Crime Policies of Small Countries: Viewing Punishment from the Periphery

Criminological theorizing on crime and punishment has tended to focus on the priorities of large western, particularly Anglophone, countries. While criminology is by no means unique in this among the social sciences, recent critiques of North Atlantic domination in the analogous field of sociology have prompted researchers to reflect on the limitations associated with “reading from the center” (Connell 2006, p. 259, cited in Aas 2012; Lee and Laidler 2013). Even more than other specialties, contemporary work on the sociology of punishment—which forms the main focus of this chapter—typifies this tendency to generalize from the particular. Garland (2001), for example, grounds his seminal “culture of control” thesis in crime policy in the United States, United Kingdom, “and elsewhere,” prompting a response from some European analysts about the specificities of the “elsewhere” (Albrecht 2001; O’Donnell 2004). Wacquant’s (2005, 2009) arguments about race, neoliberalism, and the “penal state” are centered around the United States and certain large European jurisdictions, such as France. He too has been criticized by Lacey (2009), among others, for failing to acknowledge the cavernous differences in the imprisonment rates of these continents as well as the significant variations among American states. Finally, Simon’s (2007) work on the “war on crime” is intended as a uniquely American study yet has also been criticized for its excessive focus on his home state of California. As Hughes (2008) suggests, it is at least questionable whether the home of the notorious “three strikes” law, among other punitive measures, can be characterized as typical of US criminal justice policy, as he claims.

While there are advantages to such “big canvas” accounts, there are costs associated with such a high level of abstraction, not least the danger of presenting an overly monolithic view. Authors such as Melossi (2001) and Nelken (2009, 2010) remain concerned about the lack of attention given to distinctive cultural, historical, constitutional, and political conditions in individual countries and the need for criminologists to contextualize general explanations; yet certain imbalances remain. The purpose of this chapter is thus to respond to Aas’s (2012) call to “see from the periphery” and explore some of the limits of such “grand narratives” through an examination of crime policies in small rather than larger jurisdictions. Given the tendency in much of the literature to view punishment as a “one size fits all” phenomenon, extending from the United States into Europe and beyond, the severity of crime-control policy is examined in smaller jurisdictions, which have traditionally been underexamined in the criminological literature. Case studies of countries include a (necessarily limited) survey of crime-control policy in island states in the Caribbean and Mediterranean, small states in Europe and Asia, and new states in the Balkans.

In Section I, McAra’s (2005) arguments concerning the dynamics of small-scale systems and the manner in which elite networks operating within these systems can act to resist larger transformative processes are discussed, together with literature from other countries supporting this view. In Section II, the relative importance of country size is examined in more detail, with a view to assessing whether it operates as a “risk,” “protective,” or “non” factor for punitiveness (Tonry, 2007). In Section III, research into crime policy in a number of small jurisdictions is drawn upon in an effort to highlight the limits of macro-level accounts of punitiveness. Specific issues examined relating to this broad theme are the dangers of assuming similarity with larger jurisdictions as well as the complexities surrounding policy transfer in smaller countries.

Before beginning to discuss these issues, however, a preliminary matter concerns the definition of small country as referred to in the title. Clearly size is a relative concept and may be best understood through comparisons with other, bigger jurisdictions. Studies carried out on small jurisdictions in other fields of study have set limits of 3 million (Armstrong and Read 1998), 5 million (Brautigam and Woolcock 2001; Colllier and Dollar 1999), and 10 million (Kuznets 1960; Streeten 1993). Given that there is no special significance attached to the selection of a particular population threshold to define small jurisdictions, an expansive definition is preferred of approximately 10 million. Reference is also made, however, to larger jurisdictions that share some or all of the characteristics of smaller countries.¹

There has been very limited criminological research to date on the impact of the size of a jurisdiction on crime-control policy. Looking to other disciplines, however, work in the broad area of economics illustrates that opinion is largely divided on whether size matters (Schotburgh 2011). On the one hand, research indicates few systematic differences, nor do smaller jurisdictions appear disadvantaged in terms of health, wealth, education, and a host of other social indicators (Brautigam and Woolcock 2001; Rose, 2006). On the other hand, several studies point to the highly centralized nature of political arrangements in such countries, which tend to be characterized by “closely knit” and “highly personalized” relationships with an increased likelihood of clientism and corruption (Katzenstein 1985; Oostindie and Sutton 2006).

Developing these arguments in a criminological context, McAra (2005) puts forward the view that small jurisdictions may be better equipped to resist more punitive policies owing to the tight-knit nature of their policy networks and collaborative working cultures (McAra, 2005). In her discussion of Scottish penal policy, she relates how Scotland experienced a “crisis of governance” in the 1980s and early 1990s similar to that described by Garland (2001), but the existing policy networks acted to shield the penal system from radical change. Policy changes in key institutional sites such as the Children’s Hearing System and prisons appeared to renegotiate rather than replace the traditional welfarist ethos. Thus, over the last number of decades, there has been increasing recognition of the need to rebalance care and control rather than a complete transformation in favor of control. McAra attributes this to the mediating effect of Scottish civic culture and the prominent role played by a number of elite policy networks in Scottish penal policy, both of which she maintains have been facilitated by the small-scale nature of the criminal justice system in Scotland. The significance of the growing role played by these elites is that they themselves were driven by penal welfarist imperatives, shored up by a civic culture that “valorises community, public provision of welfare and mutual support” (2005, p. 294). The net effect is that the larger transformative processes described by Garland and others are significantly constrained by local processes and values or, more specifically, “self-reflexive modes of communication” that allow the society in question to continually reconstruct the social world within its own terms. For McAra, therefore, a systems analytical approach is useful for the very fact that it permits analysis at both the level of the general and the local, and cognizance can be taken of the interplay between the two.

These networks became particularly influential when the political arm of the UK national government had a weak claim to legitimacy in Scotland (owing to the growing divide between grassroots Scottish politics and the Conservative government then in power). However, McAra (2005, p. 293) is also clear in her view that these networks continued to thrive principally because of the small-scale nature of the Scottish penal system itself. She draws attention to the following features of smaller penal systems in this regard: “key decision-makers are well known to each other; the professional links between different institutions are made easier by constant interaction between the same groups of individuals; lines of communication are generally simple; there are fewer groups to consult; and geographical proximity facilitates collaborative ventures and joint-working.” Moreover, McAra (2002, 2008) contends that the role played by these policy networks is not only of historical interest. While the grip of older elites on criminal justice policy in postdevolutionary Scotland may have loosened somewhat, their impact is still felt through resistance to more exclusionary policies, such as antisocial behavior orders (ASBOs).

McAra’s work in this area is important in that it represents the first attempt by a criminologist to fully develop an argument relating to the effects of jurisdictional size on criminal justice policy. The heightened importance of policy networks in smaller countries has also been suggested by Lappi-Seppalla (2007, pp. 284–285), who has noted the influence of personal and political friends over the determination of penal policies in Finland. During a critical period in Finnish penal policy, criminal justice policy was strongly influenced by a number of like-minded experts who held key positions in drafting offices, the judiciary, prison administration, and the universities. These individuals went on to hold even more senior posts in the cabinet, civil service, and judiciary, thereby “creating conditions for consistency and consensus that may have been hard to establish elsewhere.” For “elsewhere,” we can probably read “larger jurisdictions,” given that this type of consistent influence is in all likelihood much easier to achieve in a small country.

Strong resonances of this penal elitist mode of governance can also be found in Adorjan and Chui’s (2013) account of the development of youth justice policy in colonial Hong Kong. Like Scotland, contemporary Hong Kong does not “share the familiar ‘story’ of responses to youth crime found in many western nations” (2013, p. 160), namely, the shift from penal welfarism toward neoliberal “cultures of control.” Rather, it adopts a form of “disciplinary welfare” that prioritizes the disciplinary “needs” of the juvenile over the “deeds” or punitive element of the sentence. While this form of welfarism remains relatively unopposed in policy spheres, it also has a distinct disciplinary edge. Training centers have quasi-indeterminate sentences permitting detention until a young person has been “reformed,” and detention centers implement regimes incorporating “strenuous physical labor, foot drill, physical education and work” (Chui, 2005, p. 71). Adorjan and Chui trace the roots of this policy to a small circle of male colonial elites who dominated criminal justice policy in the 1960s and 1970s and were concerned to engineer juvenile justice policy in directions favorable to their wider political goals. Against the backdrop of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the emphasis on disciplinary welfare in the form of educational and vocational initiatives chimed with broader efforts to secure government legitimacy and promote citizen identification with Hong Kong. As in the Scottish context, the elitist mode of response remains salient in the postcolonial era in Hong Kong. The absence of democratic elections and the reluctance of the central Chinese government to engage in genuine consultation with the public means that responses to youth crime continue to take the form of top-down directives.

It may be argued that both of these examples revolve around small countries that, despite enjoying high degrees of autonomy in the formation of crime policy, are not sovereign states. Hong Kong operates as a Special Administrative Region of China, and Scotland remains part of the United Kingdom despite the devolution of power in 1998. Be that as it may, discussions around the influence of elites over the strategic direction of criminal justice policy serve as an important corrective to the tendency toward overly deterministic structural accounts of penal change. Tracing the impact of elite networks and individual personalities on policy formation brings us back to the more immediate political context of policy decisions and reminds us of the sometimes critical role of human agency. Indeed, we do not have to look too hard for examples of sovereign small jurisdictions where personalities rather than processes form the important drivers of penal policy. Rogan (2011) makes this point particularly well in her historical examination of penal policy in Ireland. Her detailed analysis of the pivotal role played by individual ministers for justice, such as Charles Haughey and Michael McDowell in the 1960s and 2000s respectively, shows how explanations for change in the penal system may be somewhat more prosaic than first imagined. Haughey (along with Peter Berry, Secretary General of the Department of Justice) set in train a number of important changes in Irish penal policy, aligning it more closely with penal welfarist discourse across the Irish Sea. Reforms, referred to at the time as the “Haughey Plan,” involved three steps—establishment of the Juvenile Liaison scheme (prevention), improvement in probation, and a greater emphasis on rehabilitation in prisons. McDowell, too, brought considerable personal zeal and energy to the position of minister for justice as well as his own particular (punitive) vision for change in the criminal justice system. Citing the need for “balance” in the criminal justice system, a hectic legislative schedule during his period in power included acts consolidating and expanding presumptive and mandatory sentencing provisions; the introduction of ASBOs; and two mammoth criminal justice acts reforming criminal procedure, insanity verdicts, postrelease monitoring, the law of evidence, and bail.

These detailed policy analyses remind us to be wary of generalizations that assume the eclipse of penal elitism by a penal populism, whether from above or below (Bottoms 1995; Pratt 2007; Roberts et al. 2003). The differing courses taken by these smaller countries rather speak to a process of policy formulation that includes experts, interest groups, and influential individuals as well as the public and politicians.

Discussion of McAra’s work thus far has focused on the role of elites in influencing policy rather than the questions she raises about the impact of jurisdictional size on penal policy. While the systems analysis model presents many advantages in terms of its ability to reconcile structural and local factors, questions may be raised about the particular significance attributed to the small size of the jurisdiction in question. It seems likely that the small size of Scotland may have allowed the elite policy networks in question—civil servants, judges, and prosecutors—to display greater coherence in the face of external challenges to welfarism. However, the key factor at play in preserving the welfarist ethos of the system is arguably Scottish civic culture (which, as McAra [2005, p. 295] notes, “provides the conceptual locus for penal-welfare values”).

Viewed in this light, Scotland appears less as a small jurisdiction whose scale has better allowed it to weather turbulent changes in penal policy but rather as a jurisdiction whose distinct cultural values have mitigated the effects of more punitive policies emanating from south of the border. This aligns it not so much with other small jurisdictions (some of which have appeared very susceptible to recent trends toward penal populism; see, for example, New Zealand [Pratt and Clark 2005]) but with countries of varying sizes that have maintained milder penal policies in an effort to distinguish themselves from more punitive neighboring jurisdictions (e.g., Canada and Finland). Brodeur (2007, p. 72) describes this as “self-definition by contrast” and gives the example of how Canada’s core values, such as pacifism (in contrast to its larger cousin’s role in world policing), translate into less coercive measures in its penal system as well. This provides an interesting parallel with Scotland and its communitarian civic values and testifies further to the “cultural embeddedness” of the penal realm (Melossi 2001).

McAra herself concedes that not all small-scale systems will exhibit a tendency toward mildness in penal policy and writes that “if a seismic cultural transformation were to occur across extant policy networks within Scotland, then the very smallness of the system would facilitate a swifter and more complete transformation than might be possible in a more complex and differentiated large-scale system” (2005, p. 296). If this is indeed the case, then it is difficult to see how the size of a country would matter as an explanatory or causal factor. The size of the jurisdiction would appear to hold little significance for understanding the determinants of penal policy other than as a background factor acting as a catalyst for change in any direction.

This reading would appear to be confirmed from a brief survey of a number of small jurisdictions in Europe, drawing on Tonry’s (2007) framework of nonfactors, risk, and protective factors. Applying this hypothesis to a number of small European jurisdictions, it would appear that a variety of experiences are evident and that conditions do not remain constant over time. A clear example of dramatic change is presented by the Netherlands: Once held up as “an example of penal enlightenment” by many criminologists, subsequently dubbed a “beacon of tolerance dimmed” (Cavadino and Dignan, 2006: 113), it is now once again experiencing a decline in its imprisonment rate. As Cavadino and Dignan (2006) observe, from the period after World War II until the 1990s, its imprisonment rate was consistently one of the lowest in Europe. This has changed dramatically in recent decades, however, and in the period since 1973 that nation has witnessed a sevenfold increase in its prison population, peaking at a rate of around 130 per 100,000 in 2005. What is particularly interesting about the Dutch case, moreover, as Tonry (2007) has remarked, is that the change has operated “osmotically”: Over a period of time, a shift has occurred in the attitudes of criminal justice practitioners, but there has been little change at the policy level. Downes (2007), author of the well- known Contrasts in Tolerance (1988), comparing English and Dutch postwar penal policy, attributes the harsher penal climate in the Netherlands to three factors that he claims were also instrumental in the “punitive turn” in the United States, England, and Wales. These changes comprise (a) very sharp, disproportionate rises in crime rates; (b) events that have led to a pervasive feeling of crisis and sense of moral or social collapse; and (c) a consensus—or, more accurately perception—that the system is no longer capable of dealing with crime and has left society underprotected. Downes contends that these three factors cumulatively predispose a jurisdiction to the adoption of more punitive policies and practices or, as in the Dutch case, practices only. To use Tonry’s terms, they are “risk factors” that make punitiveness more likely, with the critical factor appearing to be the fact that a “tipping point” has been reached. The public appear to share a perception that society is on the verge of collapse and to feel a pervasive sense of insecurity, which Downes refers to as a “mortal” rather than “moral” sense of panic.

Looking to another small jurisdiction just south of the Netherlands, however, the situation appears to be very different. Snacken (2007) has described Belgium’s penal system as characterized by both continuity and change, with an increasingly bifurcated approach being taken to criminal justice matters. This has resulted in harsher measures being directed at sexual, drug, and violent offenders while at the same time strenuous efforts continue to be made to divert minor offenders from prison. In contrast to England, Wales, and the United States (and, as Downes argues, the Netherlands), several features of the “culture of control” have not manifested themselves in Belgian penal policy. The system has retained a commitment to rehabilitation; expert views on criminal justice continue to be respected by policymakers; and crime reporting to date has avoided excessive emotionalism. The explanation for this relative stability may well lie in a number of “protective” factors identified by Tonry, such as the consensus political system and a firm view that criminal justice policymaking should be informed by experts and professionals. This raises the question, however, as to why similar protective factors present in the Netherlands failed to operate in a like manner, particularly given other commonalities between the two countries. For instance, as in Belgium, criminal justice issues in the Netherlands are increasingly referred to along ethnic lines. Further, the Belgian criminal justice system suffered from a crisis of legitimacy following the Marc Dutroux scandal in 1996, and Snacken writes of the increasing salience of the “politics of insecurity” since the 1980s (2007, pp. 153–154). The answers may well lie in further research. However in light of the instant concern, the difference between these two neighboring small jurisdictions in Europe serves to illustrate the variability that can result even from countries of similar size and political tradition.

It is interesting to observe that McAra (2005, p. 278) cites the Dutch case as an example of a small jurisdiction that appeared to be relatively resistant to more punitive trends— a description which unfortunately does not appear to accurately reflect the current situation in that country. She might also have cited Ireland, given its relative resistance to change, such that O’Donnell (2005, p. 102) has written: “In a number of important respects the Irish criminal justice system seems to resemble the arrangements in other western countries a generation or more ago.” It would be tempting to view this as a function of its small size, yet in actuality the scale of the country and its location between two larger common-law jurisdictions has increased its vulnerability to changing fashions in criminal justice (O’Donnell and O’Sullivan 2003). A good example is provided by the “zero tolerance” policy upon which the Fianna Fáil party fought the 1997 general election and which did, in fact, result in an increased number of prosecutions for offenses against public order in addition to an increase in the number of prison places (O’Donnell and O’Sullivan 2003). While neither the appetite for such policies nor indeed the desire to use crime as a wedge issue in political campaigns has been sustained (Kilcommins et al. 2004), it is clear that Ireland often looks to its larger neighbors for inspiration on criminal justice matters. Recent innovations that appear to have originated in either Britain or America include sex offender notification, electronic monitoring, and antisocial behavior orders (Hamilton 2007). Indeed, basing his argument on the emergence of the zero-tolerance and antisocial behavior agendas in Ireland over the last several years, Garrett (2007) has gone so far as to claim, following Bourdieu and Wacquant (1999), that England acts as a kind of “Trojan horse” for the introduction into Europe of policies originally formulated in America. He also makes the interesting point that with the adoption of zero tolerance/broken windows approaches by many Dutch municipalities, the Netherlands has become the site of the largest policy transfer in criminological history—a fact that may be of relevance in light of its recent punitive drift.

Based on the above observations, the contrary argument can be advanced that small jurisdictions may be particularly susceptible to policy transfer from the United States and possibly the United Kingdom, although admittedly this has quite the opposite effect where such jurisdictions have deliberately sought to distance themselves from them (as in the Scottish example). To recall Tonry’s framework, it would appear that the size of the jurisdiction may affect penal policies in either direction, a fact which properly categorizes it as a “nonfactor,” given that “whether [it] influence[s] policies depends on [its] interaction with other risk and protective factors” (Tonry 2007, p. 17). From the cursory survey above of some small jurisdictions, risk factors would appear to include a predisposition toward Anglo-American culture and policies, while a determination to define itself differently may act as a protective mechanism against harsher policies. In either case, as a nonfactor, the size of the country ‘may be part of the story, but … not the important part’ (Tonry 2007, p. 17).

Despite the arguments made in the previous section about the failure of jurisdictional size to determine differences in penal policy, it is by no means the case that small jurisdictions hold no lessons for criminologists interested in learning more about the punitive turn. The value of local case histories of smaller jurisdictions is illustrated in the section below from two perspectives. The first subsection demonstrates the perils of “reading from the center” (Connell, 2006, p. 259) or viewing developments in small, peripheral jurisdictions from one’s position in a larger western jurisdiction. It is argued that a more contextualized analytic approach, which takes account of how security is constituted within the sociopolitical context of particular nation states, better illuminates the concrete realities. The discussion proceeds in the second subsection to discuss the role of policy transfer, given its particular relevance to small jurisdictions. It is hoped that—through an examination of a number of small-country case studies—it will be possible to get a sense of the relative influence of the global and the local and to identify some of the factors inhibiting or facilitating this process.

It is tempting for western criminologists, schooled in various versions of punitive turn theory, to apply their own ethnocentric interpretations of events to smaller jurisdictions. Closer analysis, however, reveals that appearances can be deceptive. The emergence of “gated communities” in Singapore—a city-state that has gained a reputation for a highly authoritarian approach to crime control—provides an excellent illustration of this false universalism. Gated communities are frequently discussed by criminologists in terms of the retreat of the neoliberal state from urban crime control and the “responsibilization” of the citizenry (Garland 2001). This is well expressed by Simon’s (2013) blog that “[gated communities] promise to wrap consumers in an extra layer of security unprovided by the state and mutual self-help of citizens”; they are often seen as spreading American-style “defensive urbanism.” Pow (2013), however, suggests that they are better understood in less utilitarian terms and more as part of a broader “consumption package” that promises, first and foremost, class and privilege. In Singapore, therefore, the rapid development of this type of housing owes more to the allure of a higher quality of life, as well as a certain sense of social identity and belonging, than to more pragmatic security concerns. The manner in which security, class consumption, and identity politics are intertwined in Singapore provides, as Lee and Laidler (2013) suggest, a timely lesson in the “situatedness” of the global within the national.

Several other small-country case studies serve to illustrate the risk of “false” or ethnocentric readings of punitiveness, based on the assumption that what is happening in large western jurisdictions is also occurring elsewhere. New Zealand is often cited in the literature (Cavadino and Dignan 2006; Pratt 2007) as an example of a country that has to a large degree followed the Anglophone drift toward populist punitiveness (if such exists). The significant upward spiral of its prison population (reaching 194 per 100,000 population in 2012) as well as the sustained commitment of its political parties to tough rhetoric on crime rest comfortably with this characterization. Further, in 1999 a Citizens Initiated Referendum (CIR) was held where 99 percent voted for greater emphasis on the needs of victims and the imposition of minimum sentences and hard labor for all serious violent offences (Pratt and Clark 2005). A more nuanced reading, however, acknowledges the salience of local issues, such as the racialized nature of criminal justice, the lack of specialized reporting on legal issues in the media, the particular constitutional and political framework, and, most critically, the absence of trust in political institutions (Hamilton 2014). What Lappi-Seppälä (2008) terms “political trust” was damaged quite seriously in New Zealand by the Labour party’s controversial socioeconomic U-turn in the 1980s, which was effected without a mandate from the electorate. Interviews with key stakeholders in the country reveal a deep suspicion of both politicians and civil servants, and this distrust has manifested itself in routinized practices that bypass the state legislature, such as the CIR on sentencing (Hamilton 2014). Given the importance of these local contingencies, one may wonder whether the current “populist turn” in the state may be better conceptualized as an aftershock from an earlier political crisis than as an example par excellence of a new, virulent penal populism (Pratt 2007).

Relocating from the edges of Oceania to the periphery of Europe, similar observations can be made on the risks associated with the overly ready acceptance of generalizing arguments, in this instance hegemonic neoliberalism. In a detailed examination of punitiveness in Greece, Cheliotis and Xenakis (2010) interrogate Wacquant’s thesis about the export of the neoliberal model to European states and the connections between this process and the promotion of the “new, ‘punitive commonsense’ forged in the United States” (Wacquant 2009, p. 162). The authors find little support for the argument, given that punitive trends in the use of imprisonment—driven primarily, they argue, by fear of “downward mobility” among the lower and middle classes—predated the adoption of neoliberal policies in the country. While they acknowledge that neoliberal policies in the 1990s may well have exacerbated preexisting trends, they locate the critical explanatory factors in the ‘social, political and economic tensions typical of semi-peripheral societies: the particularly strained dynamics of social rights and mobility, political representation and state provision and labour relations and profit-making’ (2010, p. 367). Some of these features, such as inadequate welfare provision and the highly flexible labor market, paradoxically reflect neoliberal models but are more correctly understood as stemming from the semiperipheral nature of the Greek economy. As in the other two case studies, then, all is not as it initially appears; surface similarities often belie the mediating influence of local politicocultural environments.

We now turn to discuss policy transfer in small countries in an effort to get a sense of the processes involved in policy transfer between countries as well as the limits of this exchange. By “policy transfer” what is meant is both adoption/adaption of more punitive or populist policies from countries such as the United States and efforts to adhere to international human rights directives. These two processes clearly “conjure up quite different future scenarios” (Muncie 2011, p. 53), but both constitute important pressure toward convergence, particularly in certain specialized areas such as youth justice. As noted, it has been suggested by O’Donnell and O’Sullivan (2003) that small jurisdictions in close proximity to larger nations may be particularly susceptible to policy transfer, but in general little is known about how change in crime-control policy comes about and the role of policy transfer in it (Jones and Newburn 2007). It is likely, of course, that this process is highly mediated by geographic location and the relative maturity of the country’s policy environment; cross-national borrowing becomes much more likely in developing countries and newly created democracies. In light of this, and the relative neglect of such countries in criminological research so far (Aas 2012), in the discussion below, particular attention is paid to crime-policy transfer to these jurisdictions.

Given the absence of empirical detail in this field, Randma-Liiv and Kruusenberg’s (2012) analysis of the establishment of the national probation systems in Estonia and Latvia provides a welcome addition to the literature. Both of these Baltic countries used to be members of the Soviet Union and regained their independence in 1991. As probation was not practiced under Soviet rule, the establishment of a national probation system represented a good example of transitional policymaking in the criminal justice area. Drawing on interviews with policymakers in both countries, among other sources, the authors identified a number of factors relevant to the process as follows:

A number of comments can be made on these findings. First, it is interesting to note the emphasis they place on personal contacts in the choice of foreign partners, with a signal role being played here by the ethnic diaspora abroad (i.e., Latvian Canadians). While clearly this should be understood against the background of a lack of domestic expertise (less of a problem in more developed bureaucracies), it does serve to reinforce earlier arguments about the relatively neglected role of networks and human agency in criminological theorizing about punishment. It is surely no coincidence that arguably the clearest example of crime policy transfer from the United States to Ireland (the Irish “zero-tolerance’ policy discussed in Section II) was drawn up by John Timoney, a Dublin native and deputy police commissioner of New York City (O’Donnell and O’Sullivan 2003).

The second point concerns the role of the Europeanization process in producing a strong impetus to policy transfer from western countries. Particularly in the Latvian case, the aim of accession pushed the government to find a “quick fix” solution to the problem, and this has inevitably led to a survey of several western models. With Estonia, too, it is interesting that the motivation to establish a western-style probation system arose from a desire to prove to the world that Estonia is a “civilized society” (Kiviloo 1994, cited in Randma-Liiv and Kruusenberg 2012). This is particularly notable in the context of the significant decline in its imprisonment rate in the years since accession to the European Union (from 339 in 2004 to 246 in 2013).² The (usually downward) gravitational pull on imprisonment rates exerted by membership of European bodies (such as the European Union and the Council of Europe) has not escaped the notice of criminological commentators to date (Snacken and Dumortier 2012; van Zyl Smit and Snacken 2009), although it remains an area that would benefit from further research. In a more critical sense, however, the Estonian and Latvian cases raise the question of power relations in policy transfer and the extent to which policymakers adopt policies in an attempt to satisfy perceived international norms.

Following on from this point, the particular susceptibility of immature (small) political systems to coercive policy transfer in the crime-control area also merits further exploration. The location of the Caribbean islands in the drug transit zone between North and South America render them particularly vulnerable to coercive policy transfer as part of the US war on drugs. In islands such as Jamaica, US-style law enforcement tactics have been aggressively pursued to control drugs trafficking such that “crime control policy has largely been reduced to law enforcement” (Harriott 2003, p. xvii). The knock-on effect is high rates of imprisonment in these countries which owe much to the imprisonment of drugs traffickers from other countries. Once again, detailed policy analyses of this process are unfortunately absent but a good start is made by Bowling and Sheptycki (2012) who discuss the role of bilateral treaties between the Caribbean countries and the US and the role of US international liaison officers (ILOs) stationed in these jurisdictions. Agozino et al (2009: 298) observe that counter-drugs operations in the West Indies are often completely financed by international partners, with local police officers candidly acknowledging in interviews “that the policy choices are not theirs to set.”

Transfer may also occur through less direct routes such as via international aid. In a fascinating study of the “security-development” nexus in Haiti, Walby and Monaghan (2011) describe how Canadian agencies, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Correctional Service of Canada, and the Canadian International Development Agency, were involved in capacity-building initiatives that focused on police reform, border surveillance, and prison construction/refurbishment across Haiti. The “Haitian paradox” referred to in the title of their article denotes the irony that, while the securitization project may have been based on the rule of law and human rights, in practice these securitization efforts exacerbated jail overcrowding, distrust of police, and persecution of political opposition. This recalls Nelken’s (2005, 2006) work on the importance of distinguishing between punitive intentions and outcomes; clearly, in an increasingly complex penal environment, “bad” outcomes, viz. more imprisonment, can occur for “good” reasons. In any event, further work on the intersections between international development, economic aid and criminal justice and their impact on the crime policies of developing countries could usefully be done in this area.

Thus far we have examined only countries where policy has been effectively transferred. ContraRandma-Liiv and Kruusenberg’s (2012) observations, however, it is far from inevitable that policies will always successfully transfer, even in societies in transition, and much is dependent on a favorable political and institutional environment. The role played by these factors is evident in a less successful instance of policy transfer in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), another eastern European country currently experiencing a number of important social, political, and economic transitions. Here, political fragmentation and the lack of hierarchic relationships between state and entity-level systems have stymied the potential influence of the Council of Europe over penal practices relating to the detention of forensic psychiatric patients (Aitchison 2010). The slow progress on this matter detailed by Aitchison (2010) shows how even state-level obligations arising from Council of Europe membership have failed to overcome local political obstacles. This is even more surprising given that the progressive nature of certain aspects of prewar prison regimes in Yugoslavia might have been expected to have increased the receptiveness of BiH to improved human rights standards for prisoners.

Aitchison’s arguments concerning the continued influence of local factors over broader trends are echoed in other small-country case studies. Stagnation rather than change defines criminal justice policy in Malta, where contemporary western trends—such as the increasing reorientation of the criminal justice system toward the victim—have only recently begun to be felt. Calafato and Knepper (2009) attribute the formidable inertia surrounding criminal justice in the EU’s smallest state to “political traditions extending to British rule in the 19th century.” Kerezsi and Levay (2008), too, note how the Anglophone rhetoric of “zero tolerance” and “tough on crime” did not find significant support in surveys of the Hungarian population or within academic publications. Punitive legislation introducing inter alia mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole was enacted in 1998 but was partially revoked in 2003. A similar story is also told about Slovenia, where recent laws are said to have served more symbolic than instrumental purposes and should not be taken as indicative of tough crime-control practices on the “shady side of the Alps” (Flander and Mesko 2011). Given the serious and growing problem of organized crime in these countries, the continued commitment to penal moderation in Hungary and Slovenia serves to reinforce punitiveness as a political choice. Before 1989–1990, crime rates were low in both of these countries (as in other new democracies in the region), and imprisonment rates were high. In the period since the regime change, imprisonment rates have decreased significantly, even in the context of increasing criminality (Levay 2011).

Considered together, these stories attest to the complexity and the diversity of responses to penal fashions and international norms, even among the limited sample of small jurisdictions examined. Differing levels of receptiveness to western crime-control policy and the range of factors impacting on it also speak to what Muncie (2011) describes as the limitations of “doing comparative research through a lens of either divergence and/or convergence.” As the global and the local increasingly interpenetrate one another, the challenge for comparative researchers is to hold these two interpretative frameworks simultaneously in focus.

This chapter opened by acknowledging the metrocentric focus of current theorizing about punishment to date, particularly theorizing around the “punitive turn.” Small states, particularly those on the periphery of Asia, America, and (to a lesser degree) Europe, have thus far not featured prominently in the debate about contemporary punishment. Yet, as has hopefully been demonstrated in the brief survey above, they are far from marginal to inquiry and in fact should be regarded as fruitful areas for further investigation. In the paragraphs below, some of the directions that future research may take are outlined.