Boundaries, obligations and belonging: The reconfiguration of citizenship in emergency criminal regimes

Abstract

In national emergencies, states may establish special criminal regimes that criminalize behaviours legal under ordinary law, use more oppressive measures of enforcement and reduce procedural rights. Scholars associate such regimes with the exclusion of offenders from the political community. However, in some emergency criminal regimes, often dealing with economic crises and recently with pandemics, the reduction of rights can also imply inclusion. By examining two emergency regimes in Israel in 1948, a military regime imposing movement restrictions on the Palestinian minority, and an austerity regime imposing restrictions on trade in food products on all citizens, the article argues that different emergency criminal regimes can affect two different tenets of ordinary criminal law: the reinforcing of the boundaries of the community, and the set of obligations between members of that community. Hence, such regimes can foster multiple configurations of citizenship. When simultaneously enforced on marginalized groups, they render their citizenship equivocal.

The boundaries of the carceral state: Accounting for the role of military incarceration

“…Indeed, to this day, civilian criminal law and courts coexist alongside emergency laws that can potentially authorize military courts to prosecute civilians for security offenses (Ben-Natan, 2021; Mehozay, 2016). Throughout the first period, until 1966, emergency law was used to enforce the military regime over the Palestinian citizenry (Ballas, 2021). However, Israel established a single prison authority.…”

“…During the first period (the internal military regime), the military was deployed to prosecute Palestinian citizens who had violated the military regime's rules which primarily pertained to 1) restrictions on movement, access to land, and political organization, and 2) the arrest, prosecution, and deportation of Palestinian non-citizens breaching state borders as “infiltrators” and “saboteurs” (Ballas, 2021; Berda, 2020; Korn, 2000, 2003a). Although Palestinians were prosecuted in military courts, all prisoners were held in IPS facilities.…”