Punishment and ‘the People’: Rescuing Populism from its Critics

Abstract

The term ‘penal populism’ is now reflexively used by criminologists to describe what many see as a dominant trend within penal policymaking in many western countries. The epithet ‘populist’ is used with no less frequency by media and other public commentators to refer (always pejoratively) to this or that political announcement, policy or style of political leadership, whether the context be specifically related to crime or some other arena of public affairs.