Publisher's Synopsis
This volume draws upon an emerging body of interdisciplinary, comparative and largely empirical, research to address a hitherto neglected criminological issue. How, why and with what consequences do societies choose among crime control strategies? The result is to broaden the reach of criminological inquiry beyond crime, per se, to its political, social and cultural construction. The volume is divided into three sections. Section 1 focuses on the relationship between policy and politics and this research problematizes what is largely taken for granted by criminologists: the predominance of a punitive discourse and punitive policies of crime control. Section 2 shifts to an analysis of the public attitudes widely thought to be driving punitive policy choices. Here, the findings reveal a surprisingly divided and ambivalent public, whose punitive attitudes are only tenuously linked to crime. Section 3 turns to the cultural institutions that construct the meaning of punishment and to the cultural understandings that explain why punishment resonates with such a powerful positive affect. These cultural matters are the most intriguing, the least well understood and the hardest to research.
