RT Article T1 Punishment in Slovenia: seventy Years of Penal Policy Development JF European journal on criminal policy and research VO 29 IS 4 SP 625 OP 645 A1 Flander, Benjamin A2 Meško, Gorazd 1965- A2 Hacin, Rok LA English YR 2023 UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1869718984 AB This paper focuses on a comprehensive study of penal policy in Slovenia in the last 70 years, providing an analysis of statistical data on crime, conviction, and prison populations. After a sharp political and penal repression in the first years after World War II, penal and prison policy began paving the way to a unique "welfare sanction system", grounded in ideas of prisoners’ treatment. After democratic reforms in the early 1990s, the criminal legislation became harsher, but Slovenia managed to avoid the general punitive trends characterized by the era of penal state and culture of control. The authoritarian socialist regime at its final stage had supported the humanization of the penal system, and this trend continued in the first years of the democratic reforms in the 1990s, but it lost its momentum after 2000. In the following two decades, Slovenia experienced a continuous harshening of criminal law and sanctions on the one hand and an increasing prison population rate on the other. From 2014 onwards, however, there was a decrease in all segments of penal statistics. The findings of the study emphasize the exceptionalism of Slovenian penal policy, characterized by penal moderation, which is the product of the specific local historical, political, economic, and normative developments. NO Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 643-645 K1 Convictions K1 Crime K1 Penal Policy K1 Punishment K1 Slovenia DO 10.1007/s10610-022-09524-8