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In this edition, given the considerable scope of the research, I decided not to be overly original.
I decided to retain the basic idea of this edition, as in the 2011 and 2020 monographs, namely Ulrich Beck’s view that today even the theoretical premises of the “welfare state” and “social security” are melting under the scorching sun of globalization and taking on forms that enable political influence in the relevant spheres of social relations. What passes for the universalism of Western Enlightenment and human rights is nothing more than the voice of “dead, old white men” who infringe on the rights of minorities by elevating their party “metanarrative” to an absolute[1].
The problem is that in 2025, “old white men” are no longer “dead,” further exacerbating the relevance of research on prison systems and prison policy in the 21st century due to the radicalization of views on the goals of criminal punishment, the spread of imprisonment, a decline in tolerance for torture and other forms of ill-treatment (sometimes to zero), the devaluation of the rehabilitation component in the activities of many prisons, and systemic illegality in penitentiary systems in the form of informal prison hierarchies deeply embedded in modern penitentiary systems.
The rehabilitation horizons, ideals, and dreams of Philadelphia and Auburn were finally lost in the realm of conservative classical penitentiary thinking, giving way to a new symbol of the era — the Salvadoran mega-prison СЕСОТ.
When discussing the scientific analysis of any penitentiary issue, it should be noted that in the 21st century, classical legal science has exhausted itself in its attempt to identify the problems of the application of punitive practices, as well as the problems of the penitentiary system, not to mention the ways and methods of solving such problems.
The main reasons for this penological “exhaustion” were and remain the conservatism of legal science and its permanent self-isolation from globalisation trends and influences. Penitentiary science and practice have done everything in their power to demonstrate their alleged apoliticality, clarity, and purity of their “criminal-executive” element, creating dead scholastic constructs around “enforcement of punishment,” “correction,” and “resocialization.” In their efforts to appear “scientific,” penitentiary science and practice have failed to notice that the more they try to be “academic,” the more politicized they become.
The traditional (formal-legal) approach to the study of penitentiary systems as isolated national penological aquariums, standing aloof from globalisation processes, has collapsed. We can observe an increasing evaporation of faith in traditional criminal justice with its classic “goals,” which is unable to adapt to the conditions of the modern world and respond to its objective conditions.
A step must be taken toward the modernization of criminal law and penitentiary science. The question is what new concepts and ideas can save them.
This is precisely what I have attempted to do in this monograph.
At the very least, I have tried to assess contemporary ideas about crime, the aims of punishment, practices of punishment, and methods of dealing with deviants as realistically as possible.
[1] Beck, U. (2001). What is globalization? The mistakes of globalism – responses to globalization. Moscow. P. 21.
