Breaking the hegemony of the prison : an analysis of the detention centre system.

The purpose of this study is to develop a theoretically viable
and empirically detailed analysis of the emergence of the Detention
Centre in the young offender sector of the English penal system.
In doing so, it is intended to eradicate the hiatus created by
either an absence of research, or by research which has been unable
or unconcerned for epistemological reasons to address the Detention
Centre's problematic emergence in English penal history - both in
Its 'pre-legislative' stage, and in its period of development ,from a
minority to a majority form of disposal, and through to its threatened
demise in the mid-1970's.
The central methodological concern of this study is to situate
the analysis within the parameters of what has been termed the breaking
of the hegemony of the prison for young offenders, and informed by a
contingent and complementary analysis of the history of socio-political,
economic and cultural developments throughout the period, from the
late nineteenth century to the mid-1970's. Concomitant upon this has
been an analysis of the manner in which the British state has struggled
to maintain the balance between consent and coercion in the interests
of a ruling class hegemony. The study falls into three main sections: the first section
deals with the gradual emergence of the hegemony of the prison in
the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, situating
within this the creation of a specifically young offender sector.
The second section addresses itself to the history of the maintenance
and development of this sector, and, within this, the struggle of
the 'short-term movement' in the young offender disposal system.
The final section offers an analysis of the emergence of the Detention
Centre in its post-legislative stage, examining the history of its
first two, contrasting, decades, and leading to the apparent demise
by the mid-1970's.
Finally, it is necessary to take cogaisance of the importance
of the recourse to an analysis at the concrete level of a large
amount of empirical data available, much of it for the first time,
through the auspices of the Public Records Office. These
documents have played no small a part in the analysis with which
the middle section of this study is concerned.