Punitive practices are highly revealing of a society's social fabric, its normative order, and power structure. Punishment in International Society examines the penal philosophies and practices in international society. The contributions to this book show the added value of a punitive lens to international politics in two major ways: First, punitive practices reveal the contours of the international normative order, its structures, and hierarchies. Such a perspective highlights the prominent position of individuals in the current normative order, but it also reveals a major divergence in the international normative order between a global North that emphasizes individualized, retributive punishment for atrocity crimes and a global South that puts reparations for past colonial wrongs on the agenda. Second, in contrast to a nation-state, the authority to sanction and act in defense of the normative order is far more dispersed and contested in international society. Although there is a demand to embed punitive practices in procedures and institutions, the most legitimate site of such authority remains contested as regional organizations such as the African Union compete with the United Nations for the authority to defend the normative order. This book brings together an international roster of scholars from the social sciences, law, and humanities. The contributions demonstrate that punitive practices have been more prevalent than commonly acknowledged as they have often been masked as (self-)defence, reparations, or coercive diplomacy. By approaching international punishment from various disciplines, this volume sheds new light on different dimensions of the punitive practices across the globe.

During the past two decades criminological discussion in Western industrial societies has been increasingly focused on the concept of punitiveness, a concept that is frequently linked to the staggering rise in inmate numbers in the United States from the first half of the 1970 onward, making it the country with the highest prison rate per 100,000 inhabitants in the Western world. Lee sees the development in the United States in connexion with the growing discussion of "fear of crime" during the late 1960s. "Since the late 1960s the fear of crime has progressively become a profoundly engaging field of study for criminologists and other social researchers" (2001, p. 467; see also Hale 1996). The findings of inquiries and opinion polls, which confirmed the presence of such fears among the population, moved the topic to the forefront and it did not take long until it was "discovered" by politicians. This development went hand in hand with increased media reporting on crime related matters, usually concerning spectacular cases, and thus creating in the population a distorted image of the actual extent and nature of crime (see Beckett and Sasson 2004). Some politicians were quick to use this erroneous perception for their own purposes by creating so-called "politics of fear" (see, for instance, for Japan Miyazawa 2008)