NEW LABOR - NEW PENOLOGY - PUNITIVE RHETORIC AND THE LIMITS OF MANAGERIALISM IN CRIMINAL-JUSTICE POLICY

This paper argues that New Labour's 'tough' stance on law and order ha s given rise to a criminal justice policy which is based on fundamenta l contradictions and which involves a substantial retreat from traditi onal socialist thinking on crime. The continuation of a populist punit ive approach ensures the predominance in policy making of a 'criminolo gy of the other' which, in turn, sustains a Punishment deficit' which fuels public expectations that crime can be controlled effectively by a policy of deterrence through punishment. This populist punitiveness, it is argued, is at odds with another strand of government penal poli cy, the attempt to secure greater efficiencies and economies by an int ensification of managerialism throughout the criminal justice system.