Punitive and/or Preventative Confinement

Chapter 2 surveys the most common functions of prisons, that is, punishment, deterrence (both general and specific) and correction of criminals, as well as that of keeping them ‘out of circulation.’ As the latter often leads to prison overcrowding as well as rising costs, countries are experimenting with prison privatisation. It may even be possible to make incarceration profitable, by combining it with forced labour. This was part of the rationale of the huge Soviet Gulag camp system, but it failed regarding profitability. The chapter also looks at the phenomenon of panopticism as an alternative form of crime prevention as well as its functional equivalents. The chapter also covers the alternative way of separating deviants from the rest of society through deportation.