Cultural peers and penal policies: A configurational approach toward mapping penal landscapes
| Author | Susanne Karstedt |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474515590890 |
| Published date | 01 July 2015 |
| Date | 01 July 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Punishment & Society
2015, Vol. 17(3) 374–396
! The Author(s) 2015
Cultural peers and penal
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policies: A configurational
DOI: 10.1177/1462474515590890
pun.sagepub.com
approach toward mapping
penal landscapes
Susanne Karstedt
Griffith University, Australia
Abstract
Globalization changed the comparative gaze and enterprise in criminology. The dia-
lectics between global convergence and domestic divergence are nowhere more visible
but in the realm of responses to crime. Rather than loosening their impact on penal
justice and penal policies, cultural differences, national institutional settings and symbols
are coming to the fore, and contemporary penal policies and systems develop along the
fault lines of regions, the routes of colonial power or supra-national regimes. Recent
conceptualizations of globalization focus on actors and mechanisms, thus advancing
‘agency-rich’ models in the comparison of penal systems. Using a ‘configurational com-
parative approach’ this article explores the role of ‘cultural peers’ in shaping the land-
scape of penal regimes in Europe. ‘Penal cultures’ and ‘cultures of control’ constitute
two layers of configurations, each one with four peer groups. The European landscape
of penal cultures and cultures of control emerges from different historic trajectories,
different partners in and mechanisms of diffusion. Cultural and spatial nearness both
are important, and processes of Europeanization seem to have an impact. Beyond
convergence and divergence of penal regimes and cultures of control, Europe appears
as a pluralistic community at best and a deeply divided one at worst.
Keywords
configurational approach, cultural peers, culture of control, morality policies, penal
culture
Corresponding author:
Susanne Karstedt, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University, Mt Gravatt Campus,
176 Messines Ridge Road, Mount Gravatt, QLD 4122, Australia.
Email: s.karstedt@griffith.edu.au
Karstedt
375
Just when comparative and international criminology started to thrive on expand-
ing and improving international data sources it came under attack. A number of
authors predicted its premature death caused by the forces of juggernaut ‘global-
ization’. They argued that ‘comparative and international approaches to. . . justice
are inadequate to capture the full complexity of these issues on a global scale’
(Larsen and Smandych, 2008: xi), or they urged comparationists to look at ‘distant
conflicts and developments’ rather than inside the territories of jurisdictions (Aas,
2007: 286). A ‘hegemonic punitive worldview’ (Listwan et al., 2008) took hold
among criminologists. From this perspective, ever harsher sanctions, mass impris-
onment and ‘penal populism’ were inevitable corollaries of the economic processes
unleashed by globalization, and their concomitant economic policies of neo-liberal-
ism (Brown, 2011). Hardly anybody noticed that the rise of global issues in crim-
inology went ‘hand in hand with a continuation of more traditional type of
comparative enquiries’ (Nelken, 2011: 4), and that ‘the explanations of penal
policy remain(ed) curiously parochial’ (Tonry, 2001: 522).
The ‘hegemonic punitive worldview’ that emerged in the last decades of the 20th
century, was linked to the ‘premise of universality’ in globalization processes and
progressive integration (Halliday and Carruthers, 2009: 5). Universality implies that
globalization and global forces lead to convergence and homogenization of both
crime and criminal justice across the globe. Within such a framework there is little
space for the nation state, and consequently global forces and flows are supposed to
have a direct and imminent impact on national justice policies (Aas, 2007). In ana-
lyses of globalization, criminal justice and penal policies, the ‘global’ as an explana-
tory tool has been used as a ‘monolithic black box’ (Halliday and Carruthers,
2009: 5). The role attributed to neo-liberal economic policies in the proliferation of
harsh penal policies, or expectations as to the global spread of US mass incarceration
and policies of ‘zero tolerance’ were mainly based on the adoption of such conceptu-
alizations of the global. As criminologists soon noticed there was less convergence than
divergence in penal systems and policies, with numerous exceptions to the penal
impact of neo-liberalism, with whole regions ‘resisting punitiveness’ (Snacken and
Dumortier, 2012), and different ‘exceptionalisms’, from US exceptionalism to
Dutch, French, English and Nordic (Daems, 2013: 35). In the field of penal policies
the nation state and national governments turned out to be as powerful as ever.
The tensions that arise between the nation state as part of the international
system and its authority over its own jurisdiction shape the face of local and
global criminal justice problems. These dynamics intricately link the global and
the local. The dialectics of global convergence and domestic divergence are
nowhere more visible but in the realm of responses to crime. Governments are
accountable to citizens but simultaneously they are part of an emerging global and
transnational system of international human rights norms, conventions, treaties
and exchange of best practice, and subject to decisions by regional and inter-
national courts. Reactions to crime and criminal justice are part of global flows,
networks and overarching ideas, as much as they are informed by local common
values and demands from citizens, and responding to domestic challenges of crime.
376
Punishment & Society 17(3)
Criminal justice systems and practices have an elective affinity with the ‘discursive’
dimension of globalization, and are related to the meanings and interpretations of
local and global crime scenes, including diagnosis, policy frameworks and practices
(Halliday and Carruthers, 2009: 7; Tonry, 2001, 2011). Domestic criminal justice
policies are situated at the cross-roads of global forces from above, and internal
forces from below, and finally the international and horizontal diffusion of prac-
tices. Rather than loosening their impact on penal justice and penal policies, cul-
tural differences, national institutional settings and symbols are thus coming to the
fore in processes of globalization. Consequently, contemporary penal policies and
systems develop along the fault lines of regions, the routes of colonial power or
different supra-national regimes.
This globalization narrative of convergence and divergence differs widely from
the grand and mostly ‘agency-less’ (Brown, 2011: 132) master paradigms – neo-
liberalism and (late) modernity – of overarching forces that push towards conver-
ging trajectories and a common and more unified model of criminal justice. In
contrast, recent conceptualizations of globalization focus on flows and networks,
and horizontal or vertical diffusion into the subunits of national societies. We find a
pre-eminence of processual and dynamic concepts, and a focus on ‘actors and
mechanisms’ (Braithwaite and Drahos, 2000; Halliday, 2009). Paradoxically, this
shift towards perspectives on actors and mechanisms on the global level has paved
the way towards analysing penal systems and penal policies in terms of more
‘agency-rich’ models generally. Garland (2013) recently has suggested abandoning
the master narratives of social and historical forces that shape punishment within
and across nation states, and replacing them with the analysis of the ‘penal state’ as
actor itself, and the various actors that constitute it.
Such an agency-rich perspective breaks up the ‘monolithic black box’ (Halliday
and Carruthers, 2009: 5) of globalization, and dissects the forces that impact on the
penal nation state, externally and from within. It thus allows for contingency: for
openness of development rather than inexorability of penal policies (Brown, 2011),
and for plurality and difference rather than convergence complemented by ever
more exceptions. The ways in which penal policies and institutions travel (Karstedt,
2007), or are adopted and diffused (Bergin, 2011, 2013) seem to be a more suitable
model for the task of explaining divergence and convergence on the regional and
global level. The actor-cum-mechanism model is more apt in identifying unex-
pected turns in punitiveness like the recent decrease in incarceration in the USA
(Karstedt, 2013a), ‘cracks’ in the hegemonic punitive worldview (Listwan et al.,
2008) or pockets of ‘resistance’ to specific penal policies (Snacken and Dumortier,
2012). It comes with the particular advantage of linking global and international
processes and actors with local developments of penal policies, and contrasting a
‘hegemonic punitive worldview’ with penal developments in the opposite direction.
There cannot be any doubt that comparative perspectives, conceptualizations and
methodologies in criminology are presently changing in the wake of their ‘revival in a
globalised world’ (Tubex, 2013). Lessons from globalization generally and changes in
the analytical toolbox with which globalization issues are addressed in other
Karstedt
377
disciplines have been decisive in developing fresh approaches. These include: com-
parative research at the micro-level (Tubex, 2013); comparisons within regions
(Johnson and Zimring, 2009; Karstedt, 2014a, 2014b); focusing on mechanisms of
diffusion and adoption of policies rather than on agency-less approaches (Dobbin
et al., 2007). Finally, as ‘strong cultural differences between countries...
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