The Prisoners' Dilemma: Political Economy and Punishment in Contemporary Democracies

Over the last two decades, in the wake of increases in recorded crime and a cluster of other social changes, British criminal justice policy has become increasingly politicised: both the scale and intensity of punishment and the significance of criminal justice policy as an index of governments' competence have developed in new and worrying ways. Across the Atlantic, we witness the inexorable rise of the US prison population, amid a ratcheting-up of penal severity which seems unstoppable in the face of popular anxiety about crime.

Nicola Lacey is Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Fellow of New College, Oxford