Beyond Public Opinion Polls: Punitive Public Sentiment & Criminal Justice Policy

The punitive turn in criminal justice policy, epitomized by policies like three-strikes, truth in sentencing, and mandatory minimums, is often attributed in part to demand for harsher criminal justice responses from an increasingly punitive public. It has been argued that public opinion, known to be both largely uninformed and often misunderstood, might both indirectly and directly affect policy. This survey article on punitiveness in public opinion opens with a discussion of competing depictions of the nature of the relationship between a punitive public and increasingly punitive criminal justice policies. The article then focuses on some of the most influential explanations for variations in punitiveness within individuals and across groups. A review of what we know about public attitudes toward punishment and a brief explanation of how we know what we know (e.g. the methodologies by which we gauge public opinion) follow. The article concludes with the observation that as methodologies continue to improve and the literature in this area continues to grow, so too does our understanding of punitive public opinion in all of its complexity.     

Explaining the United States’ Penal Exceptionalism: Political,Economic, and Social Factors

In this review, I examine explanations for why the United States is a world leader in its use of imprisonment. I first outline cross‐national trends in incarceration and then evaluate the state of the literature and empirical evidence for why the United States is more punitive than other advanced industrialized nations. I argue a confluence of political, economic, and social factors distinct to the United States context are implicated in the punitive turn in the 1970s. Specifically, United States’ penal exceptionalism is the result of (1) a shift of criminal justice policy from the judicial to the legislative branch of government; (2) political responses to social and economic changes including deindustrialization and the upheaval of race relations in the 1960s; and (3) a weak welfare state. These changes stand in stark contrast to the dynamics of criminal justice policymaking among comparable nations. However, there is a need for more comparative research on the topic, as understanding the mechanism behind the stabilization or decrease of penal populations in other countries may better elucidate the reasons for America’s divergence from international trends.     

Drug Courts and the Logic of Coerced Treatment1

This article examines the social and historical significance of coerced drug treatment within the criminal justice system. Drug courts, the most prominent example of this approach, serve as a case study to explore how seemingly contradictory perspectives on substance use—therapeutic and punitive—are merged to justify increased criminal justice oversight of defendants in the name of facilitating recovery. Drawing on an analysis of drug court organizational documents and interviews with key advocates, this article (1) examines the punitive, therapeutic, and medical knowledge drug court advocates draw on and construct to justify an increased role for the courts in solving the problem of addiction, and (2) links these theories historically to broader discussions about the causes of crime and the courts’ role in solving social problems. Overall, this article considers how scientific theories are fused with moral considerations in the name of an “enlightened” criminal justice approach to complex social problems.     

Disciplining the sex ratio: exploring the governmentality of female foeticide in India

The ‘girl child’ has attracted a considerable amount of attention in India as an object of policy addressing gender discrimination. This article examines the field of campaigns seeking to address female foeticide and positions the public discourse on the ‘girl child’ and sex selective abortion in India within a broad cultural backdrop of son preference. The article argues that anti-female foeticide campaigns exist within a disciplinary domain of female foeticide which both generates a discourse of saving the ‘girl child’ and also shows attempts to utilise both incentives and punitive measures in carving out a female foeticide carceral space.     

Retribution or Rehabilitation? Conflicting Goals of US Policies Pertaining to Drug Felonies and Their Impact on Women

Both retributive and rehabilitative views are present in US public policy regarding individuals convicted of drug-related felonies, and the impact of these policies on women is examined in this article. While federal aid program policies are frequently punitive and restrictive, criminal justice policies often focus on treatment and increased access to housing. Implications for women and families are discussed and recommendations made.     

Political origin and persistence of industrial policy in Africa

ABSTRACT

The literature on industrial policy in Africa has generally explained its political origins in terms of ruling elites’ distribution of benefits to their supporters. However, in competitive political contexts in which policies are deeply political and designed to satisfy clients, such as policies that support party donors, the problem of policy discontinuity is bound to arise because a change in ruling party is bound to alter the direction of distributional policies. The current paper uses Nigeria’s backward integration policy (BIP), an industrial policy on cement production, to sharpen the analytical distinction between the origins and persistence. Although the ruling elites’ political quest for survival explains the origin of Nigeria’s industrial policy on cement (ruling elites were in search of re-election funds and teamed up with domestic capitalists for donations, who in turn influenced the political elites to create policies in their area of business), it does not explain the continuation.     

What is social about criminal justice social work in Belgium?

This paper is concerned with how ‘social work’ is constructed in policy documents of Belgian criminal justice social work, applied to the Houses of Justice, Department of Offender Guidance (previously called the probation service). We argue that Belgian probation has been indeed under influence of controlling tendencies, however, these are masked in a managerial cloth rather than an open punitive stance. Second, we notice that social work values are interpreted in a very limited and methodical manner, namely with reference to the systems perspective of the Palo Alto school of Gregory Bateson and Paul Watzlawick as the work method for all Belgian probation tasks. Hence, from this analysis, we argue for a more radical debate on the relation between probation and social work.     

Family Support as a Gang Reduction Measure

Recent public concern about youth gangs in Britain has prompted a narrow, almost stereotypical, range of US‐derived policy responses. This paper argues that family support is an unexplored but potentially effective gang reduction tool, but in order to overcome persistent concerns regarding misidentification, stigmatic labelling and policy misdirection, programmes must not only be ‘good science’ but also be non‐punitive, acceptable to families and context‐sensitive. Beginning with a discussion of the grounds for intervention, the paper identifies likely barriers from the point of view of the parents of gang members, and from these, derives necessary standards for effective support. The paper describes some promising (‘public health oriented’) and unpromising (‘criminal justice oriented’) programmes, and argues for more ‘gang‐sensitive’ family support and a related research agenda.     

Energy transition on the rise: discourses on energy future in the German parliament

In this paper we describe energy policy discourses and their story-lines in German parliamentary debates, and trace their evolution over the past decades. Through content analysis and coding with MAXQDA, changes in the discourses and in the use of story-lines by different political parties are analyzed. Our study shows that while the concept of a transition towards a nuclear-free, renewables-based energy system became hegemonic within three decades, the discourse itself underwent major changes. Energy Transition was de-radicalized and became part of a discourse of Ecological Modernization, thus aligning with mainstream economic logic. There are still considerable differences in the story-lines narrated by parliamentarians about pathways to Energy Transition and its effects. Discursive struggles into the meaning and the means of the transition project continue, suggesting that discourse structuration is far from complete.     

The growing gap between facts and discourse on immigrant integration in the Netherlands

The Netherlands’ recent history of dealing with immigrant integration provides an excellent example of the dangers of thinking in terms of fixed ‘national’ integration models. When first confronted with large-scale immigration, the Netherlands embarked on a policy of multiculturalism. Its current approach is one of the most assimilationist in Western Europe: several in-between forms have also been tried out. This article describes the evolution of Dutch thinking and Dutch policy-making on immigrant integration over the past few decades, and it analyses why the country has switched so frequently from one model to another. The harsher approach of this moment can be explained neither by major shifts that might have occurred in public opinion, nor by the actual course of the immigrant integration process, which has been advancing steadily. The root causes of the growing gap between facts and discourse lie in popular anxiety provoked by profound changes in Dutch society.     

The Effects of State Alcohol and Pregnancy Policies on Women’s Health and Healthy Pregnancies

US states have enacted a wide range of laws to address health challenges associated with alcohol use during pregnancy. Some have taken punitive approaches that restrain women’s behavior, and some have taken supportive approaches aimed at improving women’s health and supporting healthy pregnancies. In this article we report on a study of implementation of supportive and punitive policies when both types of policies operate simultaneously in the same jurisdiction. Effects of mixed use laws on multiple stakeholder groups, especially pregnant and postpartum women, are studied. We conclude by identifying how our findings can be extended for future comparative state research.     

From coherence to coheritization: explaining the rise of policy coherence in EU external policy

ABSTRACT

Over the past decade, the external policy of the European Commission has become increasingly entangled by the notion of policy coherence. Previously ‘siloed’ policy areas such as trade, agriculture, and development are increasingly approached as challenges only effectively resolved by addressing their positive and negative interlinkages. While the EC is critical of fundamental incoherencies between different policy areas, it simultaneously calls to harness synergies between them. To explain this ambiguous approach, we combine insights from speech act theory and cultural political economy. We aim for methodological triangulation by employing social network analysis, an explanatory narrative, and expert interviews. We argue that the Commission’s approach towards coherence can be understood as a process that reshapes the actor landscape around the discourse on coherence. By gradually pushing out the most outspoken actors, the Commission discursively resolves the inherent contradictions of reconciling free trade and development of the Global South.     

‘Cycles of disadvantage’ revisited: young people,families and poverty across generations*

ABSTRACT

One of Andy Furlong’s abiding concerns was to show how the problems of working-class youth are often, straightforwardly, the outcome of inequalities in employment opportunities. On rarer occasions, however, this explanation fits less well. Some young people grow up in families where poverty seems more deeply embedded and inherent to those families. Here, old ideas about a cultural ‘underclass’ can be tempting to politicians and policy makers. Our qualitative research, with 20 families living in extremely deprived U.K. neighbourhoods, showed that neither a simple lack of job opportunities nor ‘cultures of worklessness’ explained why hardship persisted for them. Our argument is that circumstances which appear to fit with the idea of an inter-generational, cultural ‘underclass’, in fact, have their provenance in a semi-permanent constellation of external socio-economic pressures bearing on successive generations of families over decades. Examples did include a shared context of declining job opportunities but extended to a contracting and disciplinary Welfare State, punitive criminal justice systems, poor-quality education and the physical decline of working-class neighbourhoods. We take one example – the destructive impact of local drug markets – to uncover the complex, obscure processes that compound the disadvantage faced by working-class young adults and their families over generations.     

Informal Caregiving and the Politics of Policy Drift in the United States

Informal caregivers play an increasingly important role in caring for aging Americans. Yet existing social policies that could support informal caregiving have experienced “policy drift,” a failure to adapt to social risks that develop after policies are initially enacted. This article examines policy makers’ success at updating seven major policies to address caregiver needs. It draws on an original data set of legislation in this area introduced between 1991 and 2006 (n = 96). Findings indicate that drift is more likely when policy updates are costly, lack support from members of majority parties in the House and Senate, and fail to generate bipartisan support.     

The importance of discourse in homelessness policy for young people: an Australian perspective

Homelessness among young people remains an ongoing critical issue across the globe, despite numerous targeted policies attempting to address the issue. Research demonstrates that the way policies represent social problems influences policy solutions. Drawing on Australian policy, this research investigates how policy discourses construct homeless young people, and how these constructions influence the support services developed. The study involves a critical discourse analysis of Australia’s most recent national inquiry report on homelessness among young people. The analysis suggests that the values and assumptions present throughout this policy largely reflect neoliberal political contexts, emphasising the importance of individual and community responsibility. However, there exists a disconnect between policy expectations of young people’s autonomy and the construction of their capacity for autonomy. This suggests that young people require greater levels of participation in policy development to create an effective balance between their own need for self-determinism and the support they require to transition out of homelessness.     

“Classic ageism” or “brutal economy”? Old age and older people in the Polish media

This article explores media discourse of ageing, taking the example of Poland and relating it to a broader discussion of ageing policy. The discourse in news magazines appears both to reflect and create attitudes towards older people, which in turn has implications for ageing policy. To reveal the nature of these attitudes, we use a method of attitudinal positioning. The study analyzes articles that appeared in the four largest Polish weekly opinion news magazines, in the 2004–2007 period. Various domains in the discourse of ageing are identified, yet only the family and market domains seem to be described in exclusively positive terms: the authors discuss the implications of this for ageing policy.     

Missing discourses: concepts of joy and happiness in disability

This paper analyses a series of representations of disability and rehabilitation taken from research and policy settings in Australia. The purpose of the analysis is to (a) identify the presence or absence of discourses of happiness and joy in the contexts analysed and (b) to analyse the various treatments and interpretations of happiness and joy that are present. Through this analysis we show that while official professional and public discourses on disability and rehabilitation exhibit predominantly negative discursive patterns and features (i.e. aspirations to achieve ‘normality’ and a negative lexicon, such as disability, coping, rehabilitation, burden, abnormality, etc.) there are many other potentially positive and empowering discursive and narrative patterns and features that remain hidden beneath negatively oriented ways of seeing, being, acting and describing in academic, policy and practice settings. We argue that policy‐makers and academics alike need to be sensitive to the dynamics of discourse when constructing research and developing policy.     

Theorising fatherhood,welfare and the decline of patriarchy in Japan

This paper investigates social policies concerning men's transitions to fatherhood and the changing role of fathers in Japan. A review of fathering research reveals a predominantly agency-level emphasis on role-strain between work and paternal identities with a specific discourse of weakened Japanese fatherhood. Previous research suggested Japanese gender equality and work-life balance initiatives stalled due to an absence of women's influence within Japan's corporate culture. This study offers a historical perspective to show modern family policies were essentially rooted in gender-equality campaigns led by women's organisations dating back to post-WWII era. The findings situate Japanese social policy and epistemology in the international vanguard of a ‘Nordic turn’ towards structural-level research and improved social citizenship rights to support men's transitions to fatherhood.