Punishment in Europe ― A Critical Anatomy of Penal Systems

This collection brings together leading international scholars and practitioners to provide a critical guide to penal systems across Europe. Each chapter forms a case study outlining the main contours of each national penal system, identifying and interpreting the combination of forces driving penal practice in that country.

Through its exploration of twelve different Western and Eastern European countries, this collection identifies the national particularities, but also the commonalities and cross talk between penal systems, such as the overuse of imprisonment and the harsher sanctions against the poor when breaking the law. The book challenges this bias with a call for a more critical, public criminology, raising fundamental questions about how we justify and deliver punishment in Europe.

Includes contributions from Inaki Rivera Beiras, Emma Bell, Miranda Boone, Bernd Dollinger, Patrizio Gonnella, Philip Gounev, Hanns von Hofer, Vassilis Karydis, Nikolaos K. Koulouris, Andrea Kretschmann, Monica Aranda Ocana, Laura Piacentini, Monika Platek, Philippe Robert, Mary Rogan, Rene van Swaaningen and Enrik Tham.

Vincenzo Ruggiero is Professor of Sociology at Middlesex University, London, UK. His work is available in several languages, and his books (single-authored and edited) include Western European Penal Systems (1995), The New European Criminology (1998), Crime and Markets (2000), Social Movements: A Reader (2008), Penal Abolitionism (2010), Corruption and Organised Crime in Europe (2012) and The Crimes of the Economy (2013).


Mick Ryan is Professor Emeritus, Department of Law and Criminology at the University of Greenwich, London. He has been actively involved in the criminal justice lobby for many years. In the 1970s he was a member of the governing Nucleus of Radical Alternatives to Prison, and later became the chair of INQUEST which monitors deaths in state custody. His books include The Acceptable Pressure Group: A Case Study of the Howard League and Radical Alternatives to Prison (1978) and Privatisation and the Penal System: The American Experience and the Debate in Britain (with Tony Ward, 1989). He has published two collections; Western European Penal Systems (1995) and Policy Networks in Criminal Justice (2001) and his last book was Penal Policy and Political Culture in England and Wales (2003).