Penal populism: Negotiating the feminist agenda. Evidence from Spain and Poland

Abstract

It is interesting to observe how penal populism intersects with feminism when it comes to gender-based violence, as regards both anti-rape and domestic abuse reforms. There is a vast scholarship (Bumiller, 2008; Gottschalk, 2006; Gruber, 2007) in the US explaining how feminist activism turned to state power to demand more protection and more criminalization, and little focus on the European context. This article aims to analyse the development of what might be called feminist penal populist discourse in Spain and Poland. Whereas penal populist discourse has been conspicuous in Spain, and the authorities there ally themselves with domestic feminist groups and scholars to combat gender-based violence, Poland has never embraced the feminist agenda, despite the widespread influence and effectiveness of penal populism in that country. The article attempts to answer the general question: Why are feminist demands likely to be addressed in some countries where penal populism discourse has emerged in the political and public sphere, but not in others? The analysis demonstrates that the proclivity for penal populism and selection of topics are strongly related not only to some structural factors or political culture, but also to the historical and social context of each country. In Spain, the feminist movement was incorporated and politicized by left-wing parties into mainstream politics, whereas in Poland there was no grass-roots movement for women’s liberation for a long time, and the emancipatory politics during the communist era was superficial.

Governing against the tide: Populism, power and the party conference

“…Jennings et al (2017) explore the dynamic relationship between crime rates, public opinion and punitiveness in contemporary high-crime societies; while Pratt and Miao (2019b) demonstrate that populism has performed an important social function within neoliberal systems of government by helping to contain, and hive off, a broad constellation of risks, anxieties and insecurities unleashed by neoliberal economic restructuring. In a fascinating extension of this literature, recent research is beginning to document how penal populism and feminism collide and intersect in contemporary debates over gender-based violence (Grzyb, 2021) and the most appropriate societal response in high-profile cases (Phillips and Chagnon, 2020).…”

“…However, as we seek to show here, an associated tendency to treat populism as a ubiquitous, mechanistic characteristic of contemporary penality—often reflected in the use of compound nouns such as ‘penal populism’ (Pratt, 2007) or ‘populist punitiveness’ (Bottoms, 1995)—can impede systematic theoretical engagement with the inter-related question of how populist ideologies find contingent expression within national penal systems. For while it is right that research in the sociology of punishment continues to study the many accomplishments of penal populism (for better or worse), this should not distract us from its failures, setbacks and political defeats; that we seek to better understand those periods in time when populism has been in retreat and alternative ideological perspectives, such as feminism or localism, have prevailed within the political marketplace of ideas (see, for example, Grzyb, 2021).…”

The COVID-19 Crisis in Romania: A Hypothesis around Penal Populism and Legal Culture

“…Initially identified at the end of the 20 th century as distinctive for the Anglo-American world given its high incarceration rates, penal populism has by now been discussed in relation to many countries (Pratt, Miao 2017). It has also been associated with phenomena as diverse as the war on drugs (Kenny, Holmes 2020), the cultivation of moral panic in connection to the arrival of immigrants (Minetti 2020) and terrorism or the rise of feminist rhetoric denouncing domestic violence (Grzyb 2019). Some of the measures attributed to a penal populist policy seem utterly absurd such as a "proposed law in Canada that would create a database specifically designed to embarrass judges who impose 'lenient' sentences.…”