Punitiveness and Political Culture

This article draws on an emerging comparative literature indicating the significant effects that political systems can have on the deployment of penal power, and the ways they condition responses to crime and to criminal offenders. It explores two political-cultural mechanisms that help account for variations in levels of punitiveness between countries. These mechanisms – called here as the insulation and autonomy effect and the populism disincentive effect – are embedded in jurisdiction specific political cultures and the structures that sustain them.