This book explores how and why we punish people differently by undertaking a comparative social and political analysis of imprisonment regimes and political culture in Ireland and Scotland. While providing compelling new accounts of both Irish and Scottish penal cultures from 1970-1990s – a critical period for the transformation of imprisonment and penal politics – the work also provides a new framework for the comparative study of penality. The book explores the different political ideas, cultural values and social anxieties that shape prison policymaking and closely tracks how these evolve and adapt over time. Through this historical recovery, the author shows that to make sense of comparative differences in how we imprison requires us to understand the political culture that governs incarceration. This study takes place in two nations often treated as peripheral to the dominant Anglophone story of penal transformation and comparison. As a result of the in-depth and historical nature of this comparison, this book advances important new understandings of punishment in both Ireland and Scotland and forces us to rethink claims of exceptional penal cultures. This book will be essential reading for students and academics interested sociology of punishment, comparative penology, criminology, penal policymaking, law and social history.