‘Dragonisation’ revisited: A progressive criminal justice policy in Wales?
| Author | Jonathan Evans,Robert Jones,Nerys Musgrove |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1748895821990428 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895821990428
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2022, Vol. 22(4) 636 –653
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895821990428
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‘Dragonisation’ revisited:
A progressive criminal justice
policy in Wales?
Jonathan Evans , Robert Jones and
Nerys Musgrove
University of South Wales, UK
Abstract
The concept of ‘dragonisation’ was the first authoritative attempt to engage with criminal
justice policy in post-devolution Wales. Its central claim, that devolution created the space and
conditions for progressive justice policy to flourish in Wales while remaining part of the unitary
England and Wales jurisdiction, remains largely unchallenged more than a decade since it first
entered Welsh criminological vocabulary. By reviewing policy developments and drawing upon
empirical research, this article revisits dragonisation to assess the extent to which Welsh policy
has continued to diverge from England since the formative years of devolution. The arguments
presented here contribute to emerging discussions over the future of criminal justice policy in
Wales and form part of a wider criminological research agenda aimed at producing fine-grained
territorial analyses of criminal justice practices, including differences within the same jurisdiction.
Keywords
Devolution, dragonisation, justice, Wales
Introduction
Devolution has transformed the governance of the United Kingdom. The uneven distri-
bution of powers to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales since 1999, as well as to met-
ropolitan areas of England in recent years (e.g. Greater Manchester Combined Authority,
2019), has led to widening legislative and policy divergence in the United Kingdom
(MacKinnon, 2015; Paun et al., 2016). One of asymmetric devolution’s most striking
Corresponding author:
Jonathan Evans, Centre for Criminology, University of South Wales, Llantwit Road, Wales CF37 1DL, UK.
Email: jonathan.evans1@southwales.ac.uk
990428CRJ0010.1177/1748895821990428Criminology & Criminal JusticeEvans et al.
research-article2021
Article
Evans et al. 637
anomalies, however, is that Wales remains the only devolved nation without its own
distinct criminal justice system. Despite having its own government and legislature,
Wales continues to be a part of the single jurisdiction of England and Wales. This has led
some, including a former First Minister of Wales, to suggest that Wales is the only com-
mon law country in the world to have an executive and legislature without its own dis-
tinct legal jurisdiction (Huckle, 2016; Welsh Parliament’s Constitutional and Legislative
Affairs Committee, 2012).
Montesquieu’s (1748 [1989]) philosophy of the separation of powers is based on a
model of functioning constitutional entities founded upon the trias politica: the legisla-
ture, executive and judiciary. The implication of this analysis is, to use the metaphor of a
stool, that only three legs can ensure stability (Jones and Wyn Jones, 2019). By granting
Wales this unique set of arrangements, the inherent instability of the two-legged Welsh
constitutional settlement has fuelled growing concerns over the sustainability of the cur-
rent justice arrangements in Wales. Following the passage of the Wales Act 2017, the UK
Government duly established the Justice in Wales Working Group to assist the Ministry
of Justice better reflect the unique arrangements that exist in Wales. Significantly, in
September 2017, the Welsh Government announced the establishment of the Commission
on Justice in Wales, under the Chairship of the former Lord Chief Justice of England and
Wales, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, to undertake the first systematic review of justice in
Wales for over 200 years. Its final report concluded that the criminal justice arrangements
for Wales are ‘unduly complex’ and recommended that legislative responsibility for
criminal justice be transferred from the Westminster parliament to the Welsh Senedd
(Commission on Justice in Wales, 2019: 10).
One could be forgiven for assuming that Wales’ constitutional exceptionalism has
made it a standout case for critical social scientists. However, despite efforts to explain
the emergence of a distinct criminological policy space in Wales (Jones, 2017), few
attempts have been made to assess how the Welsh Government has performed while
operating within the single England and Wales system. The most authoritative attempt to
do so emerged in 2008 when academics developed the concept of ‘dragonisation’.1 Much
like the efforts made by academics in Scotland to use ‘tartanisation’ as a way to measure
its own divergence from the policies and practices adopted in England and Wales, ‘drag-
onisation’ was conceived as an attempt to capture the emergence of a different approach
to community safety and youth justice in Wales (Edwards and Hughes, 2009; Haines,
2009). At a time when New Labour in England were talking tough on crime and penal
policy (Scraton, 2005), dragonisation became shorthand for the existence of a distinc-
tively progressive Welsh Government criminal and social justice agenda within one part
of the jurisdiction.
Unlike tartanisation, which has periodically been subjected to theoretical analysis and
empirical research (e.g. Brangan, 2019; McAra, 2006; McAra and McVie, 2015), the
concept of dragonisation has largely been abandoned since it first emerged in 2008.
Despite this neglect, it remains the most authoritative conceptualisation of how Welsh
Government has used its powers within a range of policy areas that intersect with the UK
Government’s formal responsibilities for justice. More than a decade later, dragonisation
continues to linger somewhat uncritically above the Welsh debate, despite clear indica-
tions that divergence between Wales and England has narrowed (Brewster and Jones,
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