2008
The Rise of the Penal State: Neo-Liberalisation or New Political Culture?
Publication
Publication
The British Journal of Criminology: an international review of crime and society p. 720- 734
Imprisonment rates are presumed to have risen in the west, and it is argued by certain social scientists that this can be explained by a comprehensive process of economic neoliberalisation. In this paper, we develop an alternative explanation, focussing on the rise of a ‘new political culture’. Longitudinal cross-national analyses are performed to test the tenability of these theories. First, it is demonstrated that some countries have been witnessing a trend of penalisation, but that there is no overall trend. Second, economic explanations for variations in imprisonment rates prove to be untenable. Third, it is shown that a new-rightist demand for social order, which is not found to be inspired by economic neo-liberalisation, provides a better explanation. This leads to the conclusion that high incarceration rates can be understood as being part of a right-authoritarian politico-cultural complex.
| Additional Metadata | |
|---|---|
| , , , , , , , , , | |
| doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azn057, hdl.handle.net/1765/15139 | |
| Centre for Rotterdam Cultural Sociology (CROCUS) | |
| The British Journal of Criminology: an international review of crime and society | |
| Organisation | Department of Sociology |
|
de Koster, W., van der Waal, J., Achterberg, P., & Houtman, D. (2008). The Rise of the Penal State: Neo-Liberalisation or New Political Culture?. The British Journal of Criminology: an international review of crime and society, 720–734. doi:10.1093/bjc/azn057 |
|
