Penal populism is a media driven political process whereby politicians compete with each other to impose tougher prison sentences on offenders based on a perception that crime is out of control.
[1] It tends to manifest in the run up to elections when political parties put forward hard-line policies which they believe the public wants, rather than evidence-based policies based on their effectiveness at dealing with crime and associated social problems.
[2] The phrase was coined in 1993 by Anthony Bottoms,[3] when he labeled it one of the four main influences on contemporary criminal justice.
[5] It has been theorized that the rise of penal populism has brought an increase in the repressiveness of various nation's criminal laws, including that of the United Kingdom,[6] Canada under Prime Minister Stephen Harper,[7] and the United States during the War on Drugs.
This shift from penal to political populism was precipitated by two interconnected factors: the impact of the Great Recession and the mass movement of peoples across the globe.