Making sense of penal difference: Political cultures and comparative penology
| Published date | 01 October 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221117521 |
| Author | Louise Brangan |
| Date | 01 October 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Making sense of penal
difference: Political cultures
and comparative penology
Louise Brangan
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Abstract
In this paper I argue that if we are to make sense of why punishment differs between
jurisdictions, then we should focus on the political cultures that shape penal practices.
Political culture is conceived of here as a ‘practical consciousness’, made up of implicit
and express cultural values and political commitments. Using the comparative case stud-
ies of Ireland and Scotland (from 1970–1990s), the paper tries to show that by taking the
time to recover and interpret the beliefs and ideas that frame penal policymaking, we will
be better able to illuminate and make sense of cross-national penal patterns. And using
the leverage of cross-national contrast and analysis, we can also better understand pun-
ishment and its place in each society.
Keywords
political culture, comparative punishment, penal culture, politics of punishment,
Scotland, Ireland
In this paper I argue that if we are to make sense of why punishment differs between jur-
isdictions, then we should focus on the political cultures that shape penal practices.
Political culture is conceived of here as a ‘practical consciousness’(Williams 1964).
Made up of implicit and explicit cultural values and political commitments, political
culture informshow governments understandsociety and their role withinit, and permeates
decisions about how they should best respond to the problems of crime, punishment and
social order. By grasping these differencesin the politics of punishment, we can better illu-
minate the local and contingent forces that are fundamental in shaping differences in cross-
national penal policies and practices.
Corresponding author:
Louise Brangan, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK.
Email: Louise.Brangan@strath.ac.uk
Article
Punishment & Society
2023, Vol. 25(4) 934–954
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14624745221117521
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
Despite the globalisation of generic carceral commitments –human rights, rehabilita-
tion, reintegration, etc. –and the broadly similar patterns we have observed in rising and
falling prison rates (Cavadino and Dignan 2006), we see that stark differences persist in
how and why we punish. These divergences exist not just between, but also within
nations (Barker 2009). And this penal pluralism continues to defy our often binary com-
parative frameworks (Brangan 2020). The central contention of this paper is that such dif-
ferences reveal punishment's inescapably embedded nature, reflecting the respective
social relations that pervade in our comparators (Melossi 2001). To advance this argu-
ment, and more thoroughly illuminate cross-national penal differences, I argue that we
should attend to the political and cultural dynamics that shape policy choices and
inform penal outcomes. To study political culture involves a grounded study of govern-
ment. This requires that we focus on those making policy and ask what cultural sensibil-
ities inflect their decisions? And we must ask explicitly political questions about their
motivations too: what understanding of government power is embedded in penal pol-
icies? By comparing political cultures we can undertake fine-grained comparisons of pen-
ality by identifying not just punitive contrasts, but the socio-cultural distinctions
embedded in similar penal programmes. In this way, we are also using the leverage of
cross-national contrast and analysis to better understand punishment and its place in
each society.
The article begins by providing an overview of the main forms of explanation and ana-
lysis in comparative penology, which have highlighted the significance of political econ-
omies, political institutions, and national cultural meanings. Despite disagreement and
variation, there is something of a taken-for-granted consensus about the aims of compari-
son: explaining contrasts in punitiveness. How might we conduct more inductive compar-
isons that illuminate the complex penal cultures that pervade in each place being
compared? Arguing that the ‘proximate causes’of punishment are the internal workings
of government (Garland 2013), the first point of departure is conceptual. Drawing on cul-
tural sociology and governmentality, I sketch out the key components of political culture,
such that we can render it comparable. The second departure is methodological. If we
want to avoid the ‘sweeping assertions of either difference or sameness’that once threa-
tened to dominate comparative penality (Newburn and Sparks 2004:7), we require a com-
bination of grounded methods. Showing how this framework can produce fuller and often
more compelling accounts of cross-national penality, a brief illustrative comparative
sketch of Ireland and Scotland –looked at here from the 1970–1990s –is provided. I con-
clude by arguing that the ascension of punitiveness as the object of comparative punish-
ment and society has been at the expense of developing a more nuanced comparative
view of penality, one where we treat it as a dynamic social institution rooted in place
and time.
Understanding comparative penal differences
The contemporary field of comparative penality was largely spurred on by the rapidly
rising prisoner numbers in the West. In attempting to make sense of the broad similarities
and striking contrasts in penal severity across regions, what was initially the most
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