The Thrill of the Chase: Punishment, Hostility and the Prison Crisis

This article offers one of the first analyses of the current and ongoing crisis affecting English and Welsh prisons and of recent proposals for prison reform. The article pits the impression of novelty surrounding the current framework of incarceration against the notion promoted by critical scholarship that the nexus between crisis and reform is not new. Building on this debate, we deploy an original theoretical perspective, grounded on the concept of hostile solidarity, to argue that the promise of prison reform is an essential aspect of the utility ascribed to punishment, which allows the prison to be perpetually preserved and seen as unquestionably necessary, even when in crisis. The article concludes by suggesting that our emotional attachment and contemporary reliance on punishment, and its manifestation in the perpetuation and expansion of institutions like the prison, are ultimately self-defeating and self-propelling