Penal Policy And Political Culture In England And Wales

'I dislike heaping so much praise on a book, as people often imagine another agenda, purpose or friendship is at stake. That makes writing a review of Penal Policy and Political Culture all the more difficult. This really is an excellent book and it is very difficult to put down. For those with and interest in the small 'p' politics of penal policy, it will be of immense appeal. Students enrolled on courses looking at pressure groups and their influence - or lack thereof - will not find a better text. For those at the coal axe - governors, managers, officers and prisoners - it will fascinate and enlighten. And for reformers, it is something of a manifesto. Utterly Suberb': Steve Taylor, Prison Service Journal For many years making penal policy in England and Wales was in the hands of a small, male metropolitan elite made up of Ministers, liberal lobby groups like the Howard League and the Prison Reform Trust, and senior civil servants. Even Parliament was kept at a respectful distance, and public opinion on important penal questions like capital punishment was taken to be something that had to be managed and circumvented rather than acted upon. Penal Policy and Political Culture in England and Wales looks at challenges to this cosy, elite policy making world, first from below as prisoners groups such as PROP and victims groups like Women Against Rape demanded their say in the 1970s and 1980s, and then later, as the New Right deliberately mobilised public opinion around penal questions as a mechanism to support its harsh social and economic policies in the 1980s and 1990s.

'I dislike heaping so much praise on a book, as people often imagine another agenda, purpose or friendship is at stake. That makes writing a review of Penal Policy and Political Culture all the more difficult. This really is an excellent book and it is very difficult to put down. For those with and interest in the small 'p' politics of penal policy, it will be of immense appeal. Students enrolled on courses looking at pressure groups and their influence - or lack thereof - will not find a better text. For those at the coal axe - governors, managers, officers and prisoners - it will fascinate and enlighten. And for reformers, it is something of a manifesto. Utterly Suberb': Steve Taylor, Prison Service Journal For many years making penal policy in England and Wales was in the hands of a small, male metropolitan elite made up of Ministers, liberal lobby groups like the Howard League and the Prison Reform Trust, and senior civil servants. Even Parliament was kept at a respectful distance, and public opinion on important penal questions like capital punishment was taken to be something that had to be managed and circumvented rather than acted upon. Penal Policy and Political Culture in England and Wales looks at challenges to this cosy, elite policy making world, first from below as prisoners groups such as PROP and victims groups like Women Against Rape demanded their say in the 1970s and 1980s, and then later, as the New Right deliberately mobilised public opinion around penal questions as a mechanism to support its harsh social and economic policies in the 1980s and 1990s.

This title examines the role of political culture and penal populism in the response to the emotive subject of child-on-child homicide. Green explores the reasons underlying the vastly differing responses of the English and Norwegian criminal justice systems to the cases of James Bulger and Silje Redergard respectively. Whereas James Bulger's killers were subject to extreme press and public hostility, and held in secure detention for nine months before being tried in an adversarial court, and served eight years in custody, a Redergard's killers were shielded from public antagonism and carefully reintegrated into the local community. This book argues that English adversarial political culture creates far more incentives to politicize high-profile crimes than Norwegian consensus political culture. Drawing on a wealth of empirical research, Green suggests that the tendency for politicians to justify punitive responses to crime by invoking harsh political attitudes is based upon a flawed understanding of public opinion. In a compelling study, Green proposes a more deliberative response to crime is possible by making English culture less adversarial and by making informed public judgment more assessable.

A comparative study of the Dutch penal system with the one in England and Wales. This book offers a critique of the Dutch policy and prisons, upheld for many years as examples of a system designed around a humane and enlightened approach towards criminal offenders.

This collection, from a range of leading international scholars, looks at penal practice in a variety of different European countries. Noting particularities as well as similarities, such as the overuse of imprisonment and the use of harsher sanctions against the poor, this book questions how we justify and deliver punishment in Europe.

"This book is Volume IV in the Official History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales. Previous volumes have focused on the moral reforms of the 1960s, the changes to the criminal courts and the introduction of an independent prosecution service, and the broad shifts in penal policy that have taken place in the post-war era. This volume examines the changing politics of law and order, charting the gradual shift toward greater political conflict and dispute. Until the early 1970s law and order rarely occupied a privileged place in political debate. From that point this began to change with, initially, the Conservatives utilising crime and penal policy as a means of distinguishing themselves from their opponents. This volume charts these changes in the politics of law and order and examines the rise in the temperature of political debate around such issues as the Labour Party markedly shifted its direction in the 1990s This book will be of interest to students of British political history, criminology and sociology"--

This work charts the dramatic changes in crime control and criminal justice in the UK and US since the 1970s. It presents an in-depth analysis of contemporary crime control, revealing its underlying logics and rationalities, and the cultural sensibilities that have produced a culture of control.

In the last thirty years, the USA and the UK have witnessed a profound change in the way in which we think about and respond to crime and social control. Crime has become part of everyday life as, for many citizens, has imprisonment. Managing Modernity brings together criminologists, social theorists, and philosophers to consider what explains these changes and what they tell us about ourselves and the way in which we live. The authors consider the pervasive, the obvious, and the covert ways in which crime and social order have come to structure social discourses and social life, from mass imprisonment to zero tolerance, to on-the-spot fines. This volume was previously published as a special issue of the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (CRISPP).

Following the USA, in many Western countries over the last decade, prison rates have increased while crime rates have declined. This key book examines the role played by penal populism on this and other trends in contemporary penal policy.