The globalization of American criminal justice: The New Zealand Case
| Author | Liam Martin |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865817745938 |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The globalization of
American criminal justice:
The New Zealand Case
Liam Martin
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Abstract
The international influence of American criminal justice policy has been a central focus of
research on policy transfer and comparative penology. With scholars divided between those
emphasizing international convergence around United States policy, and others stressing
ongoing American exceptionalism, it has become important to trace the extent of this influ-
ence not only across different countries but within particular national contexts. This article
examines the impact of American criminal justice policy in New Zealand. I present three case
studies exploring developments in different arms of the criminal justice system: the intro-
duction of three strikes sentencing laws, the adoption of supermax principles of prison design
and administration, and the use of zero tolerance and broken windows policing strategies. In
tracing these changes, I find globalization opening new channels for the movement of policy
that are often outside the control of the criminal justice establishment.
Keywords
Assemblages, broken windows, comparative penal policy, globalization, mass imprisonment,
policy mobilities, policy transfer, supermax, three strikes, zero tolerance
Date received: 5 June 2017; accepted: 30 October 2017
The international influence of United States criminal justice has been a focus of ongoing
debate in scholarship on the globalization of punishment (Jones & Newburn, 2007;
Wacquant, 1999). New Zealand is an important national context for examining these
trends: perhaps more than any other Western country, it followed the broad American
path toward get-tough crime control over the last three decades. As punitive law and
order politics gained wide public appeal and cross-party support, legislators passed a
range of measures to lengthen prison sentences and restrict access to bail and parole
(Pratt & Clark, 2005; Goodall, 2016). The prison population increased substantially and
New Zealand now has a rate of incarceration among the highest in the OECD. As in
America, there are large racial inequalities in imprisonment (Jackson, 1987; McIntosh,
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
2018, Vol. 51(4) 560–575
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865817745938
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Corresponding author:
Liam Martin, Victoria University of Wellington, Kelburn Campus, Kelburn Parade, Wellington, New Zealand.
Email: liam.martin@vuw.ac.nz
2011; Webb, 2011). Ma
˜ori make up around 15% of the general population, but half of
all prisoners, a parallel to the mass imprisonment of African-Americans. In both coun-
tries, prison growth has been closely linked to neoliberal restructuring and concentrated
in the communities worst impacted by welfare cutbacks and declining working-class
employment (Cavadino & Dignan, 2006, pp. 77–91; Workman & McIntosh, 2013).
This paper examines three case studies of particular American policies influencing the
development of New Zealand criminal justice: (1) the introduction of three strikes laws
with origins in a fact-finding mission to California by lobbyists who became instrumen-
tal in getting the regime passed; (2) the influence of America’s first modern supermax,
United States Penitentiary (USP) Marion, on the design and administration of
Paremoremo, New Zealand’s only maximum security prison; and (3) the use of zero
tolerance and broken windows policing strategies from the New York Police
Department. These policies have all been described elsewhere as important examples
of the global spread of American criminal justice (Dixon, 1999; Jones & Newburn, 2006;
Ross, 2013). What has emerged in New Zealand are hybrids shaped at some times by
borrowing from the United States, and at others, resistance and even rejection. Three
strikes laws faced staunch opposition from within the state bureaucracy, supermax prin-
ciples were challenged by prisoners in the High Court, zero tolerance and broken win-
dows were used largely as symbols and remained at odds with national policing strategy.
Nonetheless, across the three major branches of criminal justice—courts, police, and
prisons—we find important lines of American influence at the punitive edge of New
Zealand developments.
I develop this analysis by drawing on the notion of policies as assemblages (McCann
& Ward, 2012). In this approach, policies are treated not as fully formed wholes but
unstable combinations of elements: ideas and expertise, symbols and labels, regulations
and institutional capacities. It provides an alternative to the policy transfer approach to
research on globalization in criminal justice. The concept ‘‘policy transfer’’ has tended to
imply the relatively straightforward relocation of neatly parceled policies from one jur-
isdiction to another (Peck & Theodore, 2010), -that is, the export and import of criminal
justice products between national governments. In contrast, the concept of assemblages
highlights the always partial and incomplete nature of policy mobilities. In New
Zealand, diverse local actors from both inside and outside government are borrowing
selectively from American criminal justice models. Policy enters the country not ready-
made but in bits and pieces, often debated and contested, then blended with local elem-
ents to create assemblages often quite dissimilar from their source. In showing how these
assemblages come together, distinctions can be drawn between influence operating at
different levels, from the movement of symbols and rhetoric to more substantive impacts
on policy content and implementation (Newburn, Jones, & Blaustein, 2017, p. 13).
New Zealand is an especially interesting context for examining globalization in crim-
inal justice because it couples an unlikely pair of attributes: physical isolation and global
integration. On the one hand, the country is among the most remote in the world, made
up of two islands at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean sitting 1500 mile from the nearest
neighbor, Australia. At the same time, the AT Kearney-Foreign Policy Globalization
Index (2004) ranks New Zealand as the eighth most globalized society on earth. Tourism
and migration have boomed as international travel becomes ever easier: 3.5 million
people visit the country each year and around one in seven New Zealanders now live
Martin 561
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