Comparing Penal Cultures: Child‐on‐Child Homicide in England and Norway

Abstract

Different ways of doing politics, particularly the distinction between majoritarian and consensus democracy, help account for differences in national appetites for punishment, as a comparison of two child‐on‐child homicides from the 1990s—the Bulger case in England and the Redergård case in Norway—shows. In England, pressed to act by emotive, condemnatory press coverage in a highly competitive media market, all politicians had incentives to politicize the Bulger case. The Labour Party used the case to indicate its new and tougher approach to law and order and to make the party more electable in the face of rising public concern about crime. Simplistic tabloid rhetoric went largely unchallenged, and the public’s press‐fueled fears about crime were legitimated by traditionally left‐leaning politicians intent on distancing themselves from the expertise of traditional elites. The consensual nature of Norwegian politics decreased incentives to politicize the Redergård homicide in the same way.