Political ideologies and penal policy

Zelia A. Gallo

Chapter 11 in Research Handbook on Penal Policy, 2026, pp 215-238 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Chapter 11 investigates the ‘morphological approach’ to the study of political ideologies and penal policy, which invites us to dissect existing ideologies, understanding their key claims on state–citizen relations and the constitution of our polities, to explain the ideologies’ attitudes to crime and control. Loader's analysis of British Conservatism serves here as a key case study of this approach. The chapter further discusses Loader and Sparks’ notion of ‘democratic under-laboring’: the task of extracting whatever ideational resources different ideologies offer to a ‘better politics of crime’. Using – embedded but not completely context specific – examples from recent Italian politics and penal policy, the chapter questions the possibility of ‘democratic under-laboring’ in times and places that have seen the ascendancy of ‘thin’ and ‘disfigured’ ideologies such as populism and technocracy. The chapter concludes by suggesting that penal reform may be arduous in the face of bad politics, as much as bad penal policy.

Keywords: Political ideologies; Penal policy; Morphological approach; Democratic under-laboring; Democratic disfigurements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035308521
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