NEWBURN Atlantic Crossings 'Policy Transfer' and Crime Control in the USA and Britain

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2002 4: 165Punishment & SocietyTim Newburn

Atlantic crossings : 'Policy transfer' and crime control in the USA and Britain

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Atlantic crossings

Policy transfer and crime control in theUSA and Britain

TIM N EWBURN

Goldsm iths C ollege, U niversity of Lond on, U K

Abstract

It is increasingly recognized that factors beyond the nation state are influencing and

shaping domestic crime control policies. Much discussion takes place under the general

rubric of globalization. This article looks at the more specific issue of policy transfer:

the way in wh ich ideas, ideologies, practices and policies are transpor ted from one juris-

diction to anoth er. M ore particularly, th e focus here is upon the recent influence of the

United States on areas of crime control policy and rhetoric in the United Kingdom.The article explores some of the apparent areas of influence and outlines a framework

within which a substantive account of policy transfer in t he crime con trol arena might

be developed.

Key Words

Britain comparative penal policy policy transfer Un ited States

The United States has given birth to most of our centurys dreams, and to a good many of its

nightm ares. N o other coun try h as created such a potent vision o f itself, and exported that vision

so successfully to the rest of the world. Skyscrapers and freeways, Buicks and blue jeans, film

stars and gangsters, Disneyland and Las Vegas have together stamped the image of America

onto the maps of our imaginations. (J.G. Ballard, 1994: introduction)

INTRODUCTION

The focus of this article is on what some British political scientists are increasingly

coming to refer to as policy transfer (see, for example, Dolowitz et al., 2000). The

term comes from th e recognition that over the past two decades it appears that dom es-tic social policy has more and more involved the importation of ideas from abroad,

particularly from the United States. Of course, policy transfer is only one way of under-

standing the movement of political ideas and policies. Moreover, the movement of

policies between societies is not a new development, nor does it occur in one direction

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only. T hu s, Rodgers (1998) shows in great detail how the classic era in American social

politics before the Second World War, an era characterized by huge developments in

urban plann ing, rural regeneration, t he design and organization of pu blic hou sing and

social insurance, was profoundly influenced by models and experiments derived from

Europe.Nonetheless, it seems clear that the United States has been either the direct source

of, or at least the inspiration for, a n um ber of th e policy developm ents in Britain over

the past 20 years. Indeed, the list is long, and includes: welfare to work; the intro-

duction of the intern al market in t he health service (O N eill, 2000); the Ch ild Support

Agency (Dolowitz, 2000c); the adoption of Sure Start and related early intervention

models; and reforms to both furt her and higher edu cation (H ulme, 2000). My concern

here is with the hitherto largely ignored area of policy transfer in the area of crime

control (though see Wacquant, 1999c; Nellis, 2000). More particularly, my focus is

on transfer between th e United States and th e UK and, primarily though by nomeans exclusively, policy transfer un der N ew Labou r.1 This is not to imply that

these are the on ly intern ational influen ces on British crim e cont rol policy; clearly, the

recent (re)-emergence of restorative justice init iatives in a number of areas has influ-

ences from Australia, N ew Zealand an d contin ental Europ e amon g oth ers (Braithwaite,

2000).

The specific literature on policy transfer has developed within a broader field

concerned with the growing impact of transnational or global forces upon domestic

policy. This has been linked to a nu mber of factors, includ ing an increasingly globalized

world economic system, rapid developments in communications technology and the

growing influence of supra-national institutions such as the European Un ion (D olowitz,

2000a). As a consequence, there has been a burgeoning interest within the fields of

comparative politics and international relations in the idea of policy transfer between

different jurisdictions (Stone, 1999; Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000). There is now a

substantial literature which examines various related but distinct concepts, including

lesson-drawing (Rose, 1993), policy convergence (Bennett, 1991), and policy

diffusion (Eyeston e, 1977). H ere the term policy transfer is defined generally as a

process in which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions

etc. in one time and/or place is used in the development of policies, administrative

arrangements and institutions in another time and/or place (Dolowitz and Marsh,1996: 344).

The American historian Denis Rothman remarked relatively recently that the least

cont roversial observation about American criminal justice today is th at it is remarkably

ineffective, absurdly expensive, grossly inhumane, and riddled with discrimination

(1995: 29). H ad he been an observer from the U K, however, he m ight have added to

this list, with a due sense of irony, that despite its alleged faults American criminal justice

also appears to be enormously politically attractive. Thus, paradoxically, despite the

highest incarceration rate in the World, together with levels of violent crime that dwarf

those of the UK, somehow British politicians find Made in the USA (Wacquant,1999b) crime control policies strangely seductive. It is this apparent paradox that I

explore here, examining some of the reasons that might explain it, finishing with a few

observations on where this leaves the UK.

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US CRIME CONT ROL POLICY: OV ERACT IV E, OV ERGROWN A ND

OV ER H ERE?

What does policy transfer from the USA amount to? There is not the space here to

explore in detail all the aspects of imp orted crime control in the UK. C onsequently, what

I set ou t below are som e of the better-known ideas and policies that appear to h ave clearassociations with related developments and changes in the United States.2

Zero tolerance

O f all the imp orts it is perhaps zero tolerance that is the best known. In th e UK,

despite the use of the phrase in the 1980s as part of a Scottish domestic violence

campaign (Mackay, 1996), the term is now most closely associated with the policing of

New York City. In fact, in the USA the term has more frequently been used in connec-

tion with anti-drugs policies than it has with policing.3 The very significant drops in

crime, especially violent crime and hom icide, in N ew York C ity in the early 199 0s cameto be associated with changed policing practices, largely as a result of some very success-

ful image management by the M ayor and the then C ommissioner of Police. Influ enced

by James Q . W ilson and George Kellings (1982) Broken W indows metaphor, the

N YPD un der Bill Bratton (and, althou gh less celebratedly, un der h is successor H oward

Safir) pursued a vigorous campaign against both crime and disorder. Though the

changes wrought in the NYPD went much further and deeper than this (Silverman,

1999) it was the relatively simple message of cracking down on crime that crossed the

Atlantic. As such, it is therefore perhaps not surprising that it has been the rhetoric of

zero tolerance that has been more conspicuous in the UK than the nuts and bolts of

changed policing styles and strategies.

Within mainstream policing in the UK there have been some limited experiments

with so-called zero t olerance policing. T he M etropolitan Police in Kin gs Cross under-

took a vigorous, and they allege, successful campaign to clean up the area by focusing

as much on minor infractions and in civilities as on major crimes. Th e only major explicit

attem pt to in trod uce a form of zero tolerance policing was th at in H artlepool in th e

north-east of England under the guidance of Detective Superintendent Ray Mallon.

Mallon is one of the few British police officers of any seniority to have embraced the

idea of zero tolerance. According to him , what zero tolerance meant in H artlepool was

that th e police would return peace to the streets by con trolling min or situations in theinterest of the decent and respectable citizen (Dennis and Mallon, 1997: 65).

Anoth er police operation associated with th e idea of zero tolerance O peration Spot -

light in Glasgow m assively increased arrests for drunkenness and public order offences

in an at tempt to redu ce late night disorder problems. H owever, as so many oth ers have

sought to do, Strathclyde Police have been keen to dissociate themselves from the term

zero to lerance despite the keenn ess of oth ers to at tach t he label to th eir activities (O rr,

1997 ). W hat Spotlight shared with t he N YPD was an explicit attachment to the Wilson

and Kelling thesis. Indeed, it is an element of this thesis the notion that in order

successfully to impact on serious crime it is important to target and prioritize actionagainst low-level disorder that has had the greater impact on recent crime control

policy in England and Wales. This is most visible in both the title and the contents of

the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act.

NEWBURN A tlantic crossings

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The Act makes far-reaching changes to the youth justice system, reinforces the

managerialism already impacting heavily on criminal justice and also, via the introduc-

tion of a number of new orders, focuses heavily on disorderly conduct. Key among these

orders all of which were informed by developments in the USA were the parenting

order, child safety orders and the ant i-social behaviour order. Finally, and most directlymodelled on American criminal justice, the Act introduced child curfew orders.

Curfews

Curfews, though they had a fairly long history in the United States came back into

popularity there during the 1980s and early 1990s. By the mid-1990s almost three-

quarters of major US cities had some form of juvenile curfew in operation. In the main

such curfews apply to th ose under 17 and ru n from d usk to dawn. Th e int roduction o f

curfews in the UK had been foreshadowed by proposals in the consultation paper,

Tacklin g yout h crim e (H ome O ffice, 1997b) and the White Paper,N o m ore excuses (HomeO ffice, 1997a). T he former described the prob lem th us: un supervised children gathered

in public places can cause real alarm and misery to local communities and can encour-

age one another into anti-social and criminal habits (1997b: para. 114).

In the UK, the new powers to introduce curfews, exclusion zones and other restric-

tions were described by a H om e O ffice spokesperson as giving th e concept of zero

tolerance teeth (quoted in Muncie, 1999: 238). Perhaps not surprisingly therefore, it

was Strathclyde Police that was among the first to experiment with such an idea in the

UK. The Crime and Disorder Act provides a power which enables local authorities to

impose short-term curfews for children under the age of 10. Such a curfew will impose

a ban on children of particular ages being in a public place within the specified area

covered by the scheme, for all or part of the period between 9pm and 6am.

T hree strikes

O f all the recent p ieces of crimin al justice legislation, th e one which perh aps appears

to be most closely modelled on US developments is the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997

and, in particular, those parts which introduce mandatory minimum sentences and a

variant on three strikes and youre out. Three strikes was first incorporated in

legislation in California (Shichor and Sechrest, 1996), subsequently endorsed by

President Clinton in his 1994 State of the Union Address (Surette, 1996) and eventu-ally incorporated into the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act 1994

(W indlesham , 1998). Between 1993 and 1 995 , 24 states added th ree strikes legislation

to already existing laws that enhanced sentencing for repeat offenders. In fact, though

coming und er th is th ree strikes rubric, such laws vary significantly (C lark et al., 199 7)

in terms of:

(1) how a strike zone is defined: the sale of dru gs (Ind iana), carjacking (New Jersey)

and any class A, B or C felony (North Dakota) for example;

(2) how man y strikes are required to be out: two (California, Mon tana and N orthDakota), three (Florida, Nevada, New Jersey) and four (Louisiana and Maryland);

and

(3) what it means to be out: mandatory life in prison and no parole (Montana),

enhanced sentence of up to 25 years (Pennsylvania) and five years to life (Utah).


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In one sense then, rather like zero tolerance, the label three strikes conceals consider-

able complexity. Like all such labels, its apparent simplicity is no doubt part of its

attraction . N onetheless, what the statutes share is considerably increased chances of, and

periods of, incarceration for people convicted of specific repeat offences, together with

reduced discretion for sentencers. Such characteristics chimed well with developmentsacross the Atlantic.

In the UK, in the early 1990s, there was a marked move away from the just deserts-

influenced Criminal Justice Act 1991, towards increasingly populist punitive policies

(Bottom s, 1995 ), and increasing criticism of th e alleged leniency of judges and magis-

trates. By 1995 , th e H om e Secretary, M ichael H oward, was prom oting three sets of

changes apparently modelled (in part) on US policy. First, there was increased honesty

in sentencing (no more half-time sentences for full-time crimes). Second, mandatory

minim um sent ences (if you dont want to d o the time, dont do th e crime). Th ird, th ere

was a variant on three strikes (anyone convicted for a second time of a serious violentor sexual offence shou ld receive an automatic sent ence of life imp risonment).

The Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 introduced three sets of three strikes mandatory

sent ences. It provided for an automatic life sent ence for a second serious sexual or violent

offence, a minimum seven-year prison sentence for third-time trafficking in class A

drugs and a minimu m three-year sentence for third-time d omestic burglary. The m anda-

tory senten ces for sexual and violent crim es, and for dru g trafficking were implemented

fairly soon after the 1997 election though the mandatory sentence for third-time

burglars was initially left dormant on the statute book (Dunbar and Langdon, 1998;

W indlesham, 2001). Eventually, th e measure proved irresistible and, in early 1999 , Jack

Straw, ann oun ced p lans to implement the fin al th ree strikes provision in the Act. Given

the proportion of all criminal offences accounted for by burglary (23 percent in 1997)

compared with the other offences subject to three strikes penalties, the impact on the

prison population was likely to be much more significant.

Private prisons

Though private sector involvement in prisons may be traced back a century or more

(Ryan and Ward, 1989 ) th ere has been a m ajor revival of in terest an d activity in th is area

since the late 1980s. Changing political, social and economic circumstances prompted

the growth of private corrections in the U SA in th e 1980s. A num ber of com mentatorshave drawn attention to the development of similar circumstances in the UK, and

pointed to more concrete forms of apparent policy transfer between the two jurisdic-

tions (Lilly and Knepper, 1992; James et al., 1997). In the USA in the 1980s increasing

legal requirements, deteriorating conditions in prisons, tighter budgetary control, an

ideological climate supp ort ive of privatization and th e growing th reat of expensive law-

suits by federal courts opened a window of opportunity for the private sector. Although

as a self-conscious movement privatization came later to the USA than to the UK

(Feigenbaum et al., 1999), the privatization of corrections in the UK lagged behind the

U SA (and also Australia, see H arding, 1997).The provision of auxiliary services within prisons had a long history in the United

States, the private ownership and management of prisons is a somewhat more recent

development (or, more accurately, the reappearance of an old business see Weiss,

1989) re-emerging in the 1980s. By the late 1980s the Corrections Corporation of


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America (CCA) operated two detention facilities for the Immigration and Naturaliza-

tion Service, a treatment centre for the Federal Bureau of Prisons and three other

minimum security facilities. As recently as 1989 one academic commentator noted that

there is considerable opposition nationwide to privatization of adult mainstream

[prison] populations (Weiss, 1989: 31). The position changed remarkably quickly. Bythe mid-1990s the private corrections industry had shifted its status from interesting

experiment to proven op tion (H arding, 19 97: 3). By 1993 there were over 50 privately

contracted prisons. The number rose to 78 by mid-1994, and 92 by the end of 1995.

A similar pattern is visible in the UK. There is, similarly, a long history of involve-

ment of private enterprise in criminal justice and within prisons. As pressure grew as a

result of increasing prison numbers during the second half of the 1980s (together with

other stimuli), the possibility of contracting out entered the penal policy agenda as it

had in so many other areas of public policy (Drakeford, 2000).

N onetheless, by th e end of th e 1980s, despite in creasing talk, relatively little progresshad been made and Rutherford concluded that in the immediate future, the private

sectors role in prison management in Britain is likely to be marginal at most (1990:

62). The situation, however, changed quickly. The Criminal Justice 1991 contained a

provision allowing the management of any prison, not just remand centres, to be con-

tracted out to any agency the Home Secretary considered appropriate. In April 1992

Group 4 Security won the contract to manage a new purpose-built institution for

remand prisoners, th e Wolds, and a second prison, Blakenh urst, opened in 1993 un der

the management of UK Detention Services (linked to the Corrections Corporation of

America). Privatization has gath ered pace since that t ime with Buckley H all,4 Doncaster,

Forest Bank, Lowdham Grange, Kilmarnock, Altcourse and Parc prisons, and Medway

and H assockfield Secure Training C entres, all privately run .

Electronic monitoring

The recent history of electronic monitoring begins in the early1980s in the United

States. Most accoun ts make mention of Judge Jack Love of Albuquerque who, allegedly

inspired by a Superman comic (in this case the superhero was the one who was elec-

tronically monitored), promoted the idea as a means of keeping young offenders out of

custody. He began the experiment in 1983 on a small number of offenders who weresubject to electronically monitored house-arrest. By 1988, 32 states were using some

form of electronic monitoring (Nellis, 2000) and the number of offenders subject to

monitoring grew from fewer than 100 in 1986 to almost 12,000 in 1992 (Renzema,

199 2). M onitoring at m ost stages of the criminal justice process was un dertaken , includ-

ing pre-trial, under sentence and after release. A significant minority of offenders was

either drunk drivers or serious traffic violators.

Tagging spread relatively quickly, and schemes were in operation in Australia, Canada,

Israel, the Netherlands, Singapore and Sweden by the late 1990s. According to Nellis

(2000) it is clear that th is is a case of policy transfer from t he U S to the U K. H e suggests

that although th e

modern concept of tagging may have developed simultaneously in England and America in

1982 . . . the fact remains that when it came to developing it in this country neither its sup-

porters nor its opponen ts had any alternative but to seek lessons from America. (2000: 115)


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Initially at least, there was som e considerable scepticism about the idea in the U K. There

was also not a little resistance by the probation service. Nonetheless, by the late 1980s

th e H om e O ffice was beginning to take an in terest and th e first tr ials took p lace in

198990. The trials were not a particular success, though pressure was kept on govern-

ment to continue to experiment. The Criminal Justice Act 1991 introduced curfeworders, under which offenders whereabouts were to be monitored during specific

periods. Powers were provided to secure compliance by fitting an electronic tag. A

second set of trials took place in 1995 and although evaluation suggested that curfew

orders were a practical possibility, it questioned whether it was realistic to imagine that

it m ight have anything oth er than a marginal impact as a sentence (Mair and Mortimer,

1996). The experiment did however appear to lead to something of a softening of

attitude towards electronic monitoring by the probation service (Mair, 1997).

The use of electronic monitoring was extended by the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997

to include offenders under the age of 16. A somewhat different, and initially morecautious model, has developed in Scotland where, most recently, the Crime and

Punishment (Scotland) Act 1997 has introduced the restriction of liberty order, with

electron ic monitoring to encourage compliance (Smith , 2001). H owever, as N ellis

(200 0: 110) put s it, th e clearest sign yet of an authen tic Labou r comm itm ent to tagging,

as opposed to a mere willingness to approve and implement their predecessors legis-

lation was the proposal to use electron ic monitoring to facilitate the early release of up

to 3000 prisoners in the last three months of their sentences (H an sard, Comm ons, 20

November 1997). A provision for what is known as electronically monitored home

detention curfew was included in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and allows for

prisoners serving senten ces of between th ree mon th s and four years to be released early

from prison for up to t he last two months of their sentence.

Drugs Czar

In th is case the USA was several decades ahead of Britain. R ichard N ixon is remembered

as one of the first senior American politicians to ann oun ce a war on crime and he was,

moreover, particularly scornful of dru g use and drug users. H owever, the d rugs policies

pursued by his administration nowadays look almost enlightened compared with the

war on drugs strategies pursued by his successors. In June 1971 Nixon appointed

Jerome Jaffe a treatm ent specialist to head u p t he n ewly created Special Action O fficefor Drug Abuse Prevention and to become, effectively, the USAs first drugs Czar.

N ot lon g after a visit to th e USA in early 1997 Blair, th en leader of th e opposition,

praised the record of the US drug Czar, and the Labour Party announced its intention

to m ake such an appointment in the run -up to t he 1997 G eneral Election, and p ut in

its manifesto the commitment that: Labour will appoint an anti-drugs supremo to

co-ordinate our battle against drugs across all government departments. The drug

Czar will be a symbol of our commitment to tackle the modern menace of drugs in

our com mun ity. Keith H ellawell, previously chief constable of West Yorkshire con -

stabulary, was appointed UK Anti-Drugs Co-ordinator in October 1997. The Czarwas to head up a newly established Anti-Drugs Co-ordination Unit and to develop a

government-wide anti-drugs strategy. There is little doubt that Blairs original idea was

inspired by the American experience. In addition to t he visit to th e USA and the praise

accorded by Blair of American drug C zar, there is the use of th e ph rase itself, not on ly


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in popular discourse but even in the original job advert and the 1997 manifesto

(Q uayle, 1 998).

T HE ATT RACT IV ENESS OF AMERICAN CRIME CONT ROLA large number of questions can be asked in relation to policy transfer, including who

is involved in transfer, what is transferred, where is it transferred from, what are the

constraints on transfer and why are policies transferred (see Dolowitz, 2000b)? I want

to focus on th e question : W hy do actors engage in po licy transfer from the United States

in the realm of crime control? More particularly, I want to examine six ways in which,

or reasons why, aspects of contemporary crime control have seemingly found their way

across the Atlantic to the UK in recent years.5

Ideological proximityArguably, without some form of ideological proximity it is unlikely that one political

party would wish to borrow ideas from another (Rose, 1993). Thus, one of the key

facilitating factors in the spread of policy transfer between the USA and the UK in the

past decade and a half has been, at least in itially, th e rise of the new right. T he n eoliberal

agenda shared by the Thatcher and Reagan administrations was underscored by what

became a progressively close personal relationship between the two leaders. T hou gh the

personal relationship between Thatcher and Bush was very different, their governments

continued to share a worldview. This ideological proximity was largely undisturbed by

the ascendance of the Clinton and Blair administrations. Both the Democrats and the

Labour Party remade themselves in th e period p rior to the respective elections in 1992

and 1997; both embracing many of the central tenets of neoliberalism: a reduction of

budget deficits; a preference for diminished government regulation; an acceptance of

expanded global trade and capital mobility; an acceptance of flexible labour markets;

and a reduct ion of the welfare safety net (Reich, 1999). T hese close ideological ties, allied

again to a close personal relationship (this time between C linton and Blair), un dou btedly

provided a foundation for policy transfer.

During the Thatcher administrations this may be particularly clearly seen in the

changes effected to the British emp loyment system . Un derpin nin g these chan ges was an

ideology shared with , indeed partly shaped by, the Reagan government in the USA. T hisideological position held that welfare encouraged dependency at best and moral turpi-

tude at worst. O n both sides of the Atlant ic the work of C harles Murray, particularly

Losing grou nd(Mu rray, 198 4), was highly influen tial. T he C onservative government very

clearly adopted the rhetoric of welfare dependency from the United States prior to

introducing its own version of welfare to work employment policies. A similar set of

ideas, this time linked to economic and moral concerns about lone parenthood led,

eventu ally, to the transfer of a N orth American model which formed th e basis for what

became the Child Support Agency. According to Dolowitz (2000c: 43) ideological

similarities between the Reagan and Thatcher administrations were central to thedecision to transfer the CSA.

Ideological proximity has arguably been important in underpinning the processes

of policy transfer in the area of crime cont rol over the past decade and a half. Such

proximity has been important for at least four reasons. First, it leads governments to


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examine sympathetically the policies of others with whom they share ideological beliefs.

Second, it will tend to increase the chances that governments define their problems in

similar ways. Third, it offers a shared language or terminology with which to define

problems, and to consider policy responses. Finally, it may provide an ideological

rhetoric with which particular policies can be explained and justified.

Electoral success

Naturally, much more than simply ideological propinquity has been involved in the

process of policy transfer. There were also a number of rather more practical, not to say

occasionally prosaic, reasons for the closeness of political parties on the two sides of the

Atlantic. At the heart of this was the issue of winning elections a particular concern for

the Labour Party in the 1990s (and, indeed, prior to that). As a result of the lengthy

political dominance of Republicanism in the USA and Conservatism in the UK, oppo-

sition politicians on both sides of the Atlantic were involved in a lengthy search for thesource of electoral success in what were clearly changed times. The breakthrough came

with the election of Bill Clinton in 1992. Th e Labour Party in the UK was a close observer

of the 1992 Presidential election.6 Those that were sympathetic to what had happened to

the Democratic Party in the USA sought both to learn and to apply the lessons. 7

At the heart of this was Philip Gould who worked on the 1992 Clinton campaign

and return ed to write a series of papers for John Smith on the lessons for Labour (Butler

and Kavanagh, 19 97). As G ould p ut it, Bill Clintons election in 1992 showed the world

that the left could win, and it showed the left how it could win (1998: 171, emphasis

added).8

In relation to the how, Gould says three things were central: the rebrandingof the Party to become New Democrats, shifting the political focus towards so-called

middle America (then referred to as the working middle class9) and, in narrower

campaigning terms, the use of rapid rebuttal.10 These three elements formed central

planks of what became known as the modern ization of the Party. The experience of the

New Democrats in the early 1990s gave the Labour Party a set of tools with which to

resituate itself. Indeed, many of the Clinton messages were adopted almost word for

word by the 1997 Labour camp aign.11 O f all th e facets of the so-called Clintonization

of the Labour Party it was seeking to app eal to th e middle class (middle England ) th at

had the greatest effect on their approach to the question of crime control, particularly

at a rhetorical level.

In January 199 3, Blair and Brown m ade a trip to the United States to learn the lessons

of Clintons victory a visit apparently unpop ular with t he th en leader of the party, John

Smith (M acintyre, 2000) Th e trip had, m ost commentators appear to agree, a profoun d

imp act on both men. Anderson and M ann suggest th at Blair was part icularly impressed

by the way Clinton had managed to overcome the Democrats long-standing vulnera-

bility to attack from the Republicans for being soft on crime, welfare dependency

and family values by taking aggressively populist anti-liberal stances (1997: 22). Sopel

argues that Blair and Brown were convinced that there were important lessons to be

learned from recent experience in the United States: Not only in how to win, but whatto do once you have won (1995: 146). According to Rentoul, the visit

. . . seemed to give Blair in part icular a sense of perspective. H e seemed suddenly to have seen

the larger picture. He instantly acquired a language in which to express his social moralism.


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And he felt able to translate his political themes into what he called a radical, populist, anti-

elite, anti-establishment message. (1995: 278)

It is no coincidence that the soundbite that Blair is most lastingly remembered for

tou gh on crime and tou gh on th e causes of crime was uttered just three days after th ereturn from North America.12 In studying Clintons 1992 electoral victory the Labour

Party learned important lessons about party image and electoral campaign management.

T heir visit and those by Mandelson, Gould and others led to on going relationships with

Clintons pollsters Paul Begala and Stan Greenberg and later with Clintons campaign

manager James Carville and communications director and later adviser George

Stephanop olous. In policy terms Blair, Brown, M andelson and th e rest saw how C linton

had sought to recapture the so-called middle ground and, in particular, to jettison

various liberal hostages to fortune.13 Blair clearly also brought home with him

important lessons about the language of politics.

T he language of polit ics and government

Language is vital in politics. It signifies both qualities and differences, and is a key

territory over which politicians and part ies compete. Arguably, however, the reinvention

of government that has been taking place in the past 20 years or so has made language

even m ore cent ral to th e conduct of politics. O ne of th e key bits of reinvent ion which

marked the transformation of Labour into New Labour was the much greater attention

that was paid to the management of communication and the very particular emphasis

that was placed on the use of language. Fairclough (2000 ) shows how both N ew Labour

and the New Democrats adopted strikingly similar political discourses. Both parties

incorporated elements of both the political themes and discourses of the new right. For

New Labour this was not a question of borrowing piecemeal from the New Democrats,

but recognising similarities between the modernisers in the two parties and applying

some of the Democrats vivid language to a body of ideas which [Blair] had already

largely developed (Fairclough , 2000: 68). O n both a broad level, and part icularly in

relation to crime control, the Labour Partys, and especially Blairs, new language was

influenced by a particular brand of North American communitarianism; most particu-

larly that associated with Amitai Etzioni. As Fairclough rightly argues, both N ew Labour

and the Clinton D emocrats have selectively assimilated elements of th e discourse of th enew right into new political discourses th at cann ot h owever be simply seen as new right

(2000: 68). This new discourse involves a continuation of an older Labour theme of

equality of opportun ity together with themes of respon sibility and comm un ity derived

in part from the new right and from th e particular brand of comm un itarianism favoured

initially by C linton and , subsequent ly, by Blair.

I suggested at the outset that the primary focus of this article is policy transfer, in

the arena of crime control. H owever, as shou ld already be clear, some of the key th ings

that have found their way across th e Atlant ic have in fact been element s of terminology,

ideas and ideologies. In many cases these are what Wacquant (1999b: 339) refers to asmots dordres, phrases that have both powerful symbolic value and also act as an incite-

ment to law and order. Indeed, it might be argued that the imported terminology has

in some respects been m ore import ant than actual programm es and policies. Thus, we

have had the idea of zero tolerance both in relation to policing and, more recently, in


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relation to cannabis use (though it has a much longer history14). We have had not just

the appoin tm ent of a UK anti-drugs co-ordinator, but the int roduction of a drugs Czar

(and, indeed, a whole royal family of such appointments in other policy areas), and we

have had the termin ology of war associated with both dru gs and crime po licy. Thou gh

it involves a sporting metaphor derived from baseball we have also had the importationof the idea (and indeed practice) of three strikes, a term Skolnick has suggested is

possibly the most poten t con joining of crime and politics in the history of the repu blic

(1998: 306).

The mesmeric qualities of terms such as three strikes and youre out, zero tolerance

and prison works are und oub ted. T he qu estion for us is why th ey mesmerize? O ne of

their strengths, I would suggest, lies in their ability to connect with what Jock Young

has described as our current general cultu ral predisposition to believe in the easy miracle

and the instant cure (1999: 130). At the heart of this lurk two fallacies that he calls the

cosmetic fallacy and the social as simple. The former conceives of social problems assuperficial and th erefore as being easy to deal with if only the right treatm ent is applied.

The second sees social problems as essentially simple, making interventions obvious

and easily identifiable. Both of these fallacies are clearly visible in the public pro-

noun cements on crime cont rol made by senior politicians in the West and, arguably, are

also visible in their crime control policies themselves.

N owhere are such fallacies more evident , however, th an in the use of the language of

war in con nection with social prob lems. T he war m etaphor has a long history in social

policy going back as far, for example, as the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower in the

Un ited States (Best, 199 9). C learly such language is attractive for a host of reasons. T hese

include its ability to con vey the firmness and resolve of the speaker in the face of what-

ever problem is being attacked. It also suggests that the enemy is a common one and

therefore those declaring war deserve political support. Crucially for politicians, the

idea of a war also diverts attention from the causes and contexts of social problems. It

implies these are already sufficiently known and understood to allow the war to be won

quickly and comprehensively. The reality, of course, is that these are wars that cannot be

won comp letely. D rugs, crime and poverty cann ot be eradicated.15 Such wars in some

senses therefore represent both the best and the worst of symbolic politics.

Symbolic politics

The power of symbolic politics has perhaps been at its clearest in the area of crime

control. I have already talked of the symbolic power of the language of populist

punitiveness. What I want to focus on briefly here are the ways in which decisions are

taken as means by which politicians affirm what, following Goffman (1969), might be

term ed a part icular present ation of self . D ecisions are taken, policies imp lemented, not

simply because of their potential impact but, of course, because of how they will be

perceived and received by a particular electoral community (Bottoms, 1995: 3940).

They are important for what they say both about political parties and about individual

politicians. This has always been so. Arguably, however, it is increasingly the case thatind ividual politicians are exploiting the capital that can be made ou t o f symbolic action.

Two examp les will suffice. T he first con cerns the paving of th e way for the int rodu ction

of commercial involvement in th e construction and management of prisons. Through-

out th e 1980s successive Con servative H om e Secretaries had resisted the in creasing


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pressure that was building up to relax the restrictions on private sector involvement. In

the event it was the intervention of the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, that was

decisive, but perhaps not for the straightforward ideological reasons that might be

assumed. In 1989 the then Home Secretary, David Waddington, was undecided about

how to proceed on the question of experimentation in the area of privatization. Thejunior minister in the H om e O ffice at the tim e, Lord W indlesham, describes what

happened t hen:

For some months the proposal [to allow increased private sector involvement] hung in the

balance. After being advised by the Department that a detailed study had confirmed that no

substantial savings in cost could be anticipated, and swayed by the falling prison population,

Waddington eventually came down against including a power to contract out certain remand

prisons in the forthcoming legislation. Before proceeding, however, he took the precaution of

enquiring whether the Prime Minister assented to the conclusion which he had reached so

hesitant ly. The answer was emphatic: she did not . (1993: 297)

T he primary reason she did not, according to Windlesham was because of her

conviction of the need for radical reform outside the prevailing consensus; not for any

reasons of penological principle or adm inistrative practice (199 3: 4212). T he decision

was a symbol as well as an experiment (1993: 307). In relation to the Prime Minister,

it symbolized her independence and radicalness. It symbolized that she was still som eone

who could be shocked, as she had pu t it when Leader of O pposition , that there are

still people in m y party who believe in consensus politics (Youn g, 1991 : 223). H er

governm ent, she wanted everyone to know, must be a conviction governm ent (Jenkins,

1987: 183).

T he second example concerns the whole pun itive turn and that most p otent form of

symbolism in penal-political discourses in recent times: toughness. Political parties and

individual politicians have increasingly sought to develop an image or impression of

toughness.16 As Skolnick has not ed, th ree words soft on crime have become the

crowning curse of political discourse. And sharply rising incapacitation measures have

been its consequence (1998: 307). And, as is now well established, such rhetoric is

no longer simply the province of politicians on t he right. T hus, for example, in 1994

President Clinton said, I can be nicked on a lot, but no-one can say Im soft on crime

(quo ted in M auer, 1999: 69). Similarly, tou gh is what Fairclough (2000) describes as aN ew Labour keyword. In the Un ited States the emergence of what Bot tom s (1995) has

referred to as populist punitiveness began in the early 1960s and coincided with the

racial polarization of the two main political parties (Beckett, 1997). In the UK, the

process started somewhat later in th e late 1970s/early 1980 s. It gathered pace spectacu-

larly in the 1990s as the Labour Party sought to compete for and capture the law and

order agenda, to rid itself of what it perceived to be its major hostages to fortune

(D ownes and M organ, 1997 ), and generally to d isplay greater levels of penal testosterone

than its main rival.

At the heart of these changes is the apparent belief among politicians that any absenceof toughness in this area spells potential political suicide. It is in this connection that

the symbolic importance of particular exceptional events is most visible. The assumed

central importance of law and order toughness for political careers has been most

lastingly influenced by the failed Presidential bid by Michael Dukakis in 1988. Sparks


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has argued, part icu lar events, stories and controversies can in their aftermaths exercise

profound effects, both at the level of popular consciousness and of political, legislative

and system-level change (2000a: 133, emphasis in original). Returning to the theme of

cross-Atlantic influences, what I want to suggest here is that what happened to Dukakis

has had a profound effect n ot only on U S political discourse and behaviour, but has alsocast a shadow over British law and order politics.

Horton had been convicted of murder in the state of Massachusetts. Released many

years later on furlough, H orton kidnapped a couple and brut ally raped the wom an. As

Governor at the time the assault happened, Dukakis defended the policy of furlough-

ing first-degree mu rderers and refused to meet prot esters, including t he victims family,

who had come to campaign against the policy. Lee Atwater, George Bushs campaign

manager, famously said (and, on his death bed, said he regretted) that he would turn

Willie Horton into [Dukakis] running mate (Estrich, 1998). The Bush team went on

the offensive, characterizing Dukakis, among other things, as lost in the thickets ofliberal sociology (Baum, 19 96: 2 60) or, as one commentator p ut it, as a patsy for every

dark-skinned murderer in Massachusetts (Michelowski, quoted in Beckett and Sasson,

2000: 69). The Bush campaign broadcast television adverts produced by Hill and

Knowlton that used photographs of Willie Horton and described Dukakis role, in

part icular as defender of the furlough policy. O ne of th e producers of the advertisement

described the Horton case as a wonderful mix of liberalism and a big, black rapist

(quoted in Beckett, 1997: 124). As Parenti describes it: Horton, of course, had to be

African American. The advertisements function was to invoke the tried and trusted

spectre of the Black rapist, a threat to white womanhood, white supremacy, and white

society (1999: 60). This was the canonical example of a genre of stories that spoke

irresistibly to the m oral and emot ional disposition s (Sparks, 2000b: 101) o f the fearful,

white middle class, to their desire to express indignation and to blame not only

Horton, but also Dukakis. The results were enormously powerful. Bush became

President and the vanquished D emocrats decided t he on ly way to compete in future was

to attempt to occupy the law and order territory so clearly staked out by Atwater and

Bush. When Governor Clinton returned to Arkansas during his first Presidential

campaign in order to oversee the execution of a convicted murderer, there could be no

doubt that a very particular lesson had been drawn from Dukakis failed bid for the

White House (Stephanopolous, 1999).17 T he n eed t o appear tou gh has debased p ub licdiscourse about criminal justice (Tonry, 1994) and has had a dramatic impact on the

politics of crime on both sides of the Atlantic. Much of this has its origins, in the UK

as well as the USA, in the political response to the case of Willie Horton.

Penal-industrial complex

So far I have discussed a number of factors that relate to the business of doing politics:

the existence of shared political projects on both sides of the Atlantic and, built on this,

the sharing of electoral and symbolic strategies, practical ideas and a new language of

crime control. The fifth factor I wish to highlight concerns what has often been referredto as the prison-industrial complex (Lilly and Knepper, 1992; Schlosser, 1998)

th ough given the range of the activities and services it is engaged in it is probably more

accurate to t hin k of it as a penal-ind ustrial complex. The penal-indu strial comp lex has

clearly been a significant influence in the expansion of pr ivately run prisons over the past


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two decades and has, through its increasing capacity, played a crucial enabling role in

the American carceral experiment . Moreover, th e major U S corporations have identified

and begun to exploit new markets abroad, particularly in Australia and the UK. 18 Thus,

the argument goes, th e penal-indu strial complex has not on ly been an impor tant element

in the progressive emergence of new forms of government of insecurity (Rose, 1999),but has been a key conduit for its transnational transmission (Christie, 1993).

T here now exists a large and expanding set of private interests that have a stake in the

growth of imprisonment, not only in the United States, but increasingly abroad.

Schlosser describes the prisons industrial complex as a confluence of special interests

that has given p rison construction in the U nited States a seemingly un stopp able momen-

tum (1998: 52). Though there is a temptation to present this as some form of crude

capitalist conspiracy, guiding criminal justice policy behind closed doors, the reality is

undoubtedly more complex. Thus, Lilly and Knepper (1992: 182) for example, have

argued that the relationship between th e UK and the U S in t erms of privatization is nota one-way flow of penal policies out of the US to the UK. Indeed, th ey suggest that th e

relationship between the two nations is not based on the transfer of correctional policy

so much as it is on the joint ownership of corporations that profit from marketing

corrections products and services. What is undeniable is that it has been the United

States that has been the seed-bed for the growth of the prisons-industrial complex, its

influence spreading abroad from there. What is less clear is how, exactly, this has

occurred.

T he situation has changed m arkedly in the U SA in recent d ecades. T he market share

held by private corporations has grown rapidly in the past 20 years. A quick look at two

corporations, Wackenhut and the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), two of

the largest com mercial organizations working in t he penal sector, illustrates the changes

that have taken place. Wackenhut was founded in the early 1950s. By the mid-1970s its

revenue was over $10 0 m illion, t hou gh th e bulk of its operation s remained largely North

American. In 1995 the international arm of Wackenh ut accounted for over one-quarter

of the corporations turn over of almost $800 million. T he comp any has diversified n ow

providing physical security and investigative services, protective and emergency services,

services specifically protecting the nuclear industry, as well as correctional services. By

1997 Wackenhuts turnover passed $1 billion, its international contracts coming from

Brazil, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Venezuela, Peru, Equador and the Dominican Republicamon g others, and new cont racts un derway in South Africa.

Set up in by two Nashville businessmen in1983, CCA received its first contracts in

1984 and by the end of that year managed 888 inmate beds. Thomas Beasley, one of its

foun ders, in explaining how such a product was prom oted said, You just sell it like you

were selling cars, or real estate or hamburgers19 (quoted in Schlosser, 1998: 70). Like

all such salesmen, of course, Beasleys main aim was to sell more units in this case

prison cells. In this he has been undeniably successful. Although CCA did not become

profitable un til 1989, by 1997 it reported a net income of over $53 m illion. It now owns

and operates 44 prisons and jails and manages a further 35 in the USA. It employs over14,000 staff and is responsible overall for almost 72,000 beds. Between 1992 and 1997

CCAs shares performed so well that the company was one of the top five on the New

York stock exchange.

In the UK as I outlined earlier, there has been a fairly rapid expansion in the private


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sector involvement in prisons in the last decade, with UKDS, Group 4 and Securicor

being the biggest providers. The electronic monitoring experiments employed Marconi

and Racal Chubb in t he first roun d, and Securicor and G eographix in th e second roun d.

The impact of the private sector goes far wider, of course, than private prisons and

tagging the security industry having grown hugely in the past 30 years (Jones andNewburn, 1998), with, predictably enough, considerable overlap between the various

sectors. Clearly for-profit organizations have a vested interest in seeing the market for

th eir services expand. T here is no surprise, therefore, that the big private prison organiz-

ations are involved in heavy lobbying activities.

O ne of the ways in which the private sector has sought to cement and increase its

influence is by headhunting senior staff from important positions in public life and

particularly from the state penal system. Thus, in the USA the management of

Wackenhut and CCA in the 1990s included a former head of the FBI, a former CIA

director and deputy director, a previous head of the Secret Service, a former AttorneyGeneral, a former head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the former chairman of the

Tennessee Republican Party and the former director of the Virginia Department of

C orrections (D yer, 2000).

In the UK, through much of the 1980s many senior politicians remained sceptical

about commercial involvement in corrections. However, as it was corporate interests

were not short of friends, for as James et al. note, there was:

active lobbying by Racal Chubb Security Systems since the late 1970s, in the light of their

experience of building high-tech prisons abroad, whilst British construction companies are also

closely involved. For example, John Mowlem (who are substantial donors to the ConservativeParty) and Sir Robert McAlpine and Sons (one of whose directors is Lord McAlpine of West

Green, a former Conservative Party Treasurer) were the main contractors responsible for the

building of the Wolds Remand Prison and were both part of UK D etention Services. (1997: 43)

More recently, Securicor hired the PR company Bell Pottinger Good Relations (BPGR)

to manage its public image and, more part icularly, on e of BPGRs senior d irectors, D avid

H ill, former Director of Cam paigns and Commun ications for th e Labour Party.

Crucially for our purposes here, though there is still a very considerable market to

exploit in the United States, CCA and other major private prisons companies have

targeted Europe (and Australia) for expansion. Wackenhut, in its 1994 annual report,outlined its aspirations thus:

In preparing for the t hird m illenn ium and the globalisation of privatised corrections Wacken-

hut Corrections Corporation has taken a number of important steps. We have established a

central corporate infrastructure capable of sustaining global operations with numerous clients.

Addition ally, we have established two regional offices in t he U .S. and have offices in t he United

Kingdom an d Australia. (quoted in H arding, 1997: 26)

By th e end o f 1999 Wackenhu ts share of the global market was 27 percent. In th e UK,

under the name Premier Prison Services, Wackenhut (and Serco) runs LowdhamGrange, D oncaster and Kilmarnock, Scotlands only fully private prison, and is respon s-

ible for the two new privately financed, built and run prisons. It also holds the contract

for transporting immigration detainees, providing security at holding areas in ports and

airports and managing the M anchester D etention C entre for the Imm igration Service.


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C CA has similar in ternational in terests. Its largest stockholder is Sodexho Alliance, a

food services conglomerate with headquarters in France. Together CCA and Sodexho

form UK Detention Services, the largest of the private prison operators in Britain. In

January 2000 Sodexho Pass International was awarded a three-year contract to operate

the voucher scheme for asylum seekers, designed to reduce the incentive to economicmigration (Prison Reform Trust, 2000). Moreover, and underpinning Lilly and

Kneppers (1992) suggestion that this is not just a one-way flow between the USA and

the UK, CCA received significant British investment in the mid-1980s from Enskilda

Industries, merchant bankers based in London, through a Capital Venture Fund. CCA

now runs prisons and provides penal services not only in the USA, but also in England,

France, Australia and Puerto Rico. CCAs total global market share at the end of 1999

was almost half at 49 percent.

Private, often m ultinational corporat ions have played an imp ortant ro le in, at th e very

least, facilitating the expansion of th e penal estate. G arland (2001b) draws a distinctionbetween th e originating and theperpetu at in g causes of mass imprisonment in the U nited

States, and suggests that the penal-industrial complex may be better understood as a

perpetu ating cause with its vested in terests in cont inued profit s. W hile this may be right,

it is also clear that the pen al-industrial com plex has played an entrepreneurial role in t he

massive expansion of the US prison population. Moreover, in seeking new markets

such as that in the UK it may have occupied a more originating role, albeit a minor

one, in relation to t he recent expansion of th e prison popu lation in Britain.

The crudest form of commercial-corrections argument views the primary dynamic

of the spread of privatized services as being the power of US capital to identify and

exploit new markets overcoming, where necessary, national sovereignty in the process.

In this view, it is transnational capital that is the key to understanding the growth of

privatized corrections and policing. A more subtle reading sees transnational corpor-

ations more as part of an increasingly powerful, plural policy network in which they,

together with state, military and professional bodies, combine to form a corrections

subgovernment (Lilly and Knepper, 1992).

Neoliberal penal-policy complex

It is not just the role of major industrial corporations that has helped the spread of

policy and ideology across the Atlantic. Also important has been the influence of whatis generally a loosely knit set of policy networks,20 corresponding roughly to what has

sometimes been characterized as an advocacy coalition: actors from a variety of public

and private institutions at all levels of government who share a set of basic beliefs and

who seek to manipulate government to achieve these goals over time (Sabatier and

Jenkins-Smith, 1993: 5). Within the arena of crime control policy it was the rise to

prominence, or influence, of a number of major neoliberal think tanks in the 1970s

and 1980s the second wave of British think tanks (Denham and Garnett, 1998)

that was centrally importan t. T hey appeared sufficiently well organized at certain poin ts

to resemble an emergent neoliberal penal-policy com plex. Thus, the prison-industrialcomplex has been characterized as a set of bureaucratic, political and economic inter-

ests that encourage increased spending on imprisonment (Schlosser, 1998: 54). In a

sim ilar m ann er I wou ld con ceive of this pen al-policy complex as a set of bureaucrat ic,

political and moral entrepreneurial interests that encourage the adoption of punitive


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and exclusionary policies in the area of crime control (and, indeed, much more

broadly).

Schlosser (199 8) d escribes th e penal-industrial complex as a set of interest groups and

institu tions. It is also, h e suggests, a state of min d in which p rofiteering plays an im port-

ant role and a disfiguring one in crim e con trol. Th e int erest groups are primarily th osecorporations that profit from the bu ilding and run ning of prisons, and the provision of

other associated services. Linked with this, and crucial to its success, are those politicians

both liberal and conservative, who have used th e fear of crime t o gain votes (199 8: 54 ).

T his is th e poin t at which th e penal-policy complex and its prison-industrial coun terpart

interlink and overlap, for such politicians are crucial to the history and development of

both. Nonetheless, it is possible to conceive of them separately for analytical purposes.

T hough the penal-policy complex has been cent rally implicated in t he growth of private

prisons, its influence is by no means confined to this area. Similarly, its raison detre is

not so clearly, or straightforwardly, dominated by the profit motive. That said, suchmotives are not absent, and are visible among those politicians and entrepreneurs who

stand to gain financially, and among t he n ew breed of policy consultant s and experts

whose livelihood s depend upon entrepreneurial success in the policy arena. O n a m ore

general level, the punitive penal-policy complex is linked to the prison-industrial

complex through a shared adherence to, and dependence on, neoliberal philosophies.

In the Un ited States the key players in t his regard have been the H eritage Foun dation

and the Manhattan Institute; in the UK, the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of

Econom ic Affairs. Wacquan t has gone as far as to suggest that:

the foundations and think-tanks that paved the way for the advent of real (neo)liberalismunder Ronald Reagan and M argaret Thatcher by painstakingly underm ining Keynsian n otions

and policies on the economic and social front between 1975 and 1985 have also operated, a

decade later, as a pipeline feeding the political and media elites with concepts, principles, and

measures designed to b oth justify and speed up the establishment of a penal apparatus at once

prolix and protean. (1999b: 323)

Though this may somewhat overstate the capacity and influence of such bodies, their

role has nonetheless been imp ortant . Th us, during th e 1980s and early 1990 s in the UK

the big political issue was privatization of prisons, and it was the Adam Smith Institute

(ASI) that was th e cent ral player. In the later 1990s, zero tolerance policing was cent re-stage and th is time it was the In stitute for Econom ic Affairs (IEA) that played a key role.

Both have strong links with counterparts in the USA.

T he ASI was set up in the late 1970s by M adsen Pirie and Eamon n and Stuart Butler,

three graduates of St Andrews University. The ASI had strong links to the powerful

Washington DC-based think tank, the Heritage Foundation. Indeed, one of the

founders, Stuart Butler, went on to work for the Heritage Foundation and became its

vice-president for d om estic policy studies. Indeed, as H ames and Feasey (1994: 223)

suggest, the ASI resembled the H eritage Found ation in many ways (though no t size and

wealth), particularly specializing in relatively short and issue-oriented publications.D enham and G arnett suggest some of [ASIs] best-pub licized activities have apparently

been copied from American conservative bodies (1998: 151).

The ASI was registered as a charity in the UK in 1981 and in 1984 launched its

O mega Project, an explicit at tempt to spread the influence of free market ideas (Ryan


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and Ward, 1989). Levitas described the project as the most ambitious attempt to date

to spell out t he implications of neoliberalism for social policy and . . . th e main articu-

lation of liberal N ew Rights utop ia (1986: 82). Part of the O mega Project focused on

criminal justice and, more particularly, the potential for privatizing prisons. The ASIs

head of research, Peter Young, who had worked for the ASI in the U SA, took the leadin this work. H is conclusion, based on his reading of the American experience, was that

there were:

greatly im proved cond it ions for prisoners in all the US private jails . . . That costs can be cut is not

very surprising, given the general record of privatization, but that private firms can both cut

costs and improve standards is certainly worth not ing. Perhaps the m ost compelling argument

for prison privatization is therefore the h um anitarian one. (Butler et al., 1985: 38 )

T he O mega File was followed by a fur th er repor t from th e ASIs Peter Young (Young,1987) which was deeply critical of the running of the British prison system and called

for experimentation with private ent erprise. O ne of the interesting facets of the British

experience at this time is that in the debates that surrounded the putative privatization

of prisons, litt le attent ion was apparent ly paid to th e considerable experience that already

existed in the private running of immigration detention centres (McDonald, 1994).

Rather a complex mix of ideological proximity between governments, the work of key

symbolic crusaders within parliament and lobbying pressure exerted by the ASI were

much more significant. Disentangling the particular influence of the ASI is, of course,

problematic. H owever, as James et al. pu t it , few observers will fail to not ice th e close

similarity between its proposals and what was to transpire (1997: 42).21 Ryan an d Ward

note that Michael Forsyth, one of the leading advocates of prisons privatization within

the Conservative Party had strong links to the ASI, and behind the scenes some of the

key corporate in terests were lobbying hard (see James et al., 1997).

A Conservative Study Group on Crime picked up some of the ideas in the Omega

Report in 1986 and th is was shortly followed by visits to U S private prisons by the H om e

Office junior minister, Lord Glenarthur and by the House of Commons Select

Committee on Home Affairs. The Select Committee though primarily visiting the

USA to consider alternatives to custody visited two establishments run by CCA.

Though the Committee was split in its reactions to what it saw, many of its mostinfluential members became advocates of the potential role of private corporations in

corrections. O ne of th e most influ ential of these Committee members was John W heeler

MP, who was also Director General of the British Security Industry Association. 22 T he

Committees third report recommended that the Home Office should study the use of

electronic tagging in the USA. When it was eventually published, the Committees

fourth report, Contract provision of prisons, was short and somewhat muted in its

recommendations, recommending that private firms be permitted to tender for the

construction and management o f custodial institut ions, and that t he contracting out of

remand cent res become a priority (H ouse of Com mons H ome Affairs Select C ommittee,198 7). W hat t he report did succeed in doin g was keeping th e possibility of privatization

on the agenda. In recent years the private corrections industry has continued to prosper

largely without the support of the neoliberal think tanks. Nonetheless, such institutions

continue to play an important role, particularly in the USA. Thus, for example, in the


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last year the m ajor corrections com panies in the U SA have respond ed to a series of high-

profile bad news stories and apparent declining confidence in the industry, by seeking

to develop a single industry voice, and to fund independent research. Both of these

proposals have been developed in conjunction with the Reason Foundations Public

Policy Institu te.The second example of the influence of the punitive penal-policy complex concerns

zero tolerance and, once again, think tanks on both sides of the Atlantic in this case

the Manhattan Institute in the USA and the Institute for Economic Affairs in the UK.

And once again it was close transatlant ic links that were exploited to aid and abet policy

transfer. Interestingly for our purposes here, it was the export of a British think tank

model that underpinned the later transfer in the other direction. The IEA had been

established in London by Ant ony Fisher, un der the influence of H ayek, in 1955 and had

had a long and, at least in its more recent years, influential history. In 1975 Fisher

emigrated to Canada to ru n t he Fraser Institut e and then in 19 77 m oved to N ew Yorkand established the International Center for Economic Policy Studies, later the

M anhattan Institute (C ockett, 1994). Fisher, later kn ighted by M argaret T hatcher, went

on to establish the Pacific Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco, the Centre for

Independent Studies in Australia and then the Atlas Economic Research Foundation

which acted as an overarching structure for neoliberal think tanks worldwide. Atlas

claimed to create or support almost 80 such bodies by the early 1990s.

In the USA the Manhattan Institute was central in the promotion both of Charles

Murray and, subsequently, of James Q . W ilson and George Kellings Broken W indows

ph ilosophy with in the United States. Through its promotion of Broken W indows and

its conn ections with similar organization s in th e UK th e Manhatt an Institute also played

a central role in the international promulgation of the idea of zero tolerance policing.

In terms of its early role, the Manhattan Institute held a series of seminars to promote

th e Broken W indows ph ilosoph y. O ne of those in att endance was Rud y Giuliani, later

to b ecome Mayor of N ew York C ity. Ind eed, the M anhattan In stitute was both a

contributor to Giulianis mayoral campaign (Barrett, 2000) and provided financial

support for, and prom oted G eorge Kelling and C atherine Coles more recently published

book, Fixing broken windows (Kelling and Coles, 1996). After his period as Commis-

sioner of Police under Giuliani, Bill Bratton became a regular lecturer at Manhattan

Institute events and later an international consultant in urban policing. Throughseminars at this and other similar organizations like the Heritage Foundation (Bratton,

1996) and articles in the Manhattan Institutes house magazine, the City Journal (see,

for examp le, Bratton and Andrews, 199 9), Bratton became the key proselytizer on b ehalf

of quality of life policing (Wacquant, 1999 b). H e has subsequently, th rough his auto-

biography (Bratton with Knobler, 1998), and widespread travels, taken his message

aroun d th e world, includ ing at a seminar organized by the Institu te for Econom ic Affairs

(IEA) in London in 1997.23

Such events, and the publications associated with them (Dennis, 1997) have been

vital in d isseminatin g the idea of zero tolerance, despite the fact that Bratton and oth ershave generally sought to distance themselves from the notion.24 Part of the reason is to

be foun d in the already established association in the public mind, created largely by th e

media, but also by politicians, between New York and zero tolerance. In establishing

th is association, the M ayor of N ew York C ity, Rudy Giuliani, has und oub tedly been a


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prim e mover. As one of his biographers describes, th ough both George Kelling and Bill

Bratton spent time explaining to Giuliani what quality of life policing meant, the

Mayor didnt understand (Barratt, 2000: 345), and insisted on referring to it publicly

as zero tolerance. In addit ion, despite the apparent disavowal of the term , penal policy

entrepreneurs such as Bratton have also played their part . Brattons man y well-pub licizedtrips to th e UK, includ ing to t he event organized by the IEA in 1 997, at which he spoke,

have all involved the term zero tolerance in some shape or form. The IEA conference

for examp le, the m ost highly publicized of all, was organized t o coincide with the publi-

cation of a short book entitled: Z ero toleran ce: Policin g a free society. It can hardly be

coincidence that contact between the NYPD and the Governor of the State of Brasilia

led t o th e annou ncement of a policy of tolerncia zero and that with in a year of Brattons

visit to Frankfurt, the C hristian D emocrats were campaigning under the banner of N ull

Toleranz (see Wacquant, 1999b).

CONCLUDING T HOUGHT S

W here does the preceding discussion leave us? At the very least, I th ink, it begins to open

up an interesting and relatively unexplored area of criminological inquiry. I have

examined, in a fairly tentative manner, some of the specific connections and influences

underpinning the importation of made in the USA crime control strategies, particu-

larly under New Labour in the UK. What is needed now is a much more detailed

investigation and reading of these linkages, and of the linkages between other policy

developments and other nation states. Such an analysis, as the discussion above has

indicated, will have to p ay particular attent ion to t he potentially very different p rocesses

and influences involved in the transfer of ideas and rhetoric compared with the transfer

of formal policies and practices.

In addition to these concerns, however, the preceding discussion also raises some

broader questions for criminology, politics and social theory. These centre on the

direction in which we are heading as a society, and how that is to be theorized and

understood. Put crudely, is the UK on a path that leads inexorably in the direction

mapped out by th e Un ited States? And, if so, wh y? Are the m ass incarceration levels in

the USA just another example of American exceptionalism (Lipset, 1996; Downes,

2001), or a taste of things to come for the rest of the developed world? To what extentdoes the working throu gh of the n eoliberal project actually require ever-higher levels of

incarceration and oth er form s of penal surveillance? H ow mu ch of what we are

witnessing is reducible to the transition into late modernity and the globalizing

influences associated with that shift?

It is clear that there is much occurring in common in relation to crime control in

the U SA and the UK. In part this is un surprising given the alacrity with which British

politicians look to the USA for inspiration. In very general terms it is perhaps only to be

expected anyway given the broad social and economic changes that are affecting both

societies. Nonetheless, there remain some quite important differences between the twosystems of crime control. In part, the limits of policy transfer to date may indicate

something import ant h ere. In the examples I outlined above it was abun dant ly clear that

penal rhetoric was generally a more successful import than penal policy. In the UK there

has been significantly more talk of zero tolerance than there has of zero tolerance


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policing. A drugs Czar has been appointed but as yet the punitive practices of the war

on drugs have been held largely at bay. By contrast, not only has there been a lot of talk

about cracking down on out of control youth but also curfews have also been intro-

duced. And yet, in practice, at the local level, there has been a marked reluctance to use

such tactics. Even the privatization movement in the justice system has not proceededas quickly as many predicted, or in the Americanized ways they assum ed it would (Jones

and N ewburn, 2002). T he except ion to all th is is th ree strikes. Put on the statute books

by a Conservative government, the less controversial elements were quickly implemented

by the incoming Labour administration. The mandatory sentences for repeat burglars,

however, were resisted for a while. They were eventually called upon, not because there

was widespread demand , bu t because there was a bad n ews story th e Governm ent wished

to distract attention from. So the UK has its own version of three strikes and its impact

on prison numbers has been significant. However, and in contrast to the United States,

the British governm ent has continued to attempt to stem th e increase in p rison n um bers.That it has not been entirely successful should not lead us to ignore the fact, entirely, that

it has tried. Its modernist penal instincts are not entirely dead. Crucially, th e UK has not ,

as yet, seen the emergence of a political mindset that is utterly impervious to the conse-

quences of unlimited prison growth as now appears to exist among both Republicans

and D emocrats in th e United States. W hile, in some respects, th e differences between the

USA and the UK may not be enormous, they are significant.

A closer look at the penal practices and policies of other advanced capitalist societies

would u nd oubtedly reveal oth er trends, oth er trajectories, oth er differences. What I want

to suggest, therefore, is that while powerful transnational changes are und eniably at work

changes often summarized as the coming of late modernity (Garland, 2001a) the

attitudes, beliefs, practices and policies, the crime complex, associated with late

modernity varies, often in very important ways, both within and between nation states.

A degree of scepticism is called for then in reading those pessimistic accounts of our new

times in which the hollowed-out nation state is presented as powerless in the face of

global, neoliberal capitalist in terests. O f course, it is und oub tedly right to argue th at

nation states are now less autonomous . . . have less exclusive control over the econom ic

and social processes within t heir territories, and . . . are less able to m aint ain national

distinctiveness and cultural hom ogeneity (H irst and T hom pson, 1999: 263). H owever,

as Hirst and Thompson (1999: 262) point out, it is equally mistaken to talk of nationstates as if they were merely the local authorities of the global system. As the study of

policy transfer illustrates, governm ents are involved in th e production and reprodu ction

of transnational forces and changes. They both influence them and, though no doubt

the extent is limited, they may and do also resist them.25

And so back to th e question of what our future holds. O f course one cannot rule out

the possibility that it may look something like contemporary USA. But the vital point

is that it remains just that a possibility. As Wacquant has said of France:

if, owing to their technocratic myopia and fascinated fixation on short -term financial perform-

ance, [the] ruling elites both left and right persist with the neoconservative policy of down-

sizing the public sector and rampant commodification of social relations they have pursued

since the m id-seventies, th en on e cann ot ru le out th at what is still today a distant and frightful

dystopia m ight one day turn into an all

NEWBURN Atlantic Crossings 'Policy Transfer' and Crime Control in the USA and Britain

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