Punitive by negligence? The myths and reality of penal nationalism in the Czech Republic

Penal populism has repeatedly been described as influencing penal policies, with harsh penal practices presented as evidence of its influence. However, little attention has yet been paid to its role in the development of penal policies in post-authoritarian countries, which generally have large prison populations. Some minimal research has suggested that Central European countries were driven by penal nationalism following the 1989 revolutions. I examine this claim for the Czech Republic, using Garland (2013) 's framework of the five dimensions of a penal state. My analysis of political manifestoes shows that Czech politicians did not employ “law and order” rhetoric. The country's penal reforms were led by lenient penal elites. Nevertheless, a lack of analysis, coordination and sufficient funding resulted in a failure to properly identify or tackle the causes of the country's high imprisonment rate. Even though it gradually became more difficult to impose prison sentences, insufficient attention was paid to the length of the sentences Czech prisoners were serving. The large Czech prison population thus seems to be the result of state actors’ negligence, but not of penal populism nor of penal nationalism.

A Punitive But Non-Punitive Society: An Explanation Of The Specificity Of Penal Populism In South Korea

<p>It is argued in existing Korean criminological literature that penal populism has strongly influenced the criminal justice system over the last two decades in South Korea (‘SK’, hereafter). Their contention is based on the evidence of punitive penal policies formulated around sex offences against children since the 2000s. These policies include increased minimum sentencing for sex offenders, increased maximum terms of imprisonment, sex offender registration and community notification, electronic monitoring, and chemical castration. However, imprisonment rates in SK, one of the main indicators of punitiveness in other countries, rapidly decreased in the 2000s and have since then been stable. Moreover, the imprisonment rates in this country are significantly lower than those of other societies where penal populism has occurred, including the US, England, and New Zealand. Why, then, do criminologists in SK argue that penal populism has flourished in SK at a time when imprisonment rates are not sufficiently high to invoke punitiveness, let alone the downward (and stabilising) trend of imprisonment rates? The purpose of this thesis is to explain the punitive penal developments in SK since the 2000s, by drawing upon Pratt’s (2007) penal populism theory. Firstly, the contention in Korean criminology that penal populism has strongly operated and impacted the penal landscape in SK is empirically demonstrated. This demonstration is based on analyses of newspaper articles, social media, legislative bills, and minutes of the National Assembly with regard to sexual violence against children. This is followed by an explanation of the specific form of penal populism in SK, which is focused exclusively around sexual violence against children. The explanation draws on a social analysis of why and how the sensibilities of South Koreans toward children and the safety of children have changed over recent decades. The main argument here is that the socio-cultural value of children created under the tradition of Confucian familialism in SK has significantly increased through immense social, economic, and structural changes. These changes were brought about by a compressed process of industrialisation, which began as early as the 1960s, and the transition to late-modern society from the 1990s onwards. Lastly, this thesis seeks to explain the apparent contradiction between penal populism and the rapid decrease of the imprisonment rate in the 2000s in SK. I argue here that the rapid decrease of the imprisonment rate at that time was primarily caused by the changed patterns of pardon, parole, and remand within the context of the criminal justice reforms driven by the two progressive governments between 1998 and 2007. In addition, during the CJS reforms, ‘independence of the judiciary’ was upheld as the most important value, which regulated institutional arrangements in regard to sentencing in particular. Within these arrangements, the judiciary has been able to resist the impact of penal populism, which also contributed to the decrease of the imprisonment rate in the 2000s in this country.</p>

A Punitive But Non-Punitive Society: An Explanation Of The Specificity Of Penal Populism In South Korea

<p>It is argued in existing Korean criminological literature that penal populism has strongly influenced the criminal justice system over the last two decades in South Korea (‘SK’, hereafter). Their contention is based on the evidence of punitive penal policies formulated around sex offences against children since the 2000s. These policies include increased minimum sentencing for sex offenders, increased maximum terms of imprisonment, sex offender registration and community notification, electronic monitoring, and chemical castration. However, imprisonment rates in SK, one of the main indicators of punitiveness in other countries, rapidly decreased in the 2000s and have since then been stable. Moreover, the imprisonment rates in this country are significantly lower than those of other societies where penal populism has occurred, including the US, England, and New Zealand. Why, then, do criminologists in SK argue that penal populism has flourished in SK at a time when imprisonment rates are not sufficiently high to invoke punitiveness, let alone the downward (and stabilising) trend of imprisonment rates? The purpose of this thesis is to explain the punitive penal developments in SK since the 2000s, by drawing upon Pratt’s (2007) penal populism theory. Firstly, the contention in Korean criminology that penal populism has strongly operated and impacted the penal landscape in SK is empirically demonstrated. This demonstration is based on analyses of newspaper articles, social media, legislative bills, and minutes of the National Assembly with regard to sexual violence against children. This is followed by an explanation of the specific form of penal populism in SK, which is focused exclusively around sexual violence against children. The explanation draws on a social analysis of why and how the sensibilities of South Koreans toward children and the safety of children have changed over recent decades. The main argument here is that the socio-cultural value of children created under the tradition of Confucian familialism in SK has significantly increased through immense social, economic, and structural changes. These changes were brought about by a compressed process of industrialisation, which began as early as the 1960s, and the transition to late-modern society from the 1990s onwards. Lastly, this thesis seeks to explain the apparent contradiction between penal populism and the rapid decrease of the imprisonment rate in the 2000s in SK. I argue here that the rapid decrease of the imprisonment rate at that time was primarily caused by the changed patterns of pardon, parole, and remand within the context of the criminal justice reforms driven by the two progressive governments between 1998 and 2007. In addition, during the CJS reforms, ‘independence of the judiciary’ was upheld as the most important value, which regulated institutional arrangements in regard to sentencing in particular. Within these arrangements, the judiciary has been able to resist the impact of penal populism, which also contributed to the decrease of the imprisonment rate in the 2000s in this country.</p>

Stressed to the Punishing Point: Economic Insecurity and State Imprisonment Rates

This research examines the association between economic insecurity and imprisonment rates in the United States. Building on Garland’s thesis about punishment and late modernity, it is hypothesized that rising economic insecurity in a population is associated with an increase in the imprisonment rate. This hypothesis is tested with state-level data for the years 1986–2013. Results indicate a robust association between changes in economic insecurity, measured as the percentage of households in a state losing a quarter or more of their income in a single year, and changes in imprisonment rates. This finding suggests that economic insecurity is not only relevant for explaining large-scale shifts in penal philosophy and practice, as prior sociological theory has argued. It also explains some of the year-to-year variation in imprisonment rates and points to another way in which inequality is associated with punishment.

Populacja więzienna w Polsce po nowelizacji systemu prawa karnego ustawą z 20 lutego 2015 roku

Prison population in Poland after the amendment of the criminal law system by the act of 20 February 2015The article discusses the questions of aims and consequences of the change of the criminal law system of 20 February 2015. One of the basic aims of the amendment was to reduce the amount of prisoners sentenced to imprisonment. One of the ways to achieve this aims has been to change the structure of the criminal system with non-freedom-lose penalties. The amended Criminal Law works for two years.Based on the analysis of the statistical data, it was found that during the period under review, from 1 July 2015 to 30 June 2017, the structure of imposed penalties by the court has been favorably changed. There was a 33,5% reduction in imprisonment and a 29,3% reduction of suspended sentences.The unfavorable phenomenon is the increase of the sentences of imprisonment with the absolute execution at 2,8%. Favorable and expected changes in the structure of the penalties imposed did not transfer significantly into the reduction of the population sentenced to imprisonment. In 2015 was the imprisonment rate at 184.1, and in 2016 it rose to 186.4. The reason for this was the increase in temporarily detained persons in the prison population.

Australian imprisonment 2002–2016: Crime, policing and penal policy

The period between 2002 and 2016 saw substantial reductions in a number of major categories of crime in Australia, including murder, robbery, break and enter, motor vehicle theft and ‘other’ theft. One might expect the Australian imprisonment rate to have fallen too, but it did not. Over the same period, the Australian imprisonment rate grew by 36%. Most commentators assume the growth in imprisonment rates is due to the growth in punitive penal policies. Little attention has been paid to the influence of crime and policing policy. In this article I present evidence that much of the growth in imprisonment rates stems from rising rates of drug use/drug trafficking and changes in policing policy vis-à-vis family violence and child sexual assault.

Forældres fængsling – en stratificerende livsbegivenhed?

Denne artikel handler om den gruppe af børn, der i løbet af deres opvækst må undvære en forælder i en kortere eller længere periode, fordi forælderen skal afsone en fængselsdom. Artiklen argumenterer for nødvendigheden af at inddrage et børneperspektiv i vurderingen af, hvilke konsekvenser det har, at et stigende antal personer indsættes i de danske fængsler. Artiklen undersøger, om flere børn som følge heraf oplever forældres fængsling, og om nogle børnegrupper i stigende grad oplever forældres fængsling. Resultaterne viser for det første, at der er en absolut stigning i antallet af børn, der oplever forældres fængsling, når årgangene 1982-1990 sammenlignes, og for det andet peger resultaterne på, at forældres fængsling i nogle henseender kan være med til ikke kun at opretholde, men også at intensivere i forvejen eksisterende uligheder mellem børn i Danmark og dermed bidrage til den sociale stratifikation. ENGELSK ABSTRACT: Rikke Fuglsang Olsen: Parental Imprisonment: a Stratifying Life Event? In this article I analyze parental imprisonment as a social phenomenon, and stress the importance of incorporating analyses of children’s situation in the assessment of the wider societal consequences of the increasing imprisonment rate in Denmark. The article examines the extent to which an increasing number of children experience parental imprisonment, and the extent to which children from families with fewer resources are over-represented in this increase. The results show that the absolute number of children experiencing parental imprisonment increased among birth cohorts born in 1982-1990. In addition, the results suggest that parental imprisonment not only contributes to maintaining existing social inequalities, but in some respects also reinforces them and thus contributes to the stratification of the Danish society. Keywords: imprisonment, vulnerable children, social stratification.

“The Abandoned Lower Class of Females”: Class, Gender, and Penal Discipline in Barbados, 1875–1929

Between 1873 and 1917, the numbers of Barbadian women committed to penal custody on an annual basis surpassed those of men. While women's per capita imprisonment rate was still somewhat below that of men for most of these years, given the wide margins by which women outnumbered men in the population and the labor force, these proportions were nevertheless unprecedented, not only in the British Caribbean but also in other parts of the world. Available figures for Jamaica and Trinidad over sections of the period hover around an 18–20 percent female proportion rate, while in Barbados the rate usually exceeded 50 percent.