Exploring Punitiveness, Exploiting Proportionality: Discursively Reverse-Engineering Punitive Proportionality as an Approach Towards Contemporary Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Policy

Abstract The proportionality between crime and punishment is made, and the way it is made makes for a certain kind of criminal law. By analyzing how punitive measures are justified in Swedish criminal law and crime policy through appeals to proportionality, the Article demonstrates how proportionality has been made and remade to legitimize an increasingly punitive crime policy, obscuring the reasons for these legislative changes. The Article thus calls for the principle of proportionality to be dismantled and employs a discursive approach to reverse-engineer claims of proportionality in Swedish legislative proposals. The purpose of this approach is to make visible the meanings and limits of the contemporary crime policy understanding of crime, punishment, and a just criminal law.