The Myth of Punitiveness Revisited

Abstract

Over the past few years there has been a steady stream of books and articles that have provided some commentary on what is referred to as either ‘populist punitiveness’ or ‘penal populism’ (Bottoms 1995; Pratt 2007; Pratt et al. 2005). Significantly, this growing body of literature involves little discussion about what exactly is meant by ‘punitiveness’. Consequently, the concept remains what Marx would have called a ‘chaotic conception’. That is, it remains a thin concept, lumping together the unrelated and inessential and unable to bear the explanatory weight that researchers put on it, ultimately leading to a form of analysis that descends into voluntarism. Thus, rather than identify the causal processes and mechanisms involved in the changing nature of crime control, these voluntaristic accounts see the main driver of crime-control policies as a product of the will of different individuals or groups.