Politics and Penal Change: Towards an Interpretive Political Analysis of Penal Policymaking

Abstract

This article offers an interpretive political analysis framework, exploring and asserting its value for understanding penal change. It is argued that this approach serves, in part, to emphasise the importance of the minutiae of political activity: the crucial impact that apparently minor decisions, unimportant participants, or particular ‘rules of the game’ can play in specific outcomes. It emphasises the importance of human agency and meaning: the relationship between politics and fate. It facilitates the connections of particular ‘micro’ analyses with ‘macro’ accounts of penal change. I argue that the approach set out here thereby enables us to place centre stage the beliefs and practices of policy participants, and the political dynamics of policymaking. By doing so, particular case studies serve as valuable ‘windows’ into the meanings in action that iteratively make sense of, respond to, and thereby (re‐)constitute the realities in which actors operate, specific penal outcomes, and broader penal change.

Beyond rhetoric: Emplotting the life course of criminal justice narratives

“…It is important therefore to incorporate macro-, meso- and micro-level narratives into research to capture any gaps between policy and practice while also facilitating consideration of agency. Annison (2018: 309) argues that engagement with specific actors can provide insight into their ‘understandings of pertinent developments’ along with their understandings of the wider contexts, realities and opportunities. Examining criminal justice change at different levels of analysis thus offers an opportunity to examine policymaking as a process and produce a ‘theoretically informed analysis of specific developments in penal change’ (Annison, 2018: 307).…”

“…When studying storytelling, it is important to examine the minutiae of narrative-building, including not only the role of agency but also ‘the crucial impact that apparently minor decisions, unimportant participants, or particular “rules of the game”, can play in specific outcomes’ (Annison, 2018: 303). Numerous and sometimes agonist voices determine which criminal justice narratives become dominant at a particular time, including those of politicians, policymakers, frontline workers, legal professionals, victims, the general public, the media and advocacy workers.…”

The role of storylines in penal policy change

“…2. For a more detailed discussion of approaches to politics and penal change, see Annison (2018c). 3.…”

David Hayes, Confronting Penal Excess

“…This is perhaps inevitably so, given the ambitious aims of the book as a whole. But there is much value in ‘fracturing’ the penal state (Rubin and Phelps, 2017): to recognise the range of actors, discourses and practices that can predominate at different ‘levels’ (Annison, 2018). This may complicate our conclusions regarding success or failure in particular nation states, and have implications for how one might ‘operationalise’ Hayes’ normative argument (more on this below).…”