‘There is and never has been, in my opinion, any direct correlation between spiralling growth in the prison population and a fall in crime. Crime fell throughout most of the western world in the 1990s. Crime fell in countries that had, and still have, far lower rates of imprisonment than ours.’ (The Rt Hon Kenneth Clarke, Justice Secretary, The Mansion House, 13 July 2010)

‘Labour introduced a ludicrous list of powers for tackling anti-social behaviour – the Iso, the Asbi, the Asbo and the Crasbo. Crack house closure orders, dog control orders, graffiti removal orders, litter and noise abatement orders, housing injunctions and parenting orders. These sanctions were too complex and bureaucratic. There were too many of them, they were too time consuming and expensive and they too often criminalised young people unnecessarily, acting as a conveyor belt to serious crime and prison.’ (The Rt Hon Theresa May, Home Secretary, 11 August 2010)

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. (Marx, 1852)

This new “government” of social insecurity – to speak like Michel Foucault – rests on the discipline of the deskilled and deregulated labour market and on an intrusive and omnipresent penal apparatus. The invisible hand of the market and the iron fist of the state are complementary and combine to make the lower classes accept desocialised wage labour and the social instability it brings in its wake. After a long eclipse, the prison thus returns to the front line of institutions entrusted with maintaining social order. (p 81)