Penal Populism in Criminal Cases in Courts

Penal populism is an approach in which the criminal justice system policy makers and practitioners formulate and implement dramatic and popular criminal policies to draw public opinion regardless of scientific findings. Populism may penetrate substantive criminal rules, and in this regard, severe penalties might be approved by lawmakers. Penal populism has its own traces in ceremonial laws as well; the laws that provide the best context to implement the populism actions and policies and thus provide the best condition for this phenomenon to shape. The practitioners of the criminal justice system may consider fast and dramatic trials and immediate and public enforcement of the sentences in their agenda under public pressure or political propaganda.