Weakened by the social and economic restructuring from the 1980s in Anglo-American societies, the state‘s authority in these jurisdictions and numerous others are now being strengthened by utilising criminal justice regimes to provide security against future risk, rather than merely punish past wrongdoings and in so doing undermining many of the foundation stones on which...
From protecting individual rights to protecting the public: the changing parameters of populist driven criminal law and penal policy
It had been the case that in advanced liberal democracies, criminal law and penal policy were bound by clearly defined parameters, that then helped to distinguish governance in the democracies from the non-democratic world. And one of the features of citizenship in the democracies was the importance that was given to protecting individual rights in...
Rethinking populism and its threats and possibilities
Resurgent populism is depicted as a pathological perversion of democratic principles, an enemy of the rule of law. But is this an inherent feature of populism or only of its contemporary manifestations? ‘Populist‘ is not usually a label adopted by way of self-description but is deployed by others to deprecate any political movement, leader, policy...
The Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal, Shahbag protests and political violence: a rather peculiar penal popularism, political vendetta or defence of national identity and democracy?
Since 2010 the Awarmi League Government has instituted War crimes Trials of alleged colloborators in the 1971 ‘War of Liberation‘ that provided the constitutional moment and founding narrative of Blangadeshi national identity. Massive street protests broke out in February 2013 – the Shahbag movement – when Adbul Quarder Mollah was sentenced to life imprisonment demanding...
The popular politics of punitiveness: security, identity, and changing societies
The rise of populism has become a central feature of contemporary political and penal practices. What are the common (or country-specific) causes of these seemingly isolated strains of penal populism and how do they take shape in different social milieu? This paper addresses these salient questions. Its objectives are two-fold. First, it develops a typology...