Book review: Inventing fear of crime, Murray Lee. Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2007. 237 pp. (including index). £22.00. ISBN 1—84392—174—X
| Author | Sandra Walklate |
| Published date | 01 October 2007 |
| Date | 01 October 2007 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745070090040411 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
were meant to intercede between the uninformed public and more reflective and
informed expert opinion have not been wholly swept aside. So, for example, the
campaign to have a version of Megan’s Law in Britain in the year 2000 did not gain
ground even though Home Office Ministers were under great pressure from the public
opinion and the media in the form of The News of the World to do otherwise. Pratt is
also keen to point out that in certain Scandinavian countries pressure to increase prison
populations has been resisted, though there is a touch of caution here as he sees ‘cracks
in the wall’ developing in all these countries whose strong underlying social welfare
structures begin to collide with the market ethos of the European Union.
What all this text suggests is that populism is not a wholly unified discourse, that it
has to co-exist with other more progressive discourses and that traditional structures
have remained in place to contain it. In punitive times this might sound like more
encouraging news than we might have expected. However I take Pratt’s underlying
message to be that we need to be vigilant, that to secure a progressive penal policy we
need to be more willing than ever before to engage with the public, and above all, we
need to reaffirm the collectivist values that underpin the welfare state.
This is an important, accessible international perspective on the rise of penal
populism and surely deserves a place in every academic library.
References
Bottoms, A. (1995) ‘The philosophy and politics of punishment and sentencing’, in
C. Clarkson and R. Morgan (eds) The politics of sentencing reform. Oxford: Clarendon.
Garland, D. (2001) The culture of control. New York: Oxford University Press.
Loader, I. (2006) ‘The fall of the platonic guardians’, British Journal of Criminology
46(4): 561–86.
Ryan, M. (2003) Penal policy and political culture in England and Wales. Winchester:
Waterside Press.
Mick Ryan
University of Greenwich, UK
Inventing...
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