Contrasts in Punishment: An explanation of Anglophone excess and Nordic exceptionalism (Routledge Frontiers of Criminal Justice)

Contrasts in Punishment will take a central place in the emerging literature seeking to explain persisting differences in levels and forms of punishment in modern societies. Its ambitious comparative and historical perspective, and in particular its interpretation of how institutional features of these societies develop over a long span of time, and of how criminal justice and other institutional arrangements interact to produce distinctive dynamics and outcomes, produce significant insights which will surely shape and stimulate debate in this important field.

Nicola Lacey, Senior Research Fellow, All Souls College and Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory, University of Oxford, UK.

These are people, with values and policies that are both different to much current penal thinking and which subsist in contemporary consciousness, who are not Scandinavians, but who are part of our traditions, our heritage, our culture. One response to this book that we might make then, is to attempt to rediscover these latent influences, identify the points of continuity and the values sustaining them, and attempt to articulate them in contemporary debate, bring them more squarely back into play in the penal field.
I think this book has assisted that possibility and I congratulate the authors on a rich and wondrous piece of work, an enthralling and instructive read and a very significant contribution to international comparative penology and penal politics.

Emeritus Professor David Brown, University of New South Wales, Australia.

(The) book gives clear cause to challenge the seemingly inexorable rush among most Anglo societies to emulate the essential brutality and absurdity of the US system. Readers are reminded that lagom (lack of both overcondemnation and praise) is a wise principle for policy makers to adopt, though there are many structural reasons why so often they do not.

C. Powell, University of Southern Maine, Choice Review

As academics and practitioners become increasingly frustrated at the punitive criminal justice policy and the condemnatory public discourse around offending in the UK, they are inclined to look to the Scandinavian nations as examples of an alternative approach. Pratt and Eriksson's excellent book provides a detailed account of these differences in approach to criminal justice, locating penal policy in a social and historical context.

Dr Brian Stout, Associate Professor of Social Work, University of Western Sydney, in British Journal of Community Justice

Recent comparative penological interest in the explanation and meaning of punitiveness was kick-started by Garland's Anglo-American-centric The Culture of Control... Pratt and Eriksson's study is a considerable and essential addition to this literature.

David Nelken, Kings College, Punishment and Society