Shifting and targeted forms of penal governance: Bail, punishment and specialized courts

Studies of punishment have focused predominantly on emerging forms of penal governance, and the revival of punitive forms of punishment. Although this research helps to raise concerns about forms of penal excess and neoliberal penal patterns, it does not clarify how these strategies co-exist with, modify and are re-assembled with older and sometimes seemingly contradictory penal strategies. Our article examines how practices used by Canadian specialized courts are changing the parameters of punishment and thereby challenging the prevailing theories about neo-liberal punishment. Specialized courts are motivated by therapeutic and preventative goals, and they rely on relationships with local community groups to create a new range of interactions with the court and the offender. Our analysis of how bail strategies and techniques are altered in specialized courts provides a valuable context in which to analyse emerging theoretical issues associated with the management of risk, community/court interactions, the connotation of 'therapeutic justice' and the subtext of punishment and penal change.