This book seeks to understand the increase in prisoners in the western world. It brings together leading authorities in the field to provide a wide-ranging analysis of new penal trends, compare the development of differing patterns of punishment across different types of societies, and to provide a range of theoretical analyses and commentaries to help understand their significance.

1 Introduction Part 1: Punitive Trends 2. The great leap backward: imprisonment in America from Nixon to Clinton 3. Crime control in western countries, 1970 to 2000 4. Continuity, rupture or just more of the 'volatile and contradictory'?: glimpses of New South Wales' penal practice behind and through the discursive 5. Supermax meets death row: legal struggles around the new punitiveness in the USA 6. The liberal veil: revisiting Canadian penality 7. Contemporary statecraft and the 'punitive obsession': a critique of the new penology thesis Part 2: Globalisation, Technology and Surveillance 8. Globalisation and the new punitiveness 9. Engaging with punitive attitudes towards crime and punishment: some strategic lessons from England and Wales 10. The ad and the form: punitiveness and technological culture 11. Electronic monitoring, satellite tracking and the new punitiveness in England and Wales Part 3: Non-Punitive Societies 12. Levels of punitiveness in Scandinavia: description and explanation 13. Missing the punitive turn? Canadian criminal justice, 'balance' and penal modernism 14. When is a society non-punitive? The Italian case Part 4: Explanations 15. Modernity and the punitive 16. Elias, punishment and civilisation 17. Liberal exclusions and the new punitiveness 18. Rethinking narratives of penal change in global context