Europeanising the sociology of punishment

Sociologists of punishment have repeatedly argued that ‘the ways in which we punish, and the ways in which we represent that action to ourselves, makes a difference to the way we are’ (Garland 1990: 276). If this is true (and it is our contention that it is), then what do the ways in which key European institutions (such as the Council of Europe and the European Union) instruct, persuade or force us to punish reveal about us as Europeans? The paper argues that we need to think more deeply about this European institutional dimension if we are to grasp what punishment in Europe now is and what it in the future can become. With the exception of the high-profile sanction of the death penalty (and Europe’s mission to turn the globe into a death-penalty free zone) there has not been any sustained effort to transcend the legal / normative debate on punishment in Europe which could enable us to better understand how a penal identity comes into existence and how this relates to the wider project of building a European polity