Crime And Punishment: Public Opinion And Political Law-And-Order Rhetoric In Europe 1996–2019

This article explores in which ways politicians’ law-and-order rhetoric and citizens’ attitudes and concerns about crime engage with each other in European countries. The focus is on the ‘constructionist’ or ‘framing’ model which posits that citizens’ attitudes about crime and punishment are influenced and ‘framed’ by political rhetoric. We capture the overall ‘tone’ of political rhetoric around crime and criminal justice using law-and-order statements in political party manifestos. Our indicators of crime concerns and punitive sentiment among the public are ‘crime salience’ (crime as the most important problem) and punitive preferences. We link law-and-order statements with survey data from the Eurobarometer and European Social Survey to explore the relationship between citizens and political elites for 26 European countries between 1996 and 2019. In line with previous research, we show that political law-and-order rhetoric indeed provides a framing narrative for citizens but limited to their punitive preferences. In contrast, European citizens’ assessment of crime as a problem is shaped by the level of serious violent crime (homicide) in their country during this period. This suggests a risk-based assessment and an ‘objectivist’ model. We discuss these results in the context of differences between the politization of criminal law in Europe and the United States.