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Like all social institutions, penal-welfarism was shaped by a specific historical context and rested upon a set of social structures and cultural experiences. Its ways of thinking and acting made sense to those who worked in the field, but they also resonated with the structures of the broader welfare state society, and with the ways of life that these reflected and reproduced. Penal-welfarism drew support from—and relayed support to—a particular form of state and a particular structure of class relations. It functioned within a specific environment of economic and social policies and it interacted with a set of contiguous institutions, the most important of which were the labour market and the social institutions of the welfare state. In short, its characteristic ways of thinking and acting, particularly its modernism and its ‘social’ rationality, were embedded in the forms of life created by the political and cultural relations of the post-war years. Like the modern welfare state of which it formed a part, penal-welfarism developed as a strategic solution to an historically specific problem of order and was underpinned by a particular kind of collective experience and collective memory. As we saw, penal-welfarism addressed itself to problems of individual maladjustment that were heavily concentrated among the poorer sections of the population, and which it attributed to poverty, poor socialization, and social deprivation. The problems it addressed were, in other words, the classic pathologies of industrialized, inegalitarian, class society.40 It was precisely these problems of destitution and insecurity, and the political problems that they engendered (open class conflict, labour unrest, and fears of an unfit population, ‘racial deterioration’, declining national efficiency, etc.) that brought about the development of ‘the social state’ in the early years of the century. And it was similar fears—amplified by the collective memory of mass unemployment, economic collapse, and the descent into fascism and communism that could follow—that spurred the New Deal, the Beveridge plan, and the post-war expansion of welfare state programmes in the USA and the UK.41 If it was a Hobbesian problem of order that first prompted the development of the criminal justice state in early modern Europe, one might say it was a Marxist problem of order—the social and political instability caused by class antagonism and unregulated economic exploitation—that first motivated penal-welfarism. To say this is not to claim that correctionalism was directly part of the politics of class struggle and compromise. No working-class movement in Britain or America (or anywhere else for that matter) ever demanded better treatment for criminals or social work for offenders. But the linkages were there nevertheless, since the state form, the social policy, and the class relations out of which penal-welfarism grew, were all strategic responses to precisely this socio-political problem.42 The British welfare state, and its American counterpart the New Deal regulatory state, institutionalized a series of strategic solutions to class conflict and economic disruption that were built around new forms of economic and social management. Regulatory law, state-directed social engineering, and Keynesian demand management came to be central tools of governance. Though the market and the private powers of wealth and capital continued to govern most aspects of life in Britain and America, these powers were increasingly subject to the restraining power of state regulation. Post-war governments in both countries increasingly tempered the risks of market capitalism and de-dramatized economic conflict by instituting social insurance and welfare measures that enhanced security and redistributed resources.43 Over time, both nations established systems of progressive taxation, built schools and highways, regulated labour, subsidized housing, provided pensions and other forms of income support, and ensured minimal (or better) levels of education, health-care, and education for their citizens. They set up new mechanisms of economic management and public investment to alleviate the problem of booms and slumps. They extended state regulation into the workplace and the home to establish national standards of health and safety. By means of an interventionist state, pooled risk, and some degree of redistribution, new levels of economic and social security were made possible. The most immediate effects of this were experienced by those who fell out of the labour market due to ill health, injury, old age or forced unemployment. But at the same time, the population as a whole was being made more secure, and the national economies were being stabilized—processes that had major implications for politics and for social and economic policy in the post-war years.44 Within this new social structure, the prevailing politics was an inclusive, corporatist, social democratic one, and the characteristic form of social policy relied upon various forms of state intervention and social engineering. Its dominant ideology was a moderately solidaristic one that claimed to bring all individuals into full social citizenship with equal rights and equal opportunities. This new civic narrative of inclusion, usually associated with the European ‘welfare state’ was in fact just as much a characteristic of the USA, where it took the special form of the civil rights movement, and the vision of ‘the Great Society’.45 In its idealistic, altruistic aspects and its concern for social justice, this appeal to solidarity reflected the still vivid memories of the Depression and total war, the guilty consciences of upper class elites, the struggles of organized labour, and the aspirations of previously excluded groups. But it also embodied the actuarial concerns and enlightened self-interest of middle-class voters, who soon realized that they had much to gain from certain social policies and redistributions. Indeed it was precisely because the post-war welfare state provided cross-class benefits of economic security, improved health care, educational opportunities, and public sector jobs that it managed to sustain itself for decades to come.46 For its supporters, the welfare state represented a new vision of social justice and equality, aptly expressed in John Rawls's influential argument that justice required a guaranteed minimum of provision before any competition for resources could begin.47 For more conservative thinkers, the welfare state was the price that had to be paid for social peace, economic stability, and the proper education and training of the workforce. Whatever the various motivations, the result was a broad level of bipartisan support for welfare state provision—a pattern that was repeated in respect of penal-welfarism. Penal-welfare and ‘social’ regulation The development of these strategies of social and economic governance established a new style of exercising power, and a new type of social authority—that of social expertise. In this respect, the trajectory of penal-welfarism (in which penological experts increasingly displaced other authority figures) was precisely in keeping with that of the welfare state as a whole. During the first half of the twentieth century many key practices of government began to make use of a new way of reasoning about and acting upon the tasks that they faced. A whole series of problems—such as crime, or health, or education, or work, or poverty, or family functioning—came to be conceived of as social problems, with social causes, to be dealt with by means of social techniques and social work professionals. This new style of regulation empowered expert authorities to establish social norms and standards in areas of life (child-rearing, health care, moral education, etc.) that had not previously been formally regulated. In doing so, these agencies did not rely upon law or coercion, though these were used in the last resort. They relied instead upon the power of their expert authority, the persuasiveness of their normative claims, and the willingness of individuals and families to bring their conduct into line with that prescribed by the experts in the hope of achieving social promotion, economic security, or physical health and self-fulfilment.48 The welfare state thus accelerated the move towards a ‘professional society’ that was already well underway during the nineteenth century. It gave rise to new strata of professional workers who staffed the welfare state and the expanding public sector, ministering to the needs of citizens in an increasingly affluent, consumer economy. Further education expanded to train and certify these proliferating new groups. Social work became a growth industry, fed by the feedback loop of newly recognized problems in need of professional solutions.49 In the 1960s there was a major growth in the personal social services, and the rise of new occupational groups such as ‘social service professionals,’ ‘counsellors’ and ‘therapists’ that had hardly existed before the Second World War. As the post-war trend towards greater income and status equality took hold, and the old hierarchies of class and rank began to fade, professionals and social experts came to enjoy an enhanced status and authority.50 The ideologies and interests of the new penal professionals thus articulated smoothly with the strategies of rule and forms of authority characteristic of the welfare state. ‘Reform’, ‘rehabilitation’, ‘treatment and training’, ‘the best interests of the child’—all of these objectives meshed effectively with the new mechanisms of social regulation, with government through experts, and with ideological stress upon universal citizenship and social integration that characterized social politics in the post-war period.