Contemporary Crises, 7 (1983) 79-85 79 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam - Printed in The Netherlands PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENT AND IDEOLOGICAL EFFECT: AN ESSAY REVIEW* DAVID GARLAND Philip Bean's previous work in this area, Rehabilitation and Deviance (1976), was a polemical critique of what he termed the "treatment philoso- phy" and its operation in penal practice. He presented a series of arguments and evidence which demonstrated that particular practices such as Social Enquiry Reports, psychiatric probation orders, and indeterminate sen- tencing are open to question in terms of their doubtful "expertise" and diagnostic abilities, their discretionary and moralistic character, and their potential for injustice and oppression. That book's success and in Britain it has been influential amongst practitioners as well as academics - depended more upon its detailed criticism of concrete practices and their effects than upon any general philosophical argument. Moreover, Rehabilitation and Deviance was essentially a negative response. It sought to challenge, to question and to deny, rather than to present positive alternatives to the "treatment model." Bean's new book, Punishment, seeks to extend his previous arguments and to support them by a broader discussion of "philosophical foundations" leading to a positive endorsement of one specific penal philosophy - retribution. This desire to return to the so-called "fundamentals" of penal philos- ophy is by no means peculiar to Philip Bean. The resurrection of what he calls "The Great Debate" (between the philosophies of retribution, deterrence, and reform) recurs so frequently on the sidelines of penality and with such monotonous repetition, that one is led to inquire what the precise value is of a philosophical currency which can be so frequently used and so rarely exchanged for anything except itself. In other words, what is the ideological function of this compulsion to repeat? Whatever the more general significance of this phantom disputation, it is clear that its present meaning relates to the penal crisis currently af- fecting the penal systems of Western Europe and North America. This crisis has little to do with the inherent tensions in the realm of actual sanc- University o f Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland *Text reviewed: Philip Bean. Punishment. Martin Robertson, 1981. 201 pp. plus index. £12.50 cloth. 0378-1100/83/0000-0000/$03.00 © 1983 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company