In this Review Essay, I try to rise to one of the challenges that Goodman, Page, and Phelps pose to other scholars in their book, Breaking the Pendulum (2017). They invite us to explore whether and how well their “agonistic perspective” on penal change travels. In response, I draw on original archival and oral history research on probation history in Scotland to explore their model’s utility in the context of this particular and challenging test case. Although Scotland is often discussed as an anomaly because of a supposed consensus around an enduring commitment to penal welfarism, my analysis reveals precisely the kinds of contestation that Goodman, Page, and Phelps describe. I conclude that their agonistic perspective seems to travel well, at least to this Atlantic edge of Europe, but that scholars in other jurisdictions will need either to undertake or revisit primary research to properly test the model and further refine it.

中文翻译：

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苏格兰的缓刑竞赛：激动人心的观点如何传播

在这篇评论文章中，我试图提出古德曼、佩奇和菲尔普斯在他们的书中对其他学者提出的挑战之一，打破钟摆（2017）。他们邀请我们探索他们对刑罚改变的“竞争性观点”是否以及如何进行。作为回应，我利用关于苏格兰缓刑历史的原始档案和口述历史研究来探索他们的模型在这个特殊且具有挑战性的测试案例的背景下的效用。尽管苏格兰经常被认为是一个反常现象，因为人们认为人们围绕着对刑罚福利主义的持久承诺达成了共识，但我的分析恰恰揭示了古德曼、佩奇和菲尔普斯所描述的那种争论。我得出的结论是，他们的竞争观点似乎很好地传播，至少到欧洲的大西洋边缘，但其他司法管辖区的学者将需要进行或重新审视主要研究，以正确测试模型并进一步完善它。