Nordic Criminal Justice In A Global Context

This book critically investigates Nordic criminal justice as a global role model. Not taking this role for granted, the chapters of the book analyze how Nordic approaches to criminal justice were folded into global contexts, and how patterns of promotion were built around perceptions that these approaches also had a particular value for other criminal justice systems. Specific actors, both internal and external to the region itself, have branded Nordic criminal justice as a form of ‘penal exceptionalism’ associated with human rights, universalistic welfare, and social cohesion. The book shows how building and using the brand of Nordic criminal justice allowed stakeholders to champion specific forms of crime control across a variety of criminal justice areas in both domestic and international settings. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of criminal justice, international law and justice, Nordic and Scandinavian studies, and more widely to the social sciences and humanities.

In the growing field of comparative criminal justice, the Nordic countries are regularly used as exceptions to the global move towards growing rates of imprisonment and tougher, less welfare-oriented crime-control policies. Why are the Nordic penal institutions viewed as so ‘different’ from a non-Nordic vantage point? Are Nordic prisons and penal policies in fact positive exceptions to the general rule? If they are, what exactly are the exceptional qualities, and why are the Nordic societies lucky enough to have them? Are there important overlooked examples of Nordic ‘bad practice’ in the penal area? Could there be a specifically Nordic way of doing prison research, contributing to the gap between internal and external perspectives? In considering – among others – the above questions, this book explores and discusses the Nordic jurisdictions as contexts for the specific penal policies and practices that may or may not be described as exceptional. Written by leading prison scholars from the Nordic countries as well as selected researchers from the English-speaking world ‘looking in’, this book will be particularly useful for students of criminology and practitioners across the Nordic countries, but also of relevance in a wider geographical context.

This book draws on historical and cross-disciplinary studies to critically examine penal practices in Scandinavia. The Nordic countries are often hailed by international observers as ‘model societies’, with egalitarian welfare policies, low rates of poverty, humane social policies and human rights oriented internal agendas. This book, however, paints a much more nuanced picture of the welfare policies, ideologies and social control in strong centralistic states. Based on extensive new empirical data, leading Nordic and international scholars discuss the relationship between prison conditions in Scandinavia and Scandinavian social policy more generally, and argue that it is not always liberating and constructive to be embraced by a powerful welfare state. This book is essential reading for researchers of state punishment in Scandinavia, and it is highly relevant for anyone interested in the ‘Nordic Model’ of social policy.

Through the critical analyses of various sexual offenses and statistical data, European Perspectives on Attrition in Sexual Offenses demonstrates how cases continue to attrite through their journey from commencement to the finalization within seven different European criminal justice systems.

Punishment in International Society examines the penal philosophies and practices in international society, arguing for the added value of a punitive lens to international politics. Bringing together an international roster of scholars from the social sciences, law, and humanities, the contributions demonstrate that punitive practices have been more prevalent than commonly acknowledged as they have often been masked as (self-)defence, reparations, or coercive diplomacy. By approaching international punishment from various disciplines, this volume sheds new light on different dimensions of the punitive practices across the globe.

This book seeks to reassess and shed new light on pan-nationalisms in general and on Scandinavianism/Nordism in particular, by seeing them as possible futures and as interconnected ideas and practices across and beyond Europe. An actor and practice oriented approach is applied at the expense of more essentialist categorizations of what pan-nationalism is, or is not to underline both the synchronic and diachronic diversity of various pan-national movements. A range of expert international scholars discuss encounters, transfers, similarities and differences among pan-movements in Norden and Europe based on a broad empirical material, focusing on Scandinavianism/Nordism, pan-Slavism, pan-Turanism, pan-Germanism and Greater Netherlandism, and the position of Britishness in Great Britain. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of nationalism, European history, European studies and Scandinavian studies, history, social science, political geography, civil society and literary studies.

This prescient Handbook examines how legacies of colonialism, gender, class, and other markers of inequality intersect with contemporary humanitarianism at multiple levels.

'Criminal Justice: Local and Global' and its sister text 'Crime: Local and Global' are teaching texts designed to equip the reader with a critical understanding of the globally contested nature of crime and justice. International case studies show how these concepts are constructed and controlled.