A Punitive Society: Falling Crime and Rising Imprisonment in New Zealand
About this ebook
Western world. Yet the growth of imprisonment in New Zealand has
occurred when the crime rate here, as in most other Western societies,
has been in significant decline. Why, then, the disjuncture?’
In
this penetrating BWB Text, John Pratt describes the dramatic
transformation in penal thought that has recently taken place in this
country. Rising imprisonment in New Zealand, against the background of a
falling crime rate, is connected with changes in how we, as a society,
think about the purpose and function of punishment. This growth of
‘penal populism’, Pratt asserts, has caused enormous and lasting damage
to New Zealand’s social fabric.
About the author
ohn Pratt is Professor of Criminology at the Institute of Criminology, Victoria University of Wellington and Adjunct Professor of Criminology at Monash University, Australia.
He is the author of Penal Populism (2007) and Contrasts in Punishment: An Explanation of Anglophone Excess and Nordic Exceptionalism (2013). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and was a Royal Society of New Zealand James Cook Research Fellow from July 2009 to June 2012 and also a Fellow of the Sraus Institute for Advanced Studies of Law and Justice in the Faculty of Law, New York University, 2010-11.
In November 2013 Professor Pratt was awarded the Mason Durie Medal for advancing the frontiers of social science.
