Beyond ‘stagnation and change’?: Path dependency, translation and the ‘layering’ over time of Irish penal policy
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Author | Claire Hamilton |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12506 |
Received: 10 February 2022 Accepted: 18 August 2022
DOI: 10.1111/ho jo.12506
SPECIAL ISSUE
Beyond ‘stagnation and change’?: Path
dependency, translation and the ‘layering’ over
time of Irish penal policy
Claire Hamilton
Professor of Criminology, Maynooth
University, Ireland
Correspondence
Claire Hamilton, Professor of
Criminology, MaynoothUniversity,
Ireland.
Email: claire.hamilton@mu.ie
Abstract
In the past decade or so a significant body of work on
‘Hibernian exceptionalism’ to broader punitive trends
has emerged. The dominant argument and characterisa-
tion of Irish penality within this broad schema is that it is
exceptional for having been largely stagnant. This article
takes issue with the stagnation or ‘stickiness’that is often
supposed to characterise the Irish penal system arguing
that stagnation as a form of ‘path dependency’ fails to
adequately account for key moments of penal change
and downplays the temporal dynamics that are often
apparent in policy development. Using two key ‘policy
windows’ as case studies – the 1996 ‘moral panic’ over
crime and the post-2011 turn to a more progressive penal
politics – it argues that greater consideration should be
given to the ‘translation’ and ‘layering’ of policy deci-
sions and the growing complexity of policy space that
may result.
KEYWORDS
Hibernian exceptionalism, Ireland, path dependency, penal policy
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits
use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or
adaptations are made.
© 2023 The Authors. The Howard Journalof Crime and Justice published by Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
46 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hojo HowardJ. Crim. Justice. 2023;62:46–60.
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