What Do We Know About New Labour's Impact on the Criminal Justice System? How Did It Relate to the Policies of the 1980s and 1990s?

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to review and assess the impact of New Labour's criminal justice legislation on the punitiveness inherent in the criminal justice system. I explore nineteen key pieces of legislation (passed 1997–2010) assessing the degree to which they made the criminal justice system more punitive for those arrested, charged, brought to court or sentenced. Compared with an earlier study of criminal justice acts from 1982 to 1997, I find that whilst the initial move towards ‘toughening’ the criminal justice system did not emerge until after 1992, the legislation which was passed by New Labour accelerated the drive towards punitiveness. I seek to explain this in terms of shifts in wider political ideologies, internal party dynamics, external factors (such as public sentiments) and path‐dependent processes. Drawing upon ideas from political analyses and a close reading of these acts, we develop a multifaceted explanation of the move towards increasing punitiveness.