When Children Kill Children: Penal Populism and Political Culture

by David A. Green

Overview

This title examines the role of political culture and penal populism in the response to the subject of child-on-child homicide.

Green explores the reasons underlying the vastly differing responses of the English and Norwegian criminal justice systems to the cases of James Bulger and Silje Redergard respectively. Whereas James Bulger's killers were subject to extreme press and public hostility, held in secure detention for nine months before being tried in an adversarial court, and served eight years in custody, Redergard's killers were shielded from public antagonism and carefully reintegrated into the local community. This book argues that English adversarial political culture creates far more incentives to politicize high-profile crimes than Norwegian consensus political culture. Drawing on a wealth of empirical research, Green suggests that the tendency for politicians to justify punitive responses to crime by invoking harsh public attitudes is based upon a flawed understanding of public opinion.

In a compelling study, Green proposes a more deliberative response to crime is possible by making English culture less adversarial and by making informed public judgment more assessable.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199230969
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/02/2008
Series:	Clarendon Studies in Criminology
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Dr. David A. Green is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. He completed an MPhil in Criminology at the University Of Cambridge Institute Of Criminology in 2001 and was then awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to pursue a PhD. Afterwards, he was Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford and Research Associate at the University of Oxford Centre for Criminology.

Table of Contents

List of Tables     xxi
List of Figures     xxii
When Children Kill Children     1
Introduction     1
The James Bulger case     1
The Silje Redergard case     7
Explaining Difference     9
The argument     11
English crime and politics     16
The Norwegian contrast     18
Addressing Penal Populism     19
Three Caveats     21
Plan of the Book     23
Culture, Politics, and the Media in Norway and England     29
Cultural and Historical Backdrop     30
Child education and well-being     31
Social solidarity and the welfare state     33
Political Economy and Economic Conditions     35
Political Cultures     37
Consensus versus majoritarian democracy     37
Trust and civil society     40
Media Markets and Cultures     43
Press markets     43
Ownership     48
Accountability     50
Conclusion     51
Crime and Punishment in Norway and England     53
Legal Systems     53
Crime     54
Recordedcrime     54
Victimization     57
Punishment     58
Imprisonment rates     59
Prison regimes and conditions     60
Penalties and sentences     63
Sentence lengths     65
Youth Justice     67
The Nordic diversionary consensus     67
Young people in custody     69
Public Attitudes toward Crime and Punishment     72
Public punitiveness     72
Fear of crime     76
Conclusion     76
The Constraints and Effects of Political Culture     77
A Conceptual Model     77
Structure and Culture     80
Sentencing guidelines     81
The US Constitution     82
'Morphogenesis'     82
The Constraints of Political Culture     83
Constraining choice     86
The making of culture     88
High-Profile Cases and the 'Crisis-Reform Thesis'     90
Conclusion     94
The Constraints of Discourse     95
Discourse and 'Knowledge Utilization'     97
Analysing Discourse     99
Knowledge and power     102
The constraints of 'interpretive repertoires'     105
Discourse and sensibilities     107
Six Reasons to Study Discourse     107
Conclusion     113
Media Constraints and the Formation of Political Opinions     117
The Evolution of Political Communication Research     118
Agenda-setting     119
Impersonal influence     120
Claims-Making and the Dangers of Discourse Homogeneity     121
Media Frames and Discursive Constraints     128
Loaded questions     130
Simple justice     131
Unintended consequences     133
The Formation of Political Opinions     135
Conclusion     137
Contextualizing Tragedy     141
The Methodology     142
Theoretical underpinnings     143
Research protocols     145
Overview of the coverage     147
Comparing Prominence     149
Comparing Claims-Makers     152
Comparing the Legitimacy of Elite Experts     155
Attitudes to therapy     159
The status of the 'ologists'     161
Child-on-Child Killings in Perspective     164
Legitimating Claims and the Silent Opposition      167
Comparing Frames, Themes, and Angles     169
Marking off the discursive terrain     169
Begotten, not made: evil and innocence     173
Comparing Rhetorical Strategies: Rhetoric and Resonance     180
The Suitability of Vehicles     184
Conclusion     187
English Penal Policy Climates and Political Culture     189
The Post-Bulger Case Penal Climate     190
The merging of discourses     190
The pressure to get tough fast     193
Crises of solidarity     198
The Evolution of English Penal Policy and Political Culture     200
Insulated elite dominance     201
Practitioner influence     202
Managerialism     203
Populism and the public voice     204
The Press, the Public, and Political Culture     207
New Labour and the 'red top' press     207
The rise of the public voice     210
New Labour, Old Testament?     214
Conclusion     218
Political Culture, Legitimacy, and Penal Populism     221
Policy Deliberation and Stability     222
By-Products of Political Culture     225
Appetites for punishment      226
Trust     227
Susceptibility to Penal Populism     229
Delegates and trustees     233
Zero-sum and variable-sum assumptions     235
Inclusion and exclusion     236
Conclusion     237
Public Opinion versus Public Judgment     241
Innovations in Public Opinion Assessment     244
Effects of Mediated Proxies for Public Opinion     247
'Evolving standards' and American capital punishment     248
Public opinion and the James Bulger and Sarah Payne cases in Britain     253
So where are we?     257
Coming to Public Judgment     258
Frameworks     260
'Bees in bonnets'     263
Auld, Halliday, and the Prospects of Public Education     265
Conclusion     268
Effecting Penal Climate Change     271
Penal Populism and Political Culture     271
The Case against Re-Insulation     275
'Communicative capacity' and state legitimacy     275
No participation without public judgment     277
Public Engagement     278
Public Journalism     281
Deliberative Forums     284
Six Ways of Institutionalizing Deliberation      286
Conclusion     291
References     293
Index     321