The Birth of the Welfare Sanction

Abstract

of power. [11 As these authors point out, the modern policing of individuals, families and neighbourhoods is primarily conducted not by means of punishment or coercion but instead by the normalising agencies of social welfare - of social work, education, insurance, child-care and so on. Social regulation in the 'advanced democracies' of the 20th century is produced through a whole complex of agencies of social investigation and scrutiny in which the penal option is the last of many, the coercive end of a much broader continuum. Now the distinctive modality of regulation which this network allows is that of normalisation (the 'straightening out' of characters, the identification and repair of behavioural 'abnormalities') and clearly the modern penal system, at least in some of its aspects, functions precisely along these lines. Thus if one thinks of the juvenile court, the children's panel, probation and after-care or the various social work options available to the court, it is apparent that these institutions are in fact 'normalising' rather than punitive. They constitute a series of supervisory, disciplinary and correctional interventions which are administered under threat of punishment but which remain distinct from it. They function not by sanctioning breaches of criminal law but by using such breaches as a point of access - the opening for a disciplinary intervention which aims at a deeper, more personalised form of regulation than any punishment would afford.

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