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THE PRISONERS’ DILEMMA
Over the last two decades, in the wake of increases in recorded
crime and a cluster of other social changes, British criminal justice
policy has e increasingly politicised: both the scale and
intensity of punishment, and the significance of criminal justice
policy as an index of governments’ competence, have developed in
new and worrying ways. Across the Atlantic, we witness the
inexorable rise of the US prison population, amid a ratcheting up
of penal severity which seems unstoppable in the face of popular
anxiety about crime. But is this inevitable? Nicola Lacey argues that
harsh ‘penal populism’ is not the inevitable fate of all
contemporary democracies. Notwithstanding a degree of
convergence, ‘globalisation’ has left many of the key institutional
differences between national systems intact, and these help to
explain the striking differences in the capacity for penal
moderation of otherwise relatively similar societies. Only by
understanding the institutional preconditions for a tolerant
criminal justice system can we think clearly about the possible
options for reform within particular systems.
NICOLA LACEY is Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory
at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is a
Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Fellow of New
College, Oxford.
THE PRISONERS’ DILEMMA:
POLITICAL ECONOMY
AND PUNISHMENT IN
CONTEMPORARY
DEMOCRACIES
NICOLA LACEY
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
Information on this title: 0521899475
© Nicola Lacey 2008
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