Hamilton, Claire (2023) Beyond ‘stagnation and change’?: Path dependency, translation and the ‘layering’ over time of Irish penal policy. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 62 (1). pp. 46-60. ISSN 2059-1098

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Abstract

In the past decade or so a significant body of work on ‘Hibernian exceptionalism’ to broader punitive trends has emerged. The dominant argument and characterisation of Irish penality within this broad schema is that it is exceptional for having been largely stagnant. This article takes issue with the stagnation or ‘stickiness’ that is often supposed to characterise the Irish penal system arguing that stagnation as a form of ‘path dependency’ fails to adequately account for key moments of penal change and downplays the temporal dynamics that are often apparent in policy development. Using two key ‘policy windows’ as case studies – the 1996 ‘moral panic’ over crime and the post-2011 turn to a more progressive penal politics – it argues that greater consideration should be given to the ‘translation’ and ‘layering’ of policy decisions and the growing complexity of policy space that may result.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Hibernian exceptionalism; Ireland; path dependency; penal policy;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Law
Item ID:	17871
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12506
Depositing User:	Claire Hamilton
Date Deposited:	21 Nov 2023 16:07
Journal or Publication Title:	The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice
Publisher:	Wiley
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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