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International audienceIt is often suggested that Britain has lost its great power status since the fall of Empire. Yet, whilst its military and economic power has undoubtedly been weakened, it continues to exert power and influence and to promote national interests via the exercise of both hard and soft power. Far from representing a novel strategy, this simultaneous deployment of both forms of power may be considered as a continuation of the dual imperial strategy of gunboat diplomacy and winning hearts and minds at home and abroad. Yet, the postcolonial era does represent some novelty: as was clear under the Conservative-led coalition and is now evident under a Conservative majority government, soft power is no longer exercised principally via cultural diplomacy, through, for example, the British Council, but increasingly via large companies which promote British economic and political interests through corporate imperialism

This article seeks to sketch out alternatives to neoliberal penality by seeking to undermine the four institutional logics of neoliberalism as identified by Loïc Wacquant (2009). It begins by critically analysing the potential value of public criminology as an exit strategy, suggesting that whilst this approach has much value, popular versions of it are in fact rather limited on account of their exclusion of offenders themselves from the debate and their optimism about the capacity of existing institutions to challenge the current punitive consensus. It suggests that a genuinely 'public' criminology should be informed by an abolitionist stance to both current penal policies and the neoliberal system as a whole. This may be the best means of truly democratizing penal politics.

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