Book Reviews
Date | 01 August 2003 |
Published date | 01 August 2003 |
DOI | 10.1177/14668025030033007 |
Subject Matter | Reviews |
Julian Roberts, Loretta J. Stalans, David Indermaur and Mike Hough (eds)
Penal Populism and Public Opinion: Lessons from Five Countries
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 244 pp. (incl. index). £32.95 (hbk)
ISBN 0–19–513623–3
•Reviewed by Neil Hutton, University of Strathclyde, UK
This book is concerned with the emergence, over the last 10–15 years, of
increasingly punitive sentencing policies and practices in the English-speaking
world. The book examines the trends in the United States, Canada, Australia,
New Zealand and England and Wales. This international scope allows both
global and local characteristics to be identified and this provides opportunities
for explorations of the factors which cause jurisdictions to respond in culturally
different ways to similar political and social conditions. The chapters deal with
sentencing practice and policy, public knowledge and opinion, media repre-
sentations of crime and punishment and populist practices in juvenile justice,
sex offending and drug offending. There is also an attempt to explain the rise
of populism and to suggest ways in which penal reformers might seek to
respond to the phenomenon. A very wide range of recent research evidence is
reviewed and the scholarship is of a high standard. The central argument of the
book is that populism needs to be countered by rational argument based on
research evidence, although the authors are cautious about the potential impact
of this enlightened approach.
The evidence put forward in this book supports David Garland’s argument
that governments have responded to ‘the crime problem’ in an ambivalent way
with a combination of tough rhetoric and more rational policies. Critics might
argue that the book overplays the significance of populism as a driver of
harsher punishment and underplays the simultaneous development of more
liberal approaches such as the fertile sources of support at practice level for
restorative justice, the provision of increased resources for non-custodial
sanctions and the retention of rehabilitation under the ‘What Works’ agenda in
many jurisdictions. However, as the focus of the book is on populism, the
balance of the approach is justifiable and there are many references to the more
rational policies and practices that have been developed.
The evidence presented in the book suggests that much of the increase in the
use of prison which has occurred in all of the jurisdictions during a period of
declining crime rates, is the product of judicial sentencing practices. Judges
have sent more offenders to prison for longer periods of time. Legislation has
helped, particularly in the USA (guidelines, three strikes, abolition of parole),
but this has been less evident in the other jurisdictions. One of the problems
with this sort of comparative exercise is that it is very difficult to generalize
about the 50 plus jurisdictions that make up the USA and compare this with
single country jurisdictions like Canada and England and Wales.
The increased severity of judicial sentencing is often justified as an appro-
priate response to public demands. The book reviews a range of research
Book Reviews 321
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