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This article examines the growth, influence and limits of penal populism in New Zealand. In this country, it argues, there were four crucial factors associated with this: disenchantment with the existing democratic process; the dynamics of crime and insecurity in a period of considerable social change; the growth and influence of ‘victimization groups’; the emergence of a new kind of penal expertise.

Victoria. The author would like to thank Bill Tyler and Andrea Napier for their help in providing some of the data referred to in this paper, and anonymous reviewers for the British Journal of Criminology for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. The paper is part of a broader study on Penal Culture and Modern Society which has received generous financial assistance from the Marsden Fund in New Zealand.

This article examines the relationship between the concept of legitimacy and the power to punish in modern society. It argues that the rise of penal populism is related to the way in which criminal justice elites steadily lost legitimacy in the post-1970s period. However, it goes on to argue, using New Zealand as an illustration, that there are limits to the power of penal populism. It too can lose its legitimacy when it breaches the boundaries of morally justifiable punishment levels or when it loses consent for what it promises to do.

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This paper provides a critical examination of the prevalence of dangerous offender legislation in modern criminal justice systems. The debate about this has been dominated by issues of ethics and effectiveness. Here, though, I want to examine the significance of this legislation and some of the theoretical issues that this raises. This involves discussion of the way in which ‘dangerousness’ as a social construct has changed historically and similarly the mode of its calibration. Ultimately, the dangerousness legislation today involves the use of a largely unnoticed strategy of control — actuarialism; and seems more likely to have an effect on the behaviour of potential victims of crime rather than dangerous offenders themselves.