Penal Populism and the Folly of "Doing Good by Stealth"

This article evaluates what Drakeford and Vanstone (2000) have called "doing good by stealth"—the quiet embrace of progressive penal policies, often twinned with contradictorily punitive rhetoric—in order to critically examine both the motives of policymakers under the pressures exerted by the "penal populism calculus" and the consequences for penal policymaking processes and outcomes. It offers a typological model of penal policymaking strategies and outcomes based on two polar dimensions: covert (quiet) vs. transparent (loud), and fair/effective (high-roading) vs. unfair/ineffective (low-roading). It provides examples of each strategy, examines the arguments for and against each one, and proposes alternative ways to achieve the legitimation goals of penal populism, informed by theories of public deliberation and participatory democracy.