Difference and punishment: Ethno-political exclusion, colonial institutional legacies, and incarceration

Abstract

One dominant theoretical explanation for higher incarceration rates across the world focuses on how a nation’s level of diversity or minority presence broadly writ unleashes racial resentment that can lead to incarceration. This article contends that population heterogeneity alone offers an incomplete picture of how ethnic-based tension can affect incarceration rates. Rather, we argue that majority ethnic groups around the world use prison systems in order to govern and manage minority populations, especially those systematically excluded from power. In addition, we argue that these political structures have their roots in a nation’s colonial legacy, a legacy that shapes a nation’s contemporary incarceration rates. Results from our quantitative analysis reveal that controlling for competing explanations, there are positive associations between ethnic political exclusion and the length and form of a nation’s colonial experience and rates of incarceration.

The Relationship Between Justice System Size and Punishment Across Nations

“…Although one study has found a measure of minority threat significant across models incorporating a variety of other crime, economic, and political controls (Jacobs & Kleban, 2003), other research has highlighted the more conditional nature of minority threat as a predictor of incarceration that was also found in this research (Ruddell, 2005;Ruddell & Urbina, 2004). However, none of these studies found a significant relationship between economic threat and incarceration rates cross-nationally in their main analyses, and other studies have either failed to find a relation (Neapolitan, 2001;Clark & Herbolsheimer, 2021) or this effect diminished when controlling for other factors (Sutton, 2004;Davis & Gibson-Light, 2020). Therefore, this study's results on income inequality as a predictor, and the strongest predictor in the model at that, indicate a relative departure from prior research.…”

Inequality and punishment: A global paradox?

“…This is a decisive dimension of inequality that partially but not fully coincides with the other dimensions of inequality, as these groups are deemed to be a social threat independent of their economic status (Baumer et al, 2003;Jacobs & Kleban, 2003). The concomitant exclusion of these groups from power, most obvious for indigenous people across the globe (Davis & Gibson-Light, 2020) seems to be the strongest link between racial-ethnic inequality and penal practices, and accounts for the enduring presence of racial inequality in determining imprisonment in the US across decades (Beckett & Western, 2001;Campbell, 2018;Campbell et al, 2015;Schoenfeld, 2018;Western, 2006), or overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in Australia, Canada or Mexico (Davis & Gibson-Light, 2020;Roberts & Melchers, 2003).…”

“…The presence and impact of ethnic or racial minorities are rarely included in global samples; where these groups are included, support is mixed at best and seemingly limited to samples of rich democracies (Jacobs & Kleban, 2003). Racial-ethnic disparity and fractionalisation is not related to prison populations in large global samples (Davis & Gibson-Light, 2020;Miethe et al, 2017). This is in stark contrast to comparisons of US states, where race and racial inequality have an enduring though changing presence in determining imprisonment (Campbell, 2018;Campbell et al, 2015;Schoenfeld, 2018).…”

“…This is in stark contrast to comparisons of US states, where race and racial inequality have an enduring though changing presence in determining imprisonment (Campbell, 2018;Campbell et al, 2015;Schoenfeld, 2018). However, using a direct measure of the political exclusion of ethnic minorities and colonial institutional legacies in a global sample, Davis and Gibson-Light (2020) found that it is political exclusion of these groups rather than their presence or distribution (as in ethnic fractionalisation) that increases prison populations. On a global scale 'incarceration operates as an ethno-political resource' (p. 18), as political exclusion implies that these groups are directly ruled by the majority groups.…”

Punitiveness Beyond Criminal Justice: Punishable and Punitive Subjects in an Era of Prevention, Anti-Migration and Austerity

“…As seen in the previous discussion, all the paradigmatic punishable subjects share characteristics ascribed to them as stigmas of oppression within their social context: they are racialised, gendered, socio-economically deprived and politically excluded. Likewise, the experience of fragile entitlement grounding punitive subjectivity is more readily accessible, and more appealing, to those who identify themselves as 'dominant group members', who justify hostility by holding the belief that their rightful privileges are being 'eroded or threatened' (Ousey and Unnever 2012: 568; see also Wheelock et al 2011;Unnever and Cullen 2010;Davis and Gibson-Light 2018). This dimension thus evidences how punitiveness figures as a means through which to normatively express, justify or reclaim a power imbalance, or a relation of subjugation.…”