There is an alternative: Challenging the logic of neoliberal penality

Abstract

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.

Insurgent safety: Theorizing alternatives to state protection

“…Forms of play considered ‘rebellious’ or ‘deviant’ by mainstream culture were valued by RPSP participants precisely because they cultivated alternative affective economies structured by laughter, kinship, and trust, rather than those engendered by carceral safety or what Melamed (2015) calls ‘technologies of anti-relationality’. This analysis reaffirms that the project of developing alternatives to carceral safety is simultaneously a struggle to devise ‘exit strategies’ to racial capitalism writ large (Bell, 2014).…”

“…While academics have understandably focused a good deal of attention on understanding the roots and consequences of the carceral state, we cannot overlook the ways that public safety is often deployed to justify the maintenance and expansion of the criminal justice apparatus (Jackson and Meiners, 2011). (Re)theorizing safety then, in both its hegemonic and dissident forms, is a necessary if not under-appreciated project for those of us interested in generating ‘alternatives to the penal status quo’ that are not tied to state and capitalist imaginaries (Bell, 2014; see also Cohen, 1988; Macharia, 2016; Mathiesen, 2014).…”

Flying through the Cuckoo’s Nest: Countering the politics of agency in public criminology

“…Only quite recently have tensions emerged over what forms of political action are considered to be legitimate and effective (Piché, 2016; Ziobina and Vazquez, 2018). While finding a concrete answer to that onerous question continues to garner a great amount of attention from scholars laying out their struggles, successes, and failures “doing” public criminology (Bell, 2014; Gavrielides, 2008; Goldstein et al, 2008; Mopas and Moore, 2012; Nickel, 2010; Petersilia, 2008; Piché and Larsen, 2010; Piché and Strimelle, 2007; Schept, 2012; Stanko, 2007), there is still general conformity to the principle that engaged social science is not merely to interpret the world in various ways, but to actually change it (Marx and Engels, 2004).…”

Description at the Edge? I-It / I-Thou Relations and Action in Prisons Research

“…It assumes a kind of 'theology of the person' that not only poses risks but also respects the human dignity of the researched. The argument I present here develops the broader dialogue about the role and value of pubic criminology (following, among others, Loader and Sparks 2011; and for a recent critical review, see Bell 2014). The paradox, as Paul Rock suggests , is that, whilst 'policy change' should not be the primary aim of criminological research, research done well can make poor policy choices, or 'facile gestures', less defensible, and can have impact on the world of practice in indirect as well as direct ways (Rock 2014).…”