“The segregated and insulated nineteenth-century institutions made the actual business of deviancy control invisible, but its boundaries visible. That is to say, what went on inside these places was supposed to be unknown. Institutions like prisons gradually became wrapped with an impenetrable veil of secrecy. Segregation came to mean insulation and invisibility. This was the transition which Foucault charted - from the visible, public spectacle (torture, execution, humiliation) to the more discreet form of penitentiary discipline. The public trial remained the only visible part of the system. But a condition for internal invisibility was to have the boundaries of the punitive system more visible and .obvious. We should not See or know what went on behind the walls of the prison, but we should definitely know that these were walls. Whether prisons were built in the middle of cities, out in the remote countryside or on deserted islands, they had clear spatial boundaries to mark off the normal from the deviant. These spatial boundaries were reinforced by ceremonies of social exclusion: prisoners were sent away or sent own, their bodies were symbolically received at the prison gate, then - stripped, washed and numbered - they entered another world. Those on the outside would wonder what went on behind the walls, those inside could try to imagine the 'outside world'. Inside/outside, guilty/innocent, freedom/captivity, imprisoned/released - these were all distinctions that made sense. In the new world of community corrections, these boundaries are no longer nearly as simple. The way into an institution is not clear (it is just as likely to be via a post-adjudication diagnostic centre as a police car) the way out is even less clear (graduated release or partial release is just as likely as full freedom) nor is it clear what or where is the institution. There is, we are told, a 'correctional continuum' or a 'correctional spectrum': criminals and delinquents might be found anywhere in these spaces. And so fine, and at the same .time so indistinct, are the gradations along the Continuum, that It IS by no means easy to know where the prison ends and the community begins or just why any deviant is to be found at any particular point. Even the most dedicated spokesmen for community treatment have Some difficulty in specifying just what 'the community' is; one early report confessed that the term community treatment has lost all descriptive usefulness except as a code word with connotations of "advanced correctional thinking" and implied value judgements against the "locking up" and isolation of offenders. Even the most cursory examination of the new programmes reveals that many varieties of the more or less intensive and structured 'alternatives' are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. A great deal of energy and ingenuity is being devoted to this problem of definition: just how isolated and confining does an institution have to be before it is a prison rather than: say a 'residential community facility'? Luckily for us all, criminologists have got this matter well in hand and are spending a great deal of time and money on such questions. They have devised quantitative measures of internal control, degree of community linkage, normalization (harmony with neighbourhood, type of building, name of programme) and the like. There are now any number of standardized scales for assigning programmes along the 'institutionalization-normalization continuum' or awarding them PASS (Program Analysis of Service Systems) or MEAP (Multiphasic Environmental Assessment Procedure) scores. But these are not just untidy loose ends which scientific research will one day tie up. Community control is a project explicitly devoted to changing traditional ideas about punishment. The ideology of the new movement quite deliberately demands that boundaries should not be made too clear: the metaphor of 'crumbling walls' implies an undifferentiated open space. The main British prison reform group, the Howard League, once called for steps to 'restore the prison to the community and the community to the prison'. Less rhetorically, here was an early enthusiast for a model 'community correction centre': 'the line between being "locked up" and "free" is purposely indistinct because it must be drawn differently for each individual. Once the client is out of Phase I, where all clients enter and where they are all under essentially custodial control, he may be "free" for some activities but still "locked up" for others.' There is no irony intended in using inverted commas for such words as 'free' and 'locked up' or in using such euphemisms as 'essentially custodial control'. This sort of blurring - deliberate or unintentional - may be found throughout the complicated networks of 'diversion' and 'alternatives' which are now being set up. The half-way house might serve as a good example. These agencies - called variously, 'residential treatment centres', 'restitution shelters', 'rehabilitation residences', 'guidance centres', 'reintegration centres', 'community training residence programmes' or (with the less flowery language preferred in Britain) simply 'hostels' - invariably become special institutional domains themselves. They might be located in a whole range of odd settings - private houses, converted motels, the grounds of hospitals, YMCAs, beach clubs, the dormitories of university campuses or even within the walls of prisons themselves. Their programmes turn out to reproduce regimes and sets of rules very close to the institutions themselves: about security, curfew, passes, drugs, alcohol, permitted visitors, required behaviour and surveillance. Indeed it becomes difficult to distinguish a very 'open' prison, with liberal provisions for work release, home release and outside educational programmes, from a very 'closed' half-way house.”
- Stanley Cohen, Visions of Social Control. Crime, Punishment and Classification. Polity, 1985. pp. 57-59.