Nicola Lacey American imprisonment in comparative perspective Over the last forty years, a number of countries. This is unfortunate; notwith- Western democracies have signi½cantly standing the wide diffusion of a political increased their use of imprisonment. discourse of penal populism, there are What explains this phenomenon? The striking differences in the extent to which most influential line of reasoning looks that discourse has led to greater severity to the global economic changes that be- in penal practice. Not all “late modern” gan in the 1970s: the contraction or col- democracies have plumped for a “neolib- lapse of manufacturing industries; the eral” politics. Countries like Denmark, creation of a large sector of people who Germany, and Sweden have managed to faced long-term unemployment or were sustain relatively moderate, inclusionary employed in insecure forms of work; and criminal justice systems–systems pre- consequent pressure on the welfare state. mised on reintegrating offenders into These changes, it is argued,1 have eroded society–throughout the period in which the consensus that sustained postwar the British and American systems have penal welfarism. A rise in recorded crime moved toward ever-greater penal severity. across Western countries gradually nor- Even then, the differences in the scale and malized criminal victimization and the quality of punishment between British management of the risk and fear of crime. and American penal systems are striking, Crime became, for the economically se- with the United States occupying an un- cure, an increasingly politicized issue, enviable position as the unrivaled leader generating a “penal populism” that among advanced economies in the costly brought in its wake repressive and man- business of mass imprisonment. agerial criminal justice strategies. The baleful distinctiveness of the Unit- This is a powerful argument. How- ed States’ incarceration record is epito- ever, its focus on structural forces and mized, though not exhausted, by impris- on general categories such as “late mod- onment rates between four and twelve ern society” or “post-Fordism”2 directs times higher than those in other political attention away from variations in the economies at similar levels of develop- institutional framework through which ment (see Figure 1). The picture becomes those forces are mediated in different even more baffling when we consider var- iation among U.S. states’ imprisonment © 2010 by the American Academy of Arts rates, which, in the mid-2000s, ranged & Sciences from less than double those of the most 102 Dædalus Summer 2010 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00026 by guest on 25 September 2021 Figure 1 American Political Economy, Imprisonment, and Homicide imprison- ment in comparative Imprisonment Rate (per 100,000) perspective 2002–2003 2008–2009 Neoliberal Countries (Liberal Market Economies) United States 701 760 Canada 108* 118 New Zealand 155 196 England and Wales 141 153 Australia 115 129 Conservative-Corporatist Countries (Coordinated or Hybrid Market Economies) The Netherlands 100 100 Italy 100 97 Germany 98 90 France 93 96 Social Democracies (Coordinated Market Economies) Sweden 73 74 Denmark 58 63 Finland 70 67 Norway 58 70 Oriental-Corporatist (Coordinated Market Economies) Japan 53 63 *Denotes data from 2003–2004. Sources: Adapted from Peter A. Hall and David Soskice, “An Introduction to the Varieties of Capitalism,” in Varie- ties of Capitalism, ed. Peter A. Hall and David Soskice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 1–68; Michael Cava- dino and James Dignan, Penal Systems: A Comparative Approach (London: Sage, 2006); International Centre for Pris- on Studies, http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/worldbrief (September 2009). punitive of other advanced economies to within different kinds of political econo- rates more than ten times higher. What my: neoliberal, conservative-corporatist, explains the extraordinary scale and se- oriental-corporatist, and social-demo- verity of the “harsh justice”3 meted out cratic.4 Cavadino and Dignan show that in the U.S. penal system today? the social-democratic Nordic countries5 Comparative and historical research have maintained humanity in the quali- are central to any attempt to answer this ty of punishment and moderation in its question. For their analysis of imprison- scale while some of the neoliberal coun- ment rates, youth-justice arrangements, tries–notably the United States–have and privatization policies in twelve coun- been moving in the direction of mass tries, criminologists Michael Cavadino incarceration under ever-harsher condi- and James Dignan developed a fourfold tions. These countries are surpassing the typology of criminal justice systems nested penal severity of not only social-demo- Dædalus Summer 2010 103 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00026 by guest on 25 September 2021 Nicola cratic countries but also both kinds of offenders into society and the economy, Lacey corporatist economy. decision-makers are more likely to opt on mass incarcer- Understanding why resemblances for an inclusionary criminal justice sys- ation across types of political economy persist tem and less likely to favor exclusionary over time; why they produce systemati- stigmatization in punishment. Moreover, cally different patterns of punishment; the interlocking institutions of these co- and whether these differences are likely ordinated market economies conduce to to survive the increasing international- an environment of relatively extensive ization of economic and social relations informal social controls, which in turn is crucial to answering the key policy ques- supports the cultural attitudes that under- tion for the United States today: can the pin and stabilize a moderated approach forces that have produced mass impris- to formal punishment. onment be countered, and if so, how? A liberal market economy (of which We can begin to examine these ques- the extreme case, for any argument about tions by drawing on recent political- criminal justice, is the United States) is economic analysis of comparative insti- typically more individualistic in struc- tutional advantages as well as capacities ture, is less interventionist in regulatory for strategic coordination inherent in stance, and depends far less strongly on differently ordered systems.6 Political- the coordinating institutions needed to economic forces are mediated by cultural sustain long-term economic and social ½lters and by the economic, political, and relations. In these economies, flexibility social institutions that influence the in- and innovation, rather than stability and terests, incentives, and identities of rele- investment, form the backbone of com- vant groups of social actors. This institu- parative institutional advantage. It fol- tional mediation of cultural and strutural lows that, particularly under conditions forces produces a state’s signi½cant and of surplus unskilled labor (conditions persistent “varieties of capitalist system,” that liberal market economies are more which, notwithstanding globalization, likely to produce), the costs of a harsh, we see across states at similar stages of exclusionary criminal justice system are development. Varieties of capitalism less than they would be in a coordinated either favor or inhibit penal tolerance market economy. This variation in pro- and humanity in punishment. duction regimes also implies differences My argument starts with the distinc- in the economic activities in which coun- tion between liberal and coordinated tries excel and, consequently, involves market economies developed by political different constraints on the sway of the scientists Peter Hall and David Soskice.7 market and different degrees of influence A coordinated market economy such as for ½nancial capitalism. Germany or Sweden functions primarily Accordingly, in the environment pro- in terms of long-term relationships and duced by the global economic crisis in stable structures of investment, not least the 1970s and the subsequent collapse in education and training oriented to of Fordism, these long-run institutional company- or sector-speci½c skills, and dynamics took on a special signi½cance incorporates a wide range of social groups for criminal justice policy in liberal mar- and institutions into a highly coordinated ket economies. Confronted with political- governmental structure. In a political- economic imperatives that led to ever- economic system premised on incorpora- increasing disparities of wealth and de tion, and hence on the need to reintegrate facto status distinctions in the liberal 104 Dædalus Summer 2010 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00026 by guest on 25 September 2021 economies, economic dynamics fed into con½dence that their interests will be American the political and social forces that favor effectively represented in the bargaining imprison- ment in harsh and extensive punishment. By con- process that characterizes coalition poli- comparative trast, in countries whose economic ar- tics, the dynamics of penal populism may perspective rangements have sustained a consensus- be easier to resist. Due to the discipline oriented system, where long-term invest- of coalition politics in pr systems, which ment in high-skill economic activity was require that bargains are struck before affected relatively little by the demise of elections, voters can be more con½dent Fordism,