Beyond criminocentric dogmatism: Mapping institutional forms of punishment in contemporary societies

Abstract

This article aims to question the role criminal justice and criminal law play in structuring the set of dominant conditioning questions in criminology. Based on socio-legal approaches and past fieldwork in immigration control, I argue that the punitive use of non-criminal-based normative systems (such as immigration law) is not a new trend and that, therefore, we are not assisting a ‘criminal contamination’ of other justice systems, but the re-emergence and consolidation of different punitive logics. In that sense, I suggest that criminal justice acts as an epistemological obstacle, being a major barrier to perceive such nuances. Instead, I propose a wider conception of the penal field which operates as a mobile (kinetic sculpture) and includes the criminal law realm, but also other institutional normative systems that configure ‘less’ prominent locations of punishment, such as: regulatory criminal law, civil courts, immigration law, military law, parole boards and other administrative legal systems that play an increasing role in social reaction. I ultimately argue that criminologists should also focus on such administrative-based justice systems in order to better address and resist punitiveness.

The Hidden Arm of the Law: Examining Administrative Justice in Gun Carry Licensing

“…The tensions surrounding administrative justice and its distinction from criminal justice are not new (Garland ; Novak ; Velloso ). However, in the contemporary context, these tensions are inflected by the growing significance of criminal records as a means of evaluating eligibility and fitness within administrative bodies (and society more broadly).…”

“…Alongside a focus on the carceral state, however, punishment scholars have increasingly focused attention on broadening the analytical scope of the contemporary penal complex, characterizing a much larger apparatus of state control as a “shadow carceral state,” a “carceral archipelago,” and even a “penal mobile” (Beckett & Murakawa ; Foucault ; Velloso ). As Zedner (: 5) notes, “until we displace the dominance of the prison in our theorizing to recognize financial and non‐custodial penalities as core cases of punishment, our ability to conceptualize penality or chart its boundaries is limited.” I extend these interventions by moving beyond the criminal justice system to ethnographically examine administrative justice as a mechanism of penality.…”

“…Administrative justice involves decision‐making processes in administrative contexts, such as welfare hearings (Garland ; Gustafson ; Lens ; Lens et al ), disability hearings (Mashaw ), municipal boards (Valverde 2012), driver's license hearings (Earl ), immigration hearings (Bosworth & Kaufman ; Gilboy ), and gun boards (the present analysis). While administrative justice constitutes a penal field (Page ) that complements criminal justice mechanisms (Beckett & Murakawa ; Velloso ; Zedner ), administrative mechanisms are conceptually, practically, and legally distinct. Administrators operate in a realm of “quasi‐penal measures” (i.e., welfare benefits, driver's licenses, or gun licenses lack de jure status as penal sanctions but may function as such de facto ; Zedner : 8).…”

Le contrôle plurinormatif des gangs de rue

“…C'est seulement après l'ensemble de la réaction sociale qu'il est possible d'établir si un crime est en fait exclusivement un crime ou une construction plurinormative. On peut essayer de prédire certaines configurations pénales, mais cela est très difficile, car le pénal s'adapte comme un mobile, comme une structure dynamique (Velloso, 2013a(Velloso, , 2014. Nous avons proposé plus tôt six configurations de réaction sociale, mais il y a évidemment plusieurs autres possibilités si l'on ajoute les régimes civils (p. ex.…”

“…Ce faisant, les travaux portant sur la réaction sociale à la délinquance des élites proposent une rupture avec une forme de savoir consolidée au xix e siècle (Debuyst, Digneffe et Pires, 1998), soit la criminologie, qui encore aujourd'hui, définit son objet d'étude quasi exclusivement en fonction des crimes et des peines (Velloso, 2013a). En laissant supposer que les études sur la délinquance des élites apportent un éclairage à la criminalité de rue, il devient possible de percevoir que les situations-problèmes (Hulsman, 1986 ;Hulsman et De Celis, 1982) 2 traditionnellement classifiées comme des crimes par la criminologie ne sont en fait pas tellement différentes des crimes en col blanc du point de vue de la réaction sociale.…”