ABSTRACT
The 'law of requisite variety' demands a richer, multilayered tool which is capable of understanding the level of complexity in the murky all-too-real world. Use of a multidimensional index of punitiveness in New Zealand over the study period serves to complicate the story which has to date been told about punishment in that country. Certain criticism may also be reserved for those authors who have actually examined the empirical content of 'punitiveness'. In a comparative analysis of American, French, German and Russian punitiveness, Kutateladze rated US prison conditions above those in both Russia and France on the basis that Russian prisons are underfunded, overcrowded and plagued by tuberculosis. The interconnections between punitiveness and public criminology are thoroughly explored in a recent text on public criminology published by two well-known British criminologists, Ian Loader and Richard Sparks.
