APR 14

23: APR 14

Assigned

• Cavadino, Michael and James Dignan. "Penal policy and political economy". (17)

Cavadino, Michael and James Dignan. "Penal policy and political economy"

• Crime rates by country [1]
• Homicide rates by country [2]
• Some data on the board about income tax rates and taxation as % of GDP.

• Two claims:

• Diffs in penality likely to continue in spite of globalization
• One reason for this is that penality tracks political economy.

• Starts with an overview of the influence of the US on global penal policy. To the extent that US exerts influence on other countries to move in a neo-liberal direction there may be "penal convergence". Also, incarcertation systems are one of our global exports! "correctional imperialism"

• Some elements of the US "justice model" (retributive punishment and retributive deterrence) travel faster than others. "3 strikes" and "zero tolerance"

• In Europe, the European Convention on Human Rights is influential. Moved Russia away from capital punishment.

• 441: Table: Typology of political economies and their penal tendencies.

• Neo-liberal
• Conservative corporatism
• Social democratic corporatism
• Oriental corporatism

• Let's review some of the connections the authors make in their discussion. (bring in crime rates)

• 447: Table: Political economy and imprisonment rates.

• Is neo-liberalism "criminogenic"?

• Possibly: Evidence that unequal societies with weak community relationships suffer from worse rates of crime. 447.
• Interesting: Weak link bt crime rates and imprisonment rates.
• Some possible mechanisms: Neo-liberal societies have high social exclusion: labor market and CJ failures. The authors suggests a "feedback loop" here: the socially excluded confirm the neo-liberal narrative.
• By contrast, Corporatist and social dem states are inclusionary, have a communitarian ethos. (Think back to "Are you alright?" MRFW News!). "Welfare" can involve locking people up or giving them money.

• Beckett and Western (2001) and others claim that high welfare spending correlates with low incarceration (except Japan). Also, economic inequality predicts high incarceration rates.

Drawing some implications from Cavadino & Dignan

• Weak link bt crime rates and imprisonment rates. What might follow from this? Maybe imprisonment rates are driven "MRFW ideology"?

• Neo-liberal political economies may be indirectly "criminogenic". How might a traditional MR defender respond? Like my conservative friend to homelessness? Better to live in a society that takes responsibility seriously than...(lots of ways to finish this sentence).

• Methodological Point: We've sampled three kinds of writing about MR&FW. It might be interesting to think about these together.

• 1. Traditional and current MR&FW defenders and sceptics;
• 2. Contemp Naturalism and Cultural Evolution; and, now
• 3. Contemp Political Science.

• Culturally stable strategies. How do you get to a new equilibrium?