Michelle Bonner, Tough on Crime: The Rise of Punitive Populism in Latin America.

• Date: 22 June 2020
• Author: McSherry, J. Patrice

Michelle Bonner, Tough on Crime: The Rise of Punitive Populism in Latin America (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019)

TOUGH ON CRIME IS A COMPELLING STUDYTHAT LINKS THE PRACTICES of the neoliberal mass media to the rise of punitive populism--tough-on-crime policies and law-and-order political frameworks--in Latin America. Punitive populism offers simple solutions to complicated problems, appealing to people's emotional desire for revenge, punishment, and order (p. 48). Based on extensive research in Chile and Argentina, and drawing on her command of several literatures, political scientist Michelle Bonner offers a complex and persuasive argument that explains the connections among neoliberalism, democratization, media control, and pro-police, repressive "solutions" to the perception, and reality, of citizen insecurity. She argues that media systems contribute to the dominance of either democratic or authoritarian ideas in society and shows that neoliberal restructuring has limited media democratization in her two case studies.

Bonner's hypothesis is that "the neoliberal reform of media policies (most notably privatization and especially deregulation) and the resulting everyday communicational practices used by journalists, in interaction with state and civil society actors, are central to explaining the rise of punitive populism" (p. 7). Using her detailed case studies, she shows that punitive populism is about politics and power, not crime control or rational measures based on criminology evidence. She defines neoliberalism (p. 8) and shows throughout the book how privatization and deregulation have shaped the practices of mass media in both Argentina and Chile, reducing "watchdog journalism" and investigative articles and privileging dramatic crime stories, victim accounts, and police action. Crime, she shows, provides an easy and low-cost source of media stories that attract mass attention. With the rise in sensational stories of violence, crime, and police repression, fear of crime increases in society--often despite low crime statistics--which favors tough-on-crime leaders who promise to wield an iron fist, free up the police, and increase draconian sentences even for petty crimes and misdemeanors. "The way ideas are constructed and reinforced in the mass media is important to the boundaries of policing in democracy and the resonance (or not) of punitive populist rhetoric and polices," she argues (p. 12).

Moreover, the pressures of neoliberalism push journalists...