Problematising the Will to Intervene: Discourses on Alternative Solutions to Prison

Abstract This article explores a paradox in discourse on alternatives to prison: in trying to minimise the prison, its functions seep further into society. Prison and the pursuit of alternatives involve two suppositions: some populations need control, and some portion of the population constitutes a legitimate enforcer of control. The implications of this paradox are explored via community surveillance technology and justice reinvestment, two recent ideas to curtail the prison. The piece is indebted to Foucault, especially the attention he draws to the problem of the legitimacy to punish, and radical constructivist logic, which encourages interrogation of the cultural frameworks upon which social practices emerge. As critical scholars sympathetic to prison abolition, what follows is a reflexive gesture. It asks if critical approaches harbour categories that are hard to reconcile with political projects of decomposing the prison.