Abstract
Tom Daems, Dirk van Zyl Smit and Sonja Snacken (eds), European Penology?, Oñati International Series in Law and Society, Hart Publishing: Oxford, 2013; ix + 370 pp. (including bibliographies and index): 9781849462334, £60.00
European Penology? consists of 15 contributions by 18 authors. The background of the anthology is the increasing importance of law and order in politics and the expanding involvement of European institutions in the penal sphere. This background is further developed in the first chapter by Sonja Snacken and Dirk van Zyl Smit stressing among other things the growth of prison and overcrowding, the tension between preserving human rights for crime victims and for lawbreakers, the regulation of migration and the expansion of the European Union (EU) into an area that was supposed to be reserved for sovereign states. Tom Daems emphasizes the common values that unite European states such as a liberal and cosmopolitan tradition and the absence of the death penalty. Ian Loader and Richard Sparks follow a similar line in arguing for a specific European public criminology and penology. Estella Baker analyses in more detail the expansion of the EU as the most active actor in the penal field in protecting its interests through treaties, data registers and penal legislation. Roland Miklau points out how this expansion shows in tendencies towards co-ordinating sanctions that tend to increase punitivity and how this contrasts with the ambitions of the Council of Europe.
In one of several contributions addressing cross-cutting issues in European penology Dario Melossi analyses the criminalization of migrants where the strict immigration rules forbidding asylum seekers to work – in contrast to a more liberal situation in the USA – actually are criminogenic. Frieder Dünkel shows through his comparative research that the ‘punitive turn’ does not characterize youth justice where the European states mainly stick to the welfare model. Fergus McNeil writes about community sanctions that now outnumber prison sentences in Europe but that might develop from alternatives to prison to net-widening sanctions. Christine Morgenstern points out the large variation of the use of remand prison among European states. Alison Liebling brings attention to the prison privatization that is taking place also outside the Anglophone countries and particularly in former communist Europe.
Five contributions are based on a national perspective and thereby indicating differences between European states that will have to be considered. David Nelken writes about an Italian debate on prosecutors being too independent that risks leading to politically motivated prosecutions. Kristel Beyens, Sonja Snacken and Dirk van Zyl Smit discuss truth in sentencing in relation to conditional release in the light of particularly the Belgian situation. Elena Larrauri and James B Jacobs write from a Spanish perspective on the increasing practice among employers to ask for information from the Criminal Records Bureau and the subsequent risk of discrimination in the labour market. The contribution by Krzysztof Krajewski deals with the development in Poland and other Central and Eastern European countries and concludes that the prison figures are still high almost a quarter of a century after the fall of the wall but predictable from what research has shown to be correlates to high prison populations. In the final chapter René van Swaaningen reflects on the fluctuating trend of imprisonment in the Netherlands and asks if we now see the end of the punitive turn measured by imprisonment and if we instead should look for other indicators of control in society.
Of the authors one-third are British. The former communist countries are represented by one writer but the development here deserves more analysis – readers may ask why several of these countries had higher prison populations before communism. The Scandinavian countries are not represented and although they are relatively small countries with small populations, they have recently been the object of a contentious debate on the question of penal exceptionalism. In addition, the anthology is rather juridical. From a social science perspective more use could have been made of sources like The European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics and Council of Europe Annual Penal Statistics.
Of course, everything on European penology cannot be covered. The anthology would however have benefited from a discussion of selection criteria. Examples of themes not covered are drugs, the victim movement, the effects on law and order of the emergence of right wing extremist political parties and the role of public opinion that both politicians and several of the authors incorrectly perceive to be solely punitive. Though the national accounts sometimes are interesting in their own rights and can inspire research in other countries they are not all self-evident given the number of pressing issues.
But several important themes are definitely raised – themes that also give reasons for worries: the EU as an increasingly powerful actor expanding penal control; increasing prison populations across the EU; the expansion of prison privatization; the remaining high prison populations in the former communist countries; the risk of net widening through alternatives to prison; and the criminalization of migrants. At the same time welfare juvenile justice seems to prevail, prison populations are stagnating in some states and human rights are watched by European institutions. A concluding chapter could have analysed these different tendencies. Will the punitive turn continue or has it come to an end? Will the leaders of a weakened EU resort to law and order for legitimation? Should new and other forms of control than imprisonment be the object of analysis?
And finally, questions remain about the sympathetic idea of common liberal values grounding European states, put forward both as description and prescription. Is it a likely development in view of the analyses presented? What is required to make the image of a tolerant and non-punitive Europe attractive to citizens and politicians? And how concretely could criminologists contribute to such a process? Thus far there does not seem to be a strong correlation between the number of criminologists in a country and a non-punitive policy.