Crime that 'withered away'? Democratic backsliding and non-punitive populism

The article explores the relationship between democratic backsliding and governance of crime. By focusing on Serbia, which began to democratize in 2000 but started to backslide already in 2012, the article argues that governance of crime has been largely insulated from the damaging impact of the overall process of democratic decline and has been characterized by mostly moderate and inert penal tendencies. While the autocratic inclinations of the political regime have grown substantively in the last decade, crime has lost salience as a tool for political manipulation: the article proposes that this was mostly owing to an overarching political elite’s narrative that depicts Serbia as a successful and well-governed country, in which (most) crime has ‘withered away’. The article concludes by calling for research that better grasps the specificities of various forms of backsliding to understand the role of penality within them and by assessing the coherence of this finding with some of the key ideas developed within the punishment and society literature

Collateral legal consequences and the power to punish

Collateral legal consequences attached to criminal convictions (CLCs) are often criticized because they expose criminal offenders to various forms of harmful and/or wrongful treatment. In this article, we argue that CLCs are problematic because they undermine the power to punish, a distinct normative power that allows the relevant powerholders to directly change the offender’s normative situation. The article identifies important features of the power to punish construed as the normative ability that judges should hold in liberal polities. In particular, we examine how CLCs undermine two of the features – viz., robustness and attributability – that are central to the non-deficient functioning of the normative power to punish. Acknowledging the implausibility of a forthcoming demise of CLCs, we conclude with an outline of non-ideal proposals that would marginally mitigate the unwarranted effects that CLCs have on the exercise of the normative power to punish

Communicating confidence:Suspended sentences as communicative punishment

The article identifies a distinctive model of suspended sentences that exists in contemporary Serbia and Slovenia. By employing Antony Duff’s notion of ‘communicative punishment’, the article suggests that suspended sentence is a robust and comprehensive penal instrument which promotes an inclusive, dialogic, and non-stigmatizing approach to criminal offenders. To demonstrate this, the article contrasts Duff’s theory with three key domains of suspended sentences in the two countries: (a) philosophical and theoretical commitments, (b) substantive and procedural law and (c) execution of sanctions. The article concludes by emphasizing the pronounced capacity of these sentences to communicate confidence and trust of the state that the convicted person will not reoffend – despite a non-custodial sanction. Finally, the article proposes modest legal modifications which pertain to the court’s ability to determine relevant facts and communicate better with the offender