Understanding criminal justice policy transfers through the narrative policy framework

This article revisits the longstanding debate on criminal justice policy convergence, understood as the growing similarity of crime control policies across Western states. Explanations range from structural accounts that focus on societal transformations underlying convergence, to agency-oriented perspectives highlighting the role of key policy actors. Within the latter, considerable attention has been given to cross-border policy transfers, examining how policies travel across jurisdictions and are adopted in new settings. Building on recent work on the role of storylines in policy transfer, which argues that successful transfers often depend on the construction of compelling policy narratives, this article introduces the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to deepen this focus on storytelling. The NPF offers a valuable lens for examining what parts of a story actually travel across jurisdictions, why certain narrative elements are particularly compelling, and identifies the mechanisms through which stories influence policy outcomes. While not a replacement for existing frameworks, the NPF serves as a powerful complement to current approaches in the study of criminal justice policy transfers. Through a case study of the Belgian Federal Security and Detention Plan, this article highlights the importance of coherent narratives for successful policy transfer processes.