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 Henrik Tham.

Vincenzo Ruggiero is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Crime and Conflict Research Centre at Middlesex University in London, UK. He has published extensively and his work is translated in several languages. His latest books are: Understanding Political Violence (2006), Social Movements: A Reader (2008), Penal Abolitionism (2010), Corruption and Organised Crime (2012) and The Crime of the Economy (2013).


Mick Ryan is Professor Emeritus, Department of Law and Criminology at the University of Greenwich, London, UK. 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).