Bordered penal populism: When populism and Scandinavian exceptionalism meet

Abstract

Penality in Scandinavia has been seen as somewhat of an outlier, a redoubt against the punitive turn witnessed in other parts of Western Europe and the United States. This article examines contemporary discourses of penality in Norway following the entry into government of the populist-right Progress Party. The analysis describes how government representatives frame themselves as protecting individual security and prioritising victims whilst pursuing a bordered version of penal populism directed against non-citizens. These non-Norwegians are shown to be the focus of a range of penal populist policies, including fast-track justice, a warehousing prison regime, targeting of petty offenders and the double punishment of imprisonment and deportation. In a context where the penal welfare consensus with respect to Norwegian citizens remains relatively strong, it is easier for the Progress Party to 'do populism' by focusing on non-citizens.

COVID-19 and European carcerality: Do national prison policies converge when faced with a pandemic?

“…However, in other cases, countries with overcrowded prisons may use the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to reduce overcrowding, as a pandemic can produce a political window to do this quickly. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that only 16 countries followed this path, perhaps suggesting that discourses about public safety that depict prisoners as dangerous criminals, which seem to be popular in many European countries (Brown and Pratt, 2000;Pratt, 2007;Simpson et al, 2019;Todd-Kvam, 2018), can easily overlap with narratives about public health. In this regard, European policymakers perhaps were publicly supporting the avoidance of early releases, since this measure could have mitigated risks associated with prisons becoming vectors of transmission of the virus into wider communities.…”

“…Literature on penal populism, as well as penal nationalism, can be helpful here. If dominant state discourse stipulates that the general population must be protected from the threatening ‘other’ (Copson, 2014; Garland, 2001; Todd-Kvam, 2018), not prioritizing prisoners’ rights may be perceived as a rewarding policy to which public opinion may react favorably. An outcome of this approach in the context of a pandemic may be that the health of the general population suffers, since contagions are less likely to be prevented within a policy frame that does not prioritize the wellbeing of prisoners.…”

“…It is well established that prisons are particularly susceptible to infections, and people in prison face high risks of complications (Kinner et al., 2020; Montoya-Barthelemy et al., 2020; World Health Organization, 2020c). Moreover, socio-economically deprived groups and ethnic minorities are overrepresented in prisons, which implies that when COVID-19 enters prison walls, it will disproportionately affect those who are already vulnerable and marginalized (Ahmed et al., 2020; Beckett and Western, 2001; Ruddel, 2005; Todd-Kvam, 2018). In this context, we turn our attention to the ways in which national governments in the EU and in neighboring countries tried to prevent coronavirus from spreading to carceral settings.…”

Criminalization or instrumentalism? New trends in the field of border criminology

“…As was previously pointed out, border criminology scholars have insightfully underlined that bordered penality (Aas, 2014; Franko, 2020; see also Todd-Kvam, 2019) changes are enabling the gradual consolidation of a bifurcated or dual criminal justice system. This dual system contains penal arrangements that significantly differ in how citizens and noncitizens are handled in every step of criminal adjudication processes (Eagly, 2010, 2013).…”

An Expanded Analytical Gaze on Penal Power: Border Criminology and Punitiveness

“…In examining the implications of the surge of immigration control policies and practices in low-incarceration rate 'Northern state' (Aas 2013;Franko 2020) jurisdictions, a strand of the border criminology literature has stressed that in certain national cases, the immigration enforcement apparatus is challenging the long-standing pivotal role played by the prison system in the penal field. This is indisputable in qualitative terms since bordered penality is eroding the penal welfarism arrangements that have proven to be particularly resilient in certain national criminal justice systems (Aas 2014;Todd-Kvam 2019;Ugelvik 2013). However, the gradual consolidation of a bordered penality subsystem apparently has added implications in quantitative terms, since the amplifying scale of detention and deportation practices risks to outnumber that of the prison (sub)system (Barker, 2018: 14, 98, 131; see also Bosworth, Franko and Pickering 2018;Franko, 2020).…”