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Remembering Roger Matthews (1948–2020) and Editors’ Introduction to “New Times” and “Environmental Crimes”
... with John Pitts (2001); Informal Justice? (1988); Issues in Realist Criminology, with Jock Young (1992); Prisons 2000: An International Perspective on the Current State and Future of Imprisonment, with Peter Francis (1996);Privatizing Criminal Justice (1989);Prostitution, with Megan O'Neill (2003); Rethinking Criminology: The Realist Debate, with Jock Young (1992); The New Politics of Crime and Punishment, with Jock Young (2011); What is to Be Done about Crime and Punishment? Towards a "Public Criminology" In the same issue of this journal, Nigel South and Avi Brisman paid a tribute to him publishing Remembering Roger Matthews (1948Matthews ( -2020 and editors' introduction to "New Times" and "Environmental Crimes" (South and Brisman 2020). After his death, his fellow academics also wrote texts about his academic legacy (Rivera Beiras 2020, South and Brisman 2020). ...
Roger Matthews was a British criminologist renowned as a left realist. He was a Professor of Criminology at the University of Kent and worked with figures such as Cohen and Young. He was part of the National Deviancy Conference and was there when Taylor, Walton and Young publish “The New Criminology”. Matthews was also one of the founders of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control. In this interview, Matthews presented a brief context of British sociocriminological academia in the 1970’s and on. He showed us the academic network between North American and British academics and the rivalry among them. After all that, Matthews still talked about his impressions on European and Latin American Criminology.
Roger Matthews fue un criminólogo británico reputado como realista de izquierdas. Fue profesor de criminología en la Universidad de Kent y participó en la National Deviancy Conference. En esta entrevista, Matthews presenta un breve contexto de la realidad académica socio-criminológica británica en los 70 y más allá. Nos muestra la red académica entre los investigadores norteamericanos y británicos y la rivalidad entre ellos. A continuación, Matthews habla de sus impresiones sobre la criminología europea y la latinoamericana. Sus afirmaciones nos animaron a reflexionar sobre debates recientes en el campo criminológico brasileño y nos alertaron de algunos de los límites de una criminología marginal.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1237
The production of global solid waste has reached an all-time high with over two billion tons discarded each year—much of it burned, illegally dumped at sea, or buried in unregulated landfills (The World Bank 2019). The United Nations Environment Assembly has declared the current waste problem a “global crisis” (Parker 2019), with estimates predicting that the present rate will worsen threefold by 2050 based on existing consumption and disposal rates (Ellis 2018). The international community has responded with expanding laws and regulations that seek to ensure that waste is disposed of in safe, sustainable and renewable ways. Such measures, however, have increased the costs of disposal and have inadvertently enlarged illegal markets in dumping and transference (European Commission 2019). This article examines the ways in which transnational corporations have avoided the rising costs of lawful disposal by shipping their waste to poor countries in the Global South—often with devastating social and environmental impacts. This article draws on world systems theory (Wallerstein 2004) and political ecology (Bedford et al. 2019; Forsyth 2008) in order to embellish discourses in green criminology and southern criminology (Brisman et al. 2018; Carrington et al. 2018; Goyes 2019) and to examine critically the contemporary social and environmental harms generated by the illegal transference of solid and hazardous waste.
Contemporary criminological discourses identify the emerging phenomena of water theft in societies experiencing drought and water insecurity (Brisman et al. 2018). Such analyses point to policies of privatization, to the marketization and commodification of freshwater, and to state politics premised on trade and fiscal prosperity. Notwithstanding the relevance of such debates, this article demonstrates that water theft and regulations prohibiting and punishing such offenses are indeed not new. Throughout history, various civilizations and societies have created and administered laws to protect freshwater and to punish and prevent water theft. This article seeks to contribute to contemporary criminological discourses by identifying and analyzing the laws and regulations of water theft within select ancient civilizations. Such analyses provide insights at both a conceptual and practical level. Such past examples of water management, non-compliance and sanction provide useful insights into contemporary acts of water theft, water justice, and the future governance of life’s most essential resource.
The Castor project was a proposed underground gas storage facility off Spain’s Mediterranean coast financed through a public–private partnership (PPP) between the Spanish state and a consortium led by the Spanish conglomerate Grupo ACS. During the project’s development, cost overruns led to it being refinanced through a bond issuance organized by the European Investment Bank (EIB)—the finance arm of the European Union (EU). On reaching the injection stage, gas escaped violently causing hundreds of small-scale earthquakes resulting in the project’s closure and, as per the terms of the concession, the generation of a €1.3 billion debt for Spanish gas consumers. Using criminological concepts and theory, this article will first explore how the seismic risks that the project posed were excluded from the EIB appraisal process before identifying the causes of the disaster as a product of the “financialization” of infrastructure and investor protection frameworks needed to sustain it.
A great deal has been written about the changing nature and direction of criminology over the past two decades, including claims that we are moving into a “new penology.” Many of these claims are suggestive rather than authoritative. In contrast to most commentaries on the subject, this article provides longer historical overview and attempts to sketch out how the central structures or “pillars” of the criminal justice system have become weakened and eroded over the last 200 years and how the emergence of body of “new crimes” and their regulation is challenging what might be called the “old criminology.” The emergence of new relations between victims and offenders, criminal justice and social justice, as well as the development of innovative modes of regulation are, it is argued, changing the social and criminological landscape. This raises issues of theory and practice that challenge traditional conceptualisations of crime and punishment.
Going for Growth, an industry-led strategy to expand the agri-food sector, was adopted by the Northern Irish government in 2013 in order to encourage farming intensification in Northern Ireland. This approach, however, threatens an already fragile natural environment and has already had detrimental consequences for human health and well-being. This article employs an environmental justice perspective to scrutinize farming intensification in a community affected by this phenomenon. Based on findings from semi-structured interviews with local residents, the article describes their exposure to environmental risks as a result of farming intensification. The uneven distribution of environmental burdens is also coupled with limited opportunities for the local residents to engage in environmental decision-making and to be recognized as active agents of change. The article concludes that farming intensification in Northern Ireland is marked by procedural environmental injustice and should be addressed by downscaling levels of production and reforming decision-making processes.
Norway has been signatory to the Council of Europe’s Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats (1979) (otherwise known as the “Bern Convention”) since 1986. Nevertheless, every year, Norwegian authorities authorize the killing of brown bears, lynx, wolves and wolverines, which are listed as strictly protected fauna species by the Bern Convention. Norway has a responsibility to protect these species and has several times been brought to court by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) for failure to satisfy their duties under this international legal instrument. This article discusses Norway’s large predator policy and its compliance with the Bern Convention through an analysis of court decisions and judicial reasoning from the perspective of species justice for nonhumans.
The beer industry in the United States (US) is undergoing significant change as craft beer has grown exponentially in recent years. The number of craft breweries has increased threefold since 2011 (Brewers Association 2019b), and the US now features more than 6000 breweries of various sizes (Vorel 2017). As promising as this growth may be for the industry and beer enthusiasts, incidents of environmental degradation at the hands of breweries have persisted. This article draws from interviews with US craft brewers to explore the problem of environmental harm in the brewing industry. We focus on the consumption of freshwater and the disposal of wastewater, primarily within brewing facilities, but also across the beer supply chain. Finally, we consider the role of consumer-driven environmental consciousness as a mechanism to address environmental harm within the beer industry.
In this qualitative study, I examine, through the lens of repression, Swedish Muslims’ experiences of being targeted by authorities in the latter’s attempts to prevent terrorism. In an effort to comprehend the full force of this repression—as coercion in its physical and violent sense, but also in its more subtle and consensual forms—I interweave various Marxist and postcolonial perspectives. The study discusses internal aspects of repression, as well as its external qualities, expanding our understanding of how repression occurs between bodies and within society. I develop the concept of “repressive consent” as a means of grasping situations in which people are influenced to undertake activities against their will. Empirically, the article focuses on experiences of disproportionate security controls and encounters with the Swedish Security Service (Säpo). The material reveals both painful and everyday consequences. For some individuals, becoming a target in the War on Terror may have, as the informants of the study indicate, devastating consequences; for others, it may feel like a friendly chat.
This article draws on discourses in political ecology and green criminology to critique the ways in which transnational mining is legitimated and advanced with significant impacts on natural environments and local communities in the Global South. It examines an ongoing case of environmental conflict related to Australian mining in South Africa and explores processes of ecologically unequal exchange. It identifies how the corporate tentacles of transnational mining corporations circumvent and subvert regulatory oversight to exploit people, land and natural resources—with devastating environmental and social impacts. Finally, it discusses the perils and prospects faced by affected communities, as well as localized movements of resistance and environmental activism when confronting state and corporate power.
That sexism and speciesism on occasion operate in concert has been well documented in animal studies, in ecofeminism and in green criminology. This article shows that for much of its history, the taboo term cunt has embodied terms of abuse that are at once both sexist and speciesist. In opening up a new direction in the analysis of intersectional oppressions, this article examines how the burden of this dirty work has been carried by species represented by terms such as bitch, bunny, cow, fox and pussy. In uncovering this history, this article constructs a cultural etymology of cunt, finding that: (1) the term acquired its full vitriol only when speciesism was shackled to its latent sexism; and (2) only when its speciesist aspects were censured and rendered obsolete did its abusiveness toward women begin to ebb. The article concludes with a warning: Those who nowadays aim to rehabilitate cunt and reclaim it on behalf of women should be mindful that this project can proceed only if it ignores the history of how this binary term was enabled and intensified by human violence against other animals.
Lone wolf terrorists, who use bombs, firearms, knives, vehicles, biological weapons, or other means to kill and injure, sometimes inflicting mass casualties, are of increasing concern to governments, police, and security forces in Western countries around the globe. This article seeks to develop a more multi-dimensional framework for understanding these actors and the attacks they perpetrate by bringing the under-examined aspect of gender to the fore. The article contributes to the body of literature on lone wolf terrorism by centering gender as a means of analyzing this phenomenon. In particular, it looks to the current criminological scholarship on lone wolf terrorism, highlighting the lack of a developed gendered analysis. The article challenges misrepresentations of male violence against women in response to and in representations of lone wolf terrorists. It argues that the proliferation of these misunderstandings in policy, practice, and scholarship undermines efforts to understand and combat effectively lone wolf terrorism.
Aquaculture is the single largest agribusiness in the Australian state of Tasmania, with local company, Tassal, the foremost producer of farm-raised salmon in the country. Tassal has come under considerable criticism for its environmental impact, despite the fact that since 2014, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) and the World Wildlife Fund have certified it consistently as a sustainable business. This article argues that these endorsements are the result of a corrupt corporate arrangement that is designed purposefully to mislead consumers. It examines the considerable payments to both non-governmental organizations from Tassal and the questionable nature of the certification process administered by the ASC.Tassal salmon showcasing eco-friendly labeling from both the WWF and ASC
(Baines and Aird 2017)
The emerging and changing roles of environmental activists pose interesting questions for criminological inquiry. On the one hand, environmental activism has become pivotal to the implementation, compliance and regulation of environmental policies. For example, the resources and technologies of environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are increasingly employed by state agencies to help identify, monitor and prosecute environmental crime. In this sense, environmental activism has become a quasi-arm of the state in preventing environmental crime. On the other hand, environmental activists have been targeted by state legislatures and enforcement agencies as “eco-terrorists” and ideological warriors who impede trade, economic prosperity and the aspirations of private enterprise. As such, protecting the environment through protest has become an increasingly dangerous endeavor with harassment, persecution and death of activists occurring at the hands of both states and corporations. In these instances, environmental activists are perceived as a threat to the corporations and states that seek profit through the exploitation of natural resources. Thus, it can be argued that the relationship between those seeking to protect the environment and the state is paradoxical, involving both collaboration and coercion, and dynamism and danger. This article addresses the relationship between environmental activists and government. It examines three different dynamics between activists and states working to develop environmental policies, each with varying levels of trust and cooperation.
Approaching behaviour that produces environmental harm through the medium of criminal sanctions (largely involving monetary penalties) has been criticised consistently as failing to prevent environmental crimes and harms, and failing to concurrently reduce environmental re-offending. Furthermore, important state-corporate political and economic relationships exist that ensure the continuation of environmental degradation. We suggest that a way to overcome this is to rework the current legal system to one grounded in Earth jurisprudence. Although we realise that state-corporate relationships would likely prevent the implementation of Earth jurisprudential principles, we argue such principles are essential to upend the prioritisation of economic imperatives over ecological values within capitalist societies. To demonstrate the strength and utility of the Earth jurisprudential approach, we use the case of fracking for shale gas in the United Kingdom to examine how Earth jurisprudential principles could prevent environmental harm from occurring.
The focus of criminology on crimes and harms committed by and against humans has broadened over time. Only since the 1990s, however, has the discipline recognized the significance of crimes and harms concerning the environment and nonhuman animals. A variety of approaches and bodies of work now contribute to what can be described as “green criminology.” This article summarizes research on types of environmental crime and harm, as well as different eco‐philosophical orientations and related justice‐based approaches. It concludes with an example illustrating the ways in which these approaches may overlap.
The nature and direction of criminology has changed significantly over the past two decades. The subject area has also grown exponentially and become more diverse. New fields of inquiry are opening up as new issues are added to the criminological agenda. However, at the same time there are some unwelcome developments in the discipline that impact on the orientation of the subject and which detract from its overall viability and standing. The aim of this paper is to identify these unwelcome trends in order to contribute to the development of a more critical and coherent criminology.
Based on an in-depth literature review, Research Fellow Dr. Alex P. Schmid explores the terms “radicalisation”, “de-radicalisation” and “counter-radicalisation” and the discourses surrounding them. Much of the literature on radicalisation focuses on Islamist extremism and jihadist terrorism. This is also reflected in this Research Paper which explores the relationship between radicalisation, extremism and terrorism. Historically, “radicalism” – contrary to “extremism” – does not necessarily have negative connotations, nor is it a synonym for terrorism. Schmid argues that both extremism and radicalism can only be properly assessed in relation to what is mainstream political thought in a given period. The paper further explores what we know well and what we know less well about radicalisation. It proposes to explore radicalisation not only on the micro-level of “vulnerable individuals” but also on the meso-level of the “radical milieu” and the macro-level of “radicalising public opinion and political parties”. The author reconceptualises radicalisation as a process that can occur on both sides of conflict dyads and challenges several widespread assumptions. The final section examines various counter-radicalisation and deradicalisation programmes. It concludes with a series of policy recommendations.
Many studies have sought to explain the major crime declines experienced in most advanced countries. Key hypotheses relate to: lead poisoning; abortion legalization; drug markets; demographics; policing numbers and strategies; imprisonment; strong economies; the death penalty; gun control; gun concealment; immigration; consumer confidence; the civilizing process, and; improved security. This paper outlines five tests that a hypothesis should pass to be considered further. It finds that fourteen of the fifteen hypotheses fail two or more tests. The security hypothesis appears to pass the tests, and thereby pave the way for further research.
This article considers the dominant structure and patterns of policing as related to Internet-based sex offences. It is argued that the policing of Internet sex offences occupies an anomalous position, as compared to other forms of online offending. One the one hand, the policing of Internet sex offences partakes of a wider trend towards the dispersed and pluralised governance of crime, a trend that is in many ways typified by responses to Internet crime. One the other hand, Internet sex offences are policed in ways at odds with responses to other forms of online offending – most especially in the extent of time, attention and resources directed to such offences by state-centred agencies. The state-centric response to such offences can be understood by appreciating their position within a ‘hierarchy of standing’ amongst and between Internet crimes. ‘Hierarchies of standing’ define offences differently according to their perceived seriousness and urgency, drawing upon collective judgements about the vulnerability of victims, the dangerousness of offenders, levels of risk and extent of harm caused. Public, political, media and expert assessments of sex offences serve to place them at the apex of the ‘hierarchy of standing’, and as such drive expectations that they will be subject to urgent and concerted action by state agencies, rather than being delegated to the responsibility of non-state actors.
‘I go about the street with water-creases crying, “Four bunches a penny, water-creases.”’ London Labour and the London Poor is an extraordinary work of investigative journalism, a work of literature, and a groundbreaking work of sociology. Mayhew conducted hundreds of interviews with London’s street traders, entertainers, thieves and beggars which revealed that the ‘two nations’ of rich and poor in Victorian Britain were much closer than many people thought. By turns alarming, touching, and funny, the pages of London Labour and the London Poor exposed a previously hidden world to view. The first-hand accounts of costermongers and street-sellers, of sewer-scavenger and chimney-sweep, are intimate and detailed and provide an unprecedented insight into their day-to-day struggle for survival. Combined with Mayhew’s obsessive data gathering, these stories have an immediacy that owes much to his sympathetic understanding and highly effective literary style. This new selection offers a cross-section of the original volumes and their evocative illustrations, and includes an illuminating introduction to Henry Mayhew and the genesis and influence of his work.
This book challenges contemporary criminological thinking, providing a thorough critique of mainstream criminology, including both liberal criminology and administrative criminology. It sets a new agenda for theoretical and practical engagement, and for creating a more effective and just criminal justice system.
There has been a recent shift of emphasis towards making social scientific investigation more policy relevant. University departments and funding bodies are increasingly using terms like ‘impact’, ‘deliverables’ and ‘outputs’ and more frequently aim to identify the beneficiaries of research studies. There has also been an important and timely debate in the social sciences about developing a ‘public criminology’ that is able to contribute to contemporary policy debates (Burawoy 2004; Currie 2007). Some leading criminologists have argued that the criminological industry is becoming increasingly socially and politically irrelevant and has little to contribute to the major debates on crime and justice (Austin 2003; Cullen 2011). Others have put the case for making criminology more policy oriented by asking ‘What is to be done?’ (Burawoy 2005, 2008). This debate raises important questions about the role of the academic researcher.
America's prison-based system of punishment has not always enjoyed the widespread political and moral legitimacy it has today. In this groundbreaking reinterpretation of penal history, Rebecca McLennan covers the periods of deep instability, popular protest, and political crisis that characterized early American prisons. She details the debates surrounding prison reform, including the limits of state power, the influence of market forces, the role of unfree labor, and the 'just deserts' of wrongdoers. McLennan also explores the system that existed between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, where private companies relied on prisoners for labor. Finally, she discusses the rehabilitation model that has primarily characterized the penal system in the twentieth century. Unearthing fresh evidence from prison and state archives, McLennan shows how, in each of three distinct periods of crisis, widespread dissent culminated in the dismantling of old systems of imprisonment.
“Backed up by the best science, Todd Clear and Natasha Frost make a compelling case for why the nation’s forty-year embrace of the punitive spirit has been morally bankrupt and endangered public safety. But this is far more than an exposé of correctional failure. Recognizing that a policy turning point is at hand, Clear and Frost provide a practical blueprint for choosing a different correctional future-counsel that is wise and should be widely followed.”-Francis T. Cullen, Distinguished Research Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati Over the last 35 years, the US penal system has grown at a rate unprecedented in US history-five times larger than in the past and grossly out of scale with the rest of the world. This growth was part of a sustained and intentional effort to “get tough” on crime, and characterizes a time when no policy options were acceptable save for those that increased penalties. In The Punishment Imperative, eminent criminologists Todd R. Clear and Natasha A. Frost argue that America’s move to mass incarceration from the 1960s to the early 2000s was more than just a response to crime or a collection of policies adopted in isolation it was a grand social experiment. Tracing a wide array of trends related to the criminal justice system, The Punishment Imperative charts the rise of penal severity in America and speculates that a variety of forces-fiscal, political, and evidentiary-have finally come together to bring this great social experiment to an end. Clear and Frost stress that while the doubling of the crime rate in the late 1960s represented one of the most pressing social problems at the time, this is not what served as a foundation for the great punishment experiment. Rather, it was the way crime posed a political problem-and thereby offered a political opportunity-that became the basis for the great rise in punishment. The authors claim that the punishment imperativeis a particularly insidious social experiment because the actual goal was never articulated, the full array of consequences was never considered, and the momentum built even as the forces driving the policy shifts diminished. Clear and Frost argue that the public’s growing realization that the severe policies themselves, not growing crime rates, were the main cause of increased incarceration eventually led to a surge of interest in taking a more rehabilitative, pragmatic, and cooperative approach to dealing with criminal offenders. The Punishment Imperative cautions that the legacy of the grand experiment of the past forty years will be difficult to escape. However, the authors suggest that the United States now stands at the threshold of a new era in penal policy, and they offer several practical and pragmatic policy solutions to changing the criminal justice system’s approach to punishment. Part historical study, part forward-looking policy analysis, The Punishment Imperative is a compelling study of a generation of crime and punishment in America.
The rise in lone wolf terrorist attacks worldwide in recent decades makes understanding the types of targets lone wolves choose a crucial locus of research, yet this topic remains understudied. In light of this lacuna, this article analyzes 84 lone wolf terrorist attacks that occurred in the United States between 1940 and 2012, identifies patterns in lone wolf target selection, and proposes and tests causal explanations for these patterns. I find that (1) a majority of lone wolves select civilian targets in familiar areas and (2) this is due to their relative weakness and their ideology.
Identity-related crimes pose a significant problem to both the UK economy and also its citizens because they cause estimated annual losses of around £1.5billion. Not only do identity crimes cause considerable public concern, but they also create challenges for policing them; not least, because policing responses, in the broader regulatory sense, are often over-reactive or take the form of dramatic Public Relations gestures rather than coherent policing policy. Yet, the realities of identity-related crimes are quite different from the ways that they are perceived and even more important is that fact that this difference presents many challenges for those whose job is to ‘police’ them. This article will look at what identity crimes are and at the very real problems they pose for policing them as non-routine policing activities. The article will, firstly, map out identity crimes and outline the behaviours that we understand as identity crimes and their core characteristics. It will then consider how the characteristics map onto traditional police practice and consider some of the ways that the challenges have been addressed.
Pre-print version available at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2466705
Members of ‘terrestrial’ communities are migrating in ever-increasing numbers to a new ‘Third Space’ that manifests outside traditional geographical physical boundaries. This online space consists of purely social relations where interaction and community are performed at-adistance. The diversifying populations of these virtual villages, towns and cities now constitute very real communities. Online non-gaming spaces such as Ebay, Active Worlds and Secondlife, for example, deliberately utilize the discourse of community in an attempt to instil a sense of communal space and shared responsibility among their members. While the majority subscribe to the rhetoric of ‘netizenship’ others find alternative means to participate online. The avocations of these few have resulted in the endemic deviance/crime problem that exists online. As a result, online communities have developed their own distinct history of control and regulation. This article explores the ways that online social spaces maintain orderly ‘communities’. It contrasts ‘proximal’ (online) forms of governing online behaviour, such as online reputation management systems, ‘virtual’ police services and vigilante groups that employ ‘online shaming’, with ‘distal’ (offline) forms such as offline policing and criminal justice processes. The central theme of the article is a critical account of how these, often contradicting, nodes of governance interact.
Pre-print version available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1012702
This paper examines the problem of alternatives to the prison in order to problematize the prison as an institution, as a form of punishment and as a system for promoting respect for the law. It argues that the mechanisms that were central to the prison during the 19th century, such as the practice of penitence as a principle of rehabilitation, the family as agent of correction, or as agent of legality, and labour as a fundamental instrument for punishment, still operate today, if in altered forms, in both the conventional and alternatives types of prison. The prison has been a factory for producing criminals; this production is not a mark of its failure but of its success. Prison manages control over illegalities by means of a whole set of apparatuses that manage their reorganization, redistributing them according to an economy of illegalisms. It may well be that changes in the economy and in the mechanisms for regulating populations mean that the carceral functions of the prison are today being disseminated at the level of the social body, so that they would now operate beyond the space of the prison through multiple instances of control, surveillance, normalization and re-socialization. The question of the prison cannot be resolved or even posed in terms of a simple penal theory. Neither can it be posed in tems of a psychology or sociology of crime. The question of the role and possible disappearance of the prison can only be posed in terms of an economy and a politics, that is, a political economy of illegalisms.
This article provides an exploration of how the criminological imagination can provide particular insights into the nature of environmental issues. To illustrate the contribution of criminology to such discussions, the article provides a case study of the social, political and economic dynamics surrounding the provision of drinking water. The article demonstrates the complexities in determining the character, extent and impact of environmental harm. It furthermore identifies diverse and at times competing approaches to environmental regulation and to the prevention of environmental harm.
In a number of recent analyses, rehabilitation has been portrayed as a casualty of processes of penal transformation, coming to be frequently characterized as 'dead' or 'irrelevant'. This article takes issue with such a characterization in the specific penal context of England & Wales, and seeks to explain why rehabilitation is currently enjoying a renewed legitimacy. The central argument is that rehabilitation, in this jurisdiction, has adapted and survived into the 21st century by transforming and re-marketing itself in important ways. Central to this transformative process has been a successful appeal to three dominant 'late modern' penal narratives: utilitarian, managerial and expressive. It is argued that in the contemporary (Anglo-Welsh) penal context, rehabilitation enjoys legitimacy to the extent that it is compatible with each of these narratives.