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elationship between the host and recipient jurisdiction. Rather, the rationalised approach
to punishment facilitated the use of similar type institutions across jurisdictions with similar
cultural settings. Western culture is firmly based upon the approach of rationality which
structures every aspect of life in terms of a duality of positive or negative, right or wrong
and as we move into the digital age one or zero. When one examines the hard physical
sciences one observes immediately that scientific propositions must be true for all places
irrespective of country or jurisdiction. But it might also be observed in other areas of life
outside of the physical sciences, that rationalisation has taken firm root in the use of
bureaucracies (Weber 1976) and pervasivelyin the services sectors of economies. Ritzer’s
(2000) example of globalised provision of fast food through the McDonald’s franchise
system furnishes a challenging example of the application of the rationalization of society
andculture. 25
There is always a danger when legislative measures are taken much in the same way as a
technology and transferred to a new setting, that the technology may not quite suit the
circumstances of the recipient jurisdiction (Freiberg 2001). As will be revealed in this
chapter and the following chapter, certain difficulties presented in the adoption of the
scheme for community service in England and Wales when it was adapted for Irish
conditions. However, notwithstanding frictional differences in such policy transference,
many such legislative measures, such as drunk driving regulation and domestic violence
legislation could be applied in many Western jurisdictions as if the measures were pre-
packagedandmade available “off the shelf”.
Although Jones and Newburn (2007) demonstrate that international policy transfer in the
criminal justice field primarily manifests itself within the recipient jurisdiction at the “soft”
end of the spectrum of ideals, rhetoric and symbolism any attempt at a “hard transfer” of
pre-packaged criminal justice measures is rare and subject to complexity and
25 A McDonaldized society is based upon four features which Weber identified in his earlier description of the bureaucratization of society. These essential
and common features require that the project is capable of a maximum efficiency, calculability, predictability and control. Ritzer’s example of McDonald’s
patrons acting as part of the enterprise byclearingtables suggest the patrons identifywith and are culturallyassimilated into it. The advent of the McDonald’s
culture to the USSR during Glasnost was initially regarded in the West with some degree of amusement, but it was also regarded as part of a normalisation
process. In the post-communist era the Eastern Bloc countries have embraced the market economy, arguably the purist form of rationalised society, with
enthusiasm. Ritzer’s example of the rationalisation, represented by McDonald’s fast food chain, is but one example of the construction of a technology
whether administrative (Weber 1976 ), commercial (Ritzer 2000) or socio-economic whose constant feature is the durability of a rationalised system as it is
appliedfromone settingto another.
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