Law and Order Policy and Politics in a Cross-National Perspective

How and with what consequences is crime politicized? This paper seeks to understand the conditions under which crime comes on to political agendas in modern democratic systems, with a particular concern for the inequities in exposure to predatory violence across racial and ethnic minority populations. While most scholarly attention has focused on the negative consequences of politicization of crime for minority populations, I seek a broader understanding of policy attention to this issue through the lens of serious violence and other forms of insecurity and risk that are experienced by marginalized groups.  The paper utilizes a unique set of data sources to explore the relationship between crime/violence, public opinion and legislative agendas in the U.K. (with a separate analysis for Scotland), the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany, including Comparative Agendas Project, country-specific homicide reports, party manifesto data and public opinion analysis. I suggest that serious criminal violence poses real political problems and can provide political opportunities not only for punitive policy responses but for a range of responses to the demands of populations suffering from serious violence.