Comparative Studies of Sentencing: The First Four Decades

“Penal populism” and steeply rising crime rates do not make sentencing laws, policies, and practices markedly harsher and imprisonment rates rise inexorably; that happened only in the United States. Sentencing policy and practice in most European and Common Law countries and Japan have remained largely insulated from partisan politics. Imprisonment rates have been broadly stable in most Western countries and Japan for five decades. Imprisonment rates in many countries fluctuated in narrow ranges even while crime rates rose steeply in the late twentieth century. In Central and Eastern Europe, they later fell substantially. Many European countries controlled prison populations by establishing new prison alternatives based on American models. The clearest examples are community service orders, electronic monitoring, and victim-offender mediation. Explanations for why sentencing policies, processes, and practices vary substantially between countries are primarily to be found in national histories and cultures.