Perspectives on Punishment: The Contours of Control - Tapa dura

The book offers an incisive collection of contemporary research into the problems of crime control and punishment. It has three inter-related aims: to take stock of current thinking on punishment, regulation, and control in the early years of a new century and in the wake of a number of critical junctures, including 9/11, which have transformed the social, political, and cultural environment; to present a selection of the diverse epistemological and methodological frameworks which inform current research; and finally to set out some fruitful directions for the future study of punishment. The contributions to this collection cover some of the most exciting and challenging areas of current research including terrorism and the politics of fear, penality in societies in transition, penal policy and the construction of political identity, the impact of digital culture on modes of compliance, the emergent hegemony of information and surveillance systems, and the evolving politics of victimhood.

Taken together, this work draws connections between local problems of crime control, transnational forms of governance, and the ways in which certain political and jurisprudential discourses have come to dominate policy and practice in western penal systems. ERRATUM The sentence on p. 153, lines 5-7 should read "...if welfare expenditure had not risen but remained at its 1987 level, the rise in imprisonment would have been 20 per cent greater than actually occurred, i.e. from 75 in 1987 to 99 in 1998." No other part of the book is affected by this correction.

Sarah Armstrong is a lecturer in criminology and a member of the Centre for Law and Society, University of Edinburgh. Her current research is in the sociology of punishment and focuses on developing a sociology of accountability, analysing privatization in justice and punishment, and contributing to social and cultural scholarship on risk. Lesley McAra is a senior lecturer in criminology and a member of the Centre for Law and Society, University of Edinburgh. She writes and teaches in the fields of the sociology of punishment, youth crime and justice, gender, and crime and criminal justice. Currently she is a co-director of a major programme of research funded by the ESCR, Scottish Executive and the Nuffield Foundation on youth transitions and crime.