The Prisoners' Dilemma: Political Economy and Punishment in Contemporary Democracies

by Nicola Lacey

• ISBN13: 9780521728294
• ISBN10: 0521728290
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-07-21
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Over the last two decades, in the wake of increases in recorded crime and a cluster of other social changes, British criminal justice policy has become increasingly politicised: both the scale and intensity of punishment and the significance of criminal justice policy as an index of governments' competence have developed in new and worrying ways. Across the Atlantic, we witness the inexorable rise of the US prison population, amid a ratcheting-up of penal severity which seems unstoppable in the face of popular anxiety about crime.

Author Biography

Nicola Lacey is Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Fellow of New College, Oxford

Table of Contents

The Hamlyn Trust	p. vi
The Hamlyn Lectures	p. ix
List of figures	p. xiii
Preface	p. xv
Punishment in contemporary democracies	p. 1
'Penal populism' in comparative perspective	p. 3
Explaining penal tolerance and severity: criminal justice in the perspective of political economy	p. 55
Prospects for the future: escaping the prisoners' dilemma	p. 113
Inclusion and exclusion in a globalising world: is penal moderation in co-ordinated market economies under threat?	p. 115
Confronting the prisoners' dilemma: the room for policy manoeuvre in liberal market economies	p. 170
Bibliography	p. 207
Index	p. 225
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