Policy Transfer and Criminal Justice

"PTCJ shines on empirical detail and an illuminating account of how policy transfer works in criminal justice. ...highly recommended for readers interested in understanding the current state of criminal justice policy."
Political Studies Review

"A very interesting book and excellent at setting the context of criminal justice policies in the UK. Thoroughly researched and written in an engaging style."
Tina Eadie, Senior Lecturer, De Montfort University

Since the late 1980s, it seems that policy-makers and politicians in the UK have increasingly looked West across the Atlantic for inspiration in the field of crime control. More broadly, recent years have seen a growing focus upon the extent to which, and ways in which, policy ideas and practices travel within and across national boundaries. Scholars from a number of disciplines have become increasingly interested in the concepts of ‘policy transfer’ and related ideas.

This book contains the first major empirical study of policy transfer in the field of criminal justice and crime control. It focuses upon policy transfer from the USA to the UK, and undertakes a detailed examination of the processes of policy change in three key areas that have been widely perceived as imports from the USA: the privatization of corrections, ‘two’ and ‘three strikes’ sentencing, and ‘zero tolerance’ policing. Drawing upon a wealth of documentary evidence and interviews with leading politicians, policy makers and other key players in policy developments, the authors explore the complex processes involved in policy transfer and analyse the nature and degree of US influence in these areas.

Tim Newburn is Professor of Criminology and Social Policy, and Head of Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics. He is the author or editor of 35 books, the most recent of which are The Sage Handbook of Criminological Theory (edited with Eugene McLaughlin, 2010) and The Eternal Recurrence of Crime and Control (edited with David Downes and Dick Hobbs, Clarendon Press, 2010). Tim was previously the editor of the journal Policy Studies, and was the founding editor of the Sage journal Criminology and Criminal Justice. He is a former Director of the Mannheim Centre for Criminology at the LSE and a past President of the British Society of Criminology. Tim s primary research interests have been in crime and criminal justice policy, the sociology and governance of policing and security, disadvantaged and disaffected young people, youth crime and youth justice, drugs and alcohol, and comparative criminal justice policy-making and policy transfer. He has recently been involved in a study of the August 2011 English riots. An innovative project which aimed to undertake high quality social research at a speed and in a way that maximised opportunities for influencing public debate, Reading the Riots was run jointly with The Guardian, and its initial results were published in their entirety in the newspaper. Currently, together with Professors David Downes and Paul Rock, Tim is currently engaged in researching and writing of an Official History of Post-war Criminal Justice.