Theorising global penal change

Over the past decades, punishment and society scholars have devoted increasing attention to the global dimensions of penal policy trajectories. However, since globalisation is one of the most contested topics in the social sciences, it is hardly surprising that the growing interest in the global determinants of penal change did not generate a scholarly consensus. Instead, accounts of current penal developments resonate with broader controversies about the characteristics, causes, and impacts of contemporary patterns of transnational interconnectivity, as well as with emergent criminological debates about the definitional boundaries of the concept of penality. This chapter explores the contours of these debates by examining the theoretical underpinnings of different explanations of the causal mechanisms producing pressures toward cross-national convergence of penal policies and by analysing the cultural, institutional and political factors affecting how different states respond to these isomorphic pressures.