Cultural peers and penal policies: A configurational approach toward mapping penal landscapes

Abstract

Globalization changed the comparative gaze and enterprise in criminology. The dialectics between global convergence and domestic divergence are nowhere more visible but in the realm of responses to crime. Rather than loosening their impact on penal justice and penal policies, cultural differences, national institutional settings and symbols are coming to the fore, and contemporary penal policies and systems develop along the fault lines of regions, the routes of colonial power or supra-national regimes. Recent conceptualizations of globalization focus on actors and mechanisms, thus advancing ‘agency-rich’ models in the comparison of penal systems. Using a ‘configurational comparative approach’ this article explores the role of ‘cultural peers’ in shaping the landscape of penal regimes in Europe. ‘Penal cultures’ and ‘cultures of control’ constitute two layers of configurations, each one with four peer groups. The European landscape of penal cultures and cultures of control emerges from different historic trajectories, different partners in and mechanisms of diffusion. Cultural and spatial nearness both are important, and processes of Europeanization seem to have an impact. Beyond convergence and divergence of penal regimes and cultures of control, Europe appears as a pluralistic community at best and a deeply divided one at worst.