Perspectives on Punishment - Criminal Law - Law

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Perspectives on Punishment

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Takes a multidisciplinary approach to the subject of penal policy and criminology
Includes a mixture of both empirical research and theoretical perspectives
Comparative analysis
International coverage

The book offers an incisive collection of contemporary research into the problems of crime control and punishment. It has three inter-related aims: to take stock of current thinking on punishment, regulation, and control in the early years of a new century and in the wake of a number of critical junctures, including 9/11, which have transformed the social, political, and cultural environment; to present a selection of the diverse epistemological and methodological frameworks which inform current research; and finally to set out some fruitful directions for the future study of punishment. The contributions to this collection cover some of the most exciting and challenging areas of current research including terrorism and the politics of fear, penality in societies in transition, penal policy and the construction of political identity, the impact of digital culture on modes of compliance, the emergent hegemony of information and surveillance systems, and the evolving politics of victimhood.

Taken together, this work draws connections between local problems of crime control, transnational forms of governance, and the ways in which certain political and jurisprudential discourses have come to dominate policy and practice in western penal systems. ERRATUM The sentence on p. 153, lines 5-7 should read "...if welfare expenditure had not risen but remained at its 1987 level, the rise in imprisonment would have been 20 per cent greater than actually occurred, i.e. from 75 in 1987 to 99 in 1998." No other part of the book is affected by this correction.

Readership: Scholars, advanced students, and policy-makers in the fields of Criminal Law; Crime & Criminology; Penology & Punishment; Sentencing and Punishment; Social Theory; Terrorism; Politics & Government; and Jurisprudence

1: Sarah Armstrong and Lesley McAra: Audience, borders, architecture: the contours of control
2: Richard Sparks: Ordinary anxieties and states of emergency: statecraft and spectatorship in the new politics of insecurity
3: Lindsay Farmer: Tony Martin and the nightbreakers: criminal law, victims, and the power to punish
4: Evi Girling: European identity, penal sensibilities and communities of sentiment
5: Loïc Wacquant: Penalization, depoliticization, racialization: on the over-incarceration of immigrants in the European Union
6: Laura Piacentini: Prisons during transition: promoting a common penal identity through international norms
7: Thomas Mathiesen: The globalization of control: towards a control system without a state?
8: David Downes and Kirstine Hansen: Welfare and punishment in comparative perspective
9: Neil Hutton: Sentencing as a Social Practice
10: Richard Jones: 'Architecture', criminal justice, and control
11: Andrew Scull: Power, social control, and psychiatry: some critical reflections
12: Malcolm Feeley: Origins of actuarial justice

Edited by Sarah Armstrong, Lecturer in Law, University of Edinburgh, and Lesley McAra, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, University of Edinburgh

Contributors:

Sarah Armstrong

Lesley McAra

Richard Sparks

Lindsay Farmer

Evi Girling

Loïc Wacquant

Laura Piacentini

Thomas Mathiesen

David Downes

Kirstine Hansen

Neil Hutton