Straus Fellow
Academic Year 2010-2011
John Pratt
John Pratt is Professor of Criminology and James Cook Research Fellow in Social Science 2009-2011 at the Institute of Criminology, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He was educated in England and has researched and published extensively in the area of the sociology and history of punishment in modern society. His books are Punishment in a Perfect Society (1992), Governing the Dangerous (1997), Punishment and Civilization (2002) and Penal Populism (2007). He has also edited or co-edited three books and published more than 70 refereed journal articles. In addition to his present position, he has taught and researched at universities in Australia, England, mainland Europe and Canada. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of numerous journals and was editor of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 1997-2005. In 2009 he was awarded the Radzinowitz Memorial Prize by the British Journal of Criminology for his 2008 article in that journal, ‘Scandinavian Exceptionalism in an era of Penal Excess, Parts I and II.’
Research Project
Understanding and Explaining Penal Differences Amongst Western Societies: Scandinavia v. The 'Anglo' Countries
During my stay at the Straus Institute I will be writing a book that contrasts penal arrangements in the Anglophone world (looking specifically at England, Australia and New Zealand) with those in the Scandinavian countries (Finland, Norway, Sweden). The book will explain the dramatic differences in the size of prison populations and prison conditions between these two clusters of societies, by reference to the develop of longstanding cultural values and their respective models of welfare state. The provisional title of the book is ‘Penal excess and penal exceptionalism. Contrasts in punishment between Anglophone and Scandinavian societies.’
