Revisiting the comparative political economy of punishment

In this lecture, I will address recent attempts to understand the relevance of political forces and institutions in shaping the practice and the social meaning of punishment. I will focus on one argument about the relevance of the political which has been especially influential during the last decade. This is the ‘neoliberal penality thesis’: the argument that politics can usefully be characterised as broadly neoliberal, or as social democratic: and that the decline or attenuation of social democracy, and the concomitant rise of neoliberalism have been associated with an intensification of penality. I will sketch what I take to be the key arguments for that thesis, before presenting a critique of both its method and its substantive conclusions.