisation of the interests of ‘man’ over those of any religious or superstitious source of obligation.
Philosophies or points of view which would qualify under these terms would include: liberalism, Marxism, neo-liberalism. I would add, in case anyone should think I am about to take refuge in a Third way or some such that I categorise such forms of thinking as simply neo-liberalism with a kinder face, or woollier logic.
The common characteristic of these points of view is their adherence to ‘truth’, and the conviction that truth is only to be found in their ways of seeing the world. Consequent upon knowing the ‘truth’ is the ability to determine that other people don’t know it, or that, knowing it, they do not respect it. Conviction that one knows the truth drives people to extreme positions, as we see both in the actions of September 11 2003 and in the response to those actions. When President Bush said ‘if you are not for us you are against us’, he put forward an essentially modern dualism: there is no room for negotiation or neutrality in this form of thought.
In his Conversations with Marxists Michel Foucault claimed that the gulag was not an accidental event in the history of Marxist forms of governance, but intrinsic to a manner of thinking which by knowing the truth must exclude those who do not share or at least acquiesce in that truth. I think one could make similar claims in relation to liberalism and the Terror of the French revolution, and to new forms of liberalism, or neo-liberalism, and Guantanamo Bay. You see I get closer to prisons here. In these instances we are talking clearly about political imprisonment, despite the best efforts of politicians to stigmatize their prisoners as criminals.
My argument is that ‘modernity’ is both a rejection of the oldfashioned in the sense of what has been previously accepted within a community, and, in the context of western democracies it is quite specifically an acceptance of currently modish neo-liberal forms of thought: that is to say that it is a rejection both of ‘conservative’ and ‘socialist’, ‘social welfare’ or ‘liberal’ forms of thought and conduct in political affairs. In these terms it represents not just physical conquest of a people by another, as in the New Zealand wars of the 1860s, but the intellectual conquest of a group of ideas by another: a true revolution as opposed to a coup which simply substitutes new names in the same mode of government.
Evidence-based research and ‘Nothing Works’.
Along with the emphasis on ‘truth’ in modernity is a commitment to exploring or discovering truth by rational and scientific means. Interestingly, ‘scientific’ has come to mean ‘empirical’: and ‘empirical’ to imply ‘evidence’. The desire for ‘evidence-based’ research, in education as elsewhere, implies a lack of confidence in forms of rationality which are not based on experimental and empirical science. Gert Biesta claims that the foundational form of research accepted in this view is the medical double-blind experiment (Biesta 2007). This provides a very high bar for any form of research which attempts to challenge accepted views, since it is almost impossible to create laboratory conditions which would ‘prove’ them, and it serves to reinforce existing paradigms, since they are most likely to be able to secure the funding needed to conduct research. The history of ‘Nothing Works’ amounts to a great cautionary tale in evidence-based research:
This story is very familiar in prison studies, I am sure, but is less well known in Education, where it should have some significant reverberations.
The paper was ‘The Effectiveness of Correctional Treatment: A Survey of Treatment Evaluation Studies’ (1974) by R. Martinson. In this meta-analytic paper which looked at prison education and rehabilitation programmes, Martinson claimed that in terms of rehabilitation, nothing worked. There were problems with the paper itself – the author had joined the research team late, published peremptorily without the consent of his colleagues, and later withdrew much of his work. He used very raw measures – any form of later conviction, even for a traffic offence was proof that rehabilitation had not worked, and the paper did not identify or discriminate between programmes with different aims. Some educational programmes aim to make prisoners literate for example, and might well achieve that aim without effecting recidivism rates. Sarre makes the point that prisons themselves induce recidivism, the best that can be hoped of educational or rehabilitative programmes is that they may inhibit this effect. And indeed this was the major point that Martinson wanted to make: "The long history of 'prison reform' is over," he wrote. "On the whole, the prisons have played out their allotted role. They cannot be reformed and must be gradually torn down.” (Milller 1989).
However, he was not read in such a way. Journalists and others took up Martinson’s work with enthusiasm, despite his own recantation and later suicide. According to Miller, those on the right thought Martinson supported their views that rehabilitation and education for prison inmates was a waste of public money, and those on the left thought that
rehabilitation should be removed as part of sentencing, because the requirement for a change in attitude as prerequisite for release was too vague. (Miller, 1989)
According to Miller, evidence which is contrary to ‘Nothing Works’ has been largely disregarded. However, I found that the research unit of the Dept of Corrections was, if not exactly sanguine, not quite so cavalier.
The department's medium term strategy is to develop a suite of core research based rehabilitative programmes to address the underlying causes of offending. There is strong international evidence that well developed and well-run programmes can reduce re-offending levels. But the reduction is unlikely to average more than 13%, at best. (Corrections briefing to incoming Minister, 1999)
The logical conclusion seems to be that it is better to avoid imprisonment, as Martinson, argued, but the use of inadequate evidence-based research as basis for modern prison practices seems highly suspect.
War by other means.
In ‘Two lectures’ (Foucault 1972), Foucault played with von Clausewitz’ axiom, that war is diplomacy by other means. He turns this around: not only is diplomacy war by other means in regards to the external relations of countries with each other, that is to say, the more powerful exert their influence on the less powerful, whether arms are used or not, but that the same is true within countries: the law, the codification of diplomacy represents the continued assault by conquering nations on the conquered. In this case it is not only the bodies of the conquered which must remain in submission, but their values and customs as well. The Norman invasion of Britain is a prime example: What is seen now as natural, as according to law, still follows Norman principles regarding property, personal and public relationships, even to a certain degree language.
In New Zealand clearly the same applies. Whether one regards the conquest of New Zealand as diplomatic, military or simply duplicitous, there can be no doubt that the legal system is substantially that of the conquering people, the British. The same applies to Australia and even South Africa. Despite the best of intentions, indigenous beliefs and practices are incorporated unwillingly, slowly, piecemeal and in very limited forms, and usually only where they do not compromise the essential qualities of European law, concerning property rights and the right to judge and imprison. Even where law is established precisely to recognise and safeguard indigenous rights, those rights are so re interpreted in order to fit them into existing understandings of law, that they contort indigenous understandings of themselves, their relation to land and their own history (Graham, 2007, unpubl thesis).