Penal populism is a media driven political process whereby politicians compete with each other to impose tougher prison sentences on offenders based on a perception that crime is out of control. It tends to manifest in the run up to elections when political parties put forward hard-line policies which they believe the public wants, rather than evidence based policies based on their effectiveness at dealing with crime and associated social problems.

Origins

The phrase was coined in 1993 by

Anthony Bottoms Sir Anthony Edward Bottoms FBA (born 29 August 1939) is a British criminologist. He is life fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, having previously been a Wolfson Professor of Criminology at the Institute of Criminology in the Faculty of La ...

, when he labeled it one of the four main influences on contemporary criminal justice. It is a process that ignores or minimizes the views of criminologists, justice professionals and penal experts, claiming instead to represent the views of “the people” about the need for tougher punishment for criminal offending. It has been theorized that the rise of penal populism has brought an increase in the repressiveness of various nation's criminal laws, including that of the UK,

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...

under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and the United States during the

War on Drugs The war on drugs is a global campaign, led by the United States federal government, of drug prohibition, military aid, and military intervention, with the aim of reducing the illegal drug trade in the United States.Cockburn and St. Clair, 1 ...

References

Populism Criminology Penology {{poli-philo-stub

Origins

See also

References