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 Law ...
, 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 tot ...
under
Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Stephen Joseph Harper (born April 30, 1959) is a Canadian politician who served as the 22nd prime minister of Canada from 2006 to 2015. Harper is the first and only prime minister to come from the modern-day Conservative Party of Canada, ...
, and the United States during the
War on Drugs
The war on drugs is a Globalization, global campaign, led by the United States federal government, of prohibition of drugs, drug prohibition, military aid, and military intervention, with the aim of reducing the illegal drug trade in the Unite ...
.
See also
*
Carceral feminism
Carceral feminism is a critical term for types of feminism that advocate for enhancing and increasing prison sentences that deal with feminist and gender issues. It is the belief that harsher and longer prison sentences will help work towards sol ...
References
Populism
Criminology
Penology
{{poli-philo-stub