ABSTRACT
In 2006, Michael Cavadino and James Dignan published an essay titled “Penal Policy and Political Economy” which presents a synthesis of their broader work, Penal Systems, A Comparative Approach. The exploration of the link between “political economy” and “punishment” has experienced a sort of renaissance within the field of the sociology of punishment, mainly in English-speaking countries. One of the main perspectives in this renaissance is built around the transformation of capitalism within the process of globalization, usually defined as the transition between “Fordist” and “postFordist” capitalist regimes of production and accumulation. Nicola Lacey’s states that the distribution of veto points across the constitutional structure and the need for coordinating different decision-making actors, opens potential for checks and balances and helps to resist external pressures toward penal severity. The recognition of penal differences in these narratives has been structured primarily using the quantitative indicator of the incarceration rate, pointing to a crucial dimension of punitiveness.
