 Legitimacy and moderation in penal policySonja Snacken Chapter 10 in Research Handbook on Penal Policy, 2026, pp 190-214 from Edward Elgar Publishing Abstract: There is substantial penological evidence in support of both quantitative and qualitative penal moderation, benefiting incarcerated individuals, their families, victims, and society as a whole. However, a persistent challenge lies in effectively communicating this evidence to policymakers and the public in order to build legitimacy for moderate penal policies – particularly in an era marked by rising penal populism. Chapter 10 applies Bottoms and Tankebe's dialogic model of legitimacy to the realm of penological evidence. A central obstacle in this process is the pervasive mechanism of Othering – the construction of criminalized individuals as fundamentally different from law-abiding citizens – which is reinforced through criminal trials and imprisonment. These processes generate physical, social, and emotional distances that foster moral and social indifference. The chapter examines several initiatives aimed at rehumanization that have emerged over the past two decades. It argues that advancing penal moderation requires not only robust empirical data and rational arguments but also greater social and emotional proximity to the lived experiences and narratives of all justice-involved individuals. Keywords: Legitimacy; Dialogic approach; Moderation; Populism; Othering; Rehumanization (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22152_10 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing |
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