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Why is it that imprisonment has undergone an explosive growth in the US and Britain over the last three decades against the background of falling crime rates in both countries? And why has this development met with a significant and escalating degree of support amongst the public? To the extent that governing elites on either side of the Atlantic have been eliciting public support for their authority by inducing concerns about issues of crime and punishment, what explains the selection of crime as a means to this effect, and in what precise ways do crime and punishment fulfil their hidden political function? Moreover, how do Americans and Britons legitimate their consent to objectively irrational policies and the elites responsible for their formulation? In seeking to advance the study of these questions, the present article rediscovers the method and key findings of Erich Fromm’s ‘materialistic psychoanalysis’, bringing them to bear upon insights produced by political economies of contemporary punishment and related scholarship. Particular attention is paid to the hitherto understudied themes of the political production of middle-class support for punitive penal policies under conditions of neoliberal capitalism, and the crucial role played in this process by the privileged position accorded to violent street crime in the public domain.
[Video link: http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/348/] The United States is often hailed as the world’s largest ‘free market’. But this ‘free market’ is also the world’s largest penal colony. It holds over seven million adults – roughly five per cent of the labour force – in jail, in prison, on parole and on probation. Is this an anomaly, or does the ‘free market’ require massive state punishment? Why did the correctional population start to rise in the 1980s, together with the onset of neoliberalism? How is this increase related to the upward redistribution of income and the capitalization of power? Can soaring incarceration sustain the unprecedented power of dominant capital, or is there a reversal in the offing?
Theoretical Criminology
‘There is an alternative: challenging the logic of neoliberal penality’, Theoretical Criminology, 2014, first published on-line on May 28, 2014.2014 •
This article seeks to sketch out alternatives to neoliberal penality by seeking to undermine the four institutional logics of neoliberalism as identified by Loïc Wacquant (2009). It begins by critically analysing the potential value of public criminology as an exit strategy, suggesting that whilst this approach has much value, popular versions of it are in fact rather limited on account of their exclusion of offenders themselves from the debate and their optimism about the capacity of existing institutions to challenge the current punitive consensus. It suggests that a genuinely ‘public’ criminology should be informed by an abolitionist stance to both current penal policies and the neoliberal system as a whole. This may be the best means of truly democratizing penal politics
2014 •
The United States is often hailed as the world's largest 'free market'. But this 'free market' is also the world's largest penal colony. It holds over seven million adults – roughly five per cent of the labour force – in jail, in prison, on parole and on probation. Is this an anomaly, or does the 'free market' require massive state punishment? Why did the correctional population start to rise in the 1980s, together with the onset of neoliberalism? How is this increase related to the upward redistribution of income and the capitalization of power? Can soaring incarceration sustain the unprecedented power of dominant capital, or is there a reversal in the offing? The paper examines these questions by juxtaposing the ‘Rusche thesis’ with the notion of capitalism as a mode of power. The empirical analysis suggests that the Rusche thesis holds under the normal circumstances of ‘business as usual’, but breaks down during periods of systemic crisis. During the systemic crises of the 1930s and the 2000s, unemployment increased sharply, but crime and the severity of punishment, instead of rising, dropped perceptibly.
coauthored by Máximo Sozzo
The Anglo-American concept of neo-liberalism with its focus on free markets and individual responsibility has pushed debates and social policies from a welfarist approach that was largely consensus in the post WW2 era towards a diverse set of more punitive regimes (Muncie 2004). To me this poses two central questions: how does the conglomerate of the neoliberal discourse, the stricter penal system, and the increasing emotionalisation of the public debate fit into sociological theory, namely Foucault’s discussion in ‘Discipline and Punish’ (1977), and what are the implications especially for young people in the UK. With this essay I am not seeking to oppose the use of prisons as viable tools in validating legal systems. However, given the growing centrality of prisons in criminal justice in the UK and particularly the alarmingly high numbers of detained youth offenders, it seems important to monitor and criticise current trends. I will firstly provide a brief evaluation of Foucault’s take on the development of modern penology, particularly the role of the ‘offender’ vis-à-vis society. Secondly I will evaluate how the emphasis on the liberal market economy has affected the discourse concerning crime in society on different levels, such as the growing presence of surveillance mechanisms, the tightening of welfare eligibility criteria and the perception of crime through the media. Lastly, I will look at how this discourse has affected particularly young people in the UK.
Debates about the trajectory of prison rates in the US, on one hand, and about the prospects of the neoliberal international order, on the other hand, suggest the time is ripe for a reappraisal of penological scholarship on the relationship between neoliber- alism and imprisonment. With the aim of responding to this challenge, this article considers the relevance of the so-called ‘neoliberal penality thesis’ as a framework through which to interpret recent and ongoing developments in US imprisonment. We first set out the core propositions of the thesis and engage with a range of critiques it has attracted regarding the role of crime and government institutions, the evolution and functions of state regulation and welfare provision, and reliance on imprisonment as an indicator of state punitiveness. We then outline the principal arguments that have arisen about the direction of contemporary prison trends in the US, including since Donald Trump was elected to the presidency and took office, and proceed to distil their commonly opaque treatment of the intersections between neoliberalism and impris- onment, also clarifying their respective implications for the neoliberal penality thesis in light of the main critiques levelled previously against it. In so doing, we go beyond the penological field to take into account concerns about the vitality of neoliberalism itself. We conclude that international politico-economic developments have cast considerable doubt over the pertinence of neoliberalism as an organising concept for analysis of emergent penal currents.
2010 •
The aim of this paper is to explore prison’s class and symbolic dimensions in the Neoliberal Era. Neoliberalism was approached as the empowerment of the market which leads to the dismantlement of the social welfare state and to the strengthening of the penal state for the marginalised populations. Also, it was analysed as the ‘conduct of conduct’ in the Foucauldian sense, as it was argued that prison is a tool of government, functioning for the management of the marginalised populations. An effort was undertaken to discuss the differences of the US, the ‘carceral example’, with the European Union countries. The class and symbolic dimensions of punishment were first approached from a historical and a theoretical perspective respectively, before attempting to discuss neoliberalism, aiming to show the maintenance of prison’s main characteristics through time under capitalism. It was argued that the dismantlement of the welfare state brought to the fore the destabilisation of the labour market and the concurrent strategies of responsibilisation which led to the increased use of imprisonment. The result is the phenomenon of mass imprisonment, mainly affecting poor and marginalised populations and communities, leading to their further exclusion and social control. Furthermore, the relation of the industry with the penal policies was discussed, as part of the passage from welfare to ‘workfare’ and ‘prisonfare’. Concerning the symbolic dimensions of prisons, it was argued that the dominant representations of the criminals should be explored under the scope of the demonisation strategies, which aim to legitimise the harsher penal policies and to naturalise the discourse on ‘criminal classes’. Therefore, emotional attitudes are emphasised, as leading to the uncritical acceptance of mass imprisonment. On the other hand, the risk management strategies were discussed, which despite having rationalistic and apolitical objectives, disguise the responsibilisation strategies of the neoliberal era and the narrative of institutionalised insecurity. The analysis of the actuarial practises showed that the targeting of the population as a whole marks the transition from the disciplinary society to the control society. The objective of this analysis was to establish an account of neoliberalism and the phenomenon of mass imprisonment, contributing to the radical analyses on prison aiming to provide argumentation for the promotion of radical social action towards prison abolition.
Contemporary sociologists of punishment have criticized the rising incidence of incarceration and punitiveness across the Western world in recent decades. The concepts of populist punitiveness and penal populism have played a central role in their critiques of the burgeoning penal state. These concepts are frequently sustained by a doctrine of penal elitism, which delegates a limited right to politicians and ‘the people’ to shape institutions of punishment, favoring in their place the dominance of bureaucratic and professional elites. I argue that the technocratic inclinations of penal elitism are misguided on empirical, theoretical, and normative grounds. A commitment to democratic politics should make us wary of sidelining the public and their elected representatives in the politics of punishment. A brief discussion of Norway’s legal proceedings against Nazi collaborators in the mid-1940s and the introduction sentencing guidelines commissions in Minnesota in the 1980s shows—pace penal elitism—that professional elites may variously raise the banner of rehabilitationism or retributivism. While penal elitism may yield a few victorious battles against punitiveness, it will not win the war.

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