Special issue: Punishment, values and local cultures
| Published date | 01 July 2015 |
| Author | David A Green,Hilde Tubex |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474515593415 |
| Date | 01 July 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
Editorial
Punishment & Society
2015, Vol. 17(3) 267–270
! The Author(s) 2015
Special issue:
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
Punishment, values
DOI: 10.1177/1462474515593415
pun.sagepub.com
and local cultures
Hilde Tubex
University of Western Australia, Australia
David A Green
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, USA
This special issue contributes to a discussion that has become central to contem-
porary comparative penology: how best to explain convergences and divergences
between Western states in their deployment of penal power. Its particular focus
is on characteristics of local cultures and the underlying and distinct historical
values that best account for jurisdictional particularities in penal policy and
outcomes.
The recent penal history of post-industrial societies is well described in a set of
overarching, global narratives, including, for instance, those that describe
and interpret the myriad consequences of the arrival of ‘late-modernity’
(e.g. Garland, 2001), as well as others that focus most on the ways in which
the expansion of neo-liberal thinking and policy, and the withering of welfare
states, have shaped justifications for and methods of state punishment and social
control (e.g. Wacquant, 2009). However, the forces at work in these master nar-
ratives manifest differently at the national and jurisdictional levels. Thus, the puni-
tive patterns and trajectories they shape in each are distinct and culturally
embedded (Melossi, 2001), resulting in different penal policies, practices and
outcomes.
Two articles (by Karstedt and Snacken) in this special issue offer theoretical
analyses of penal developments at the international level, while four focus on the
changing penal contexts in four countries: the United States, Canada, Sweden and
Australia. A comparison of their imprisonment rates per 100,000 of the population
– which range from 707 (USA), to 114 (Canada), to 57 (Sweden) – presents widely
different impressions of each country. A similarly divergent and variable pattern
can be observed among the four selected Australian jurisdictions whose
...
To continue reading
Request your trial