Difference and punishment: Ethno-political exclusion, colonial institutional legacies, and incarceration
| Published date | 01 January 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474518816643 |
| Author | Michael Gibson-Light,Andrew P Davis |
| Date | 01 January 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Difference and
punishment:
Ethno-political exclusion,
colonial institutional
legacies, and
incarceration
Andrew P Davis and
Michael Gibson-Light
University of Arizona, USA
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 contempo-
rary 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.
Keywords
cross-national analysis, ethnicity, incarceration
Corresponding author:
Andrew P Davis, University of Arizona, 400 Social Sciences Bldg., Tucson, AZ 85719, USA.
Email: andrewpdavis@email.arizona.edu
Punishment & Society
2020, Vol. 22(1) 3–27
!The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474518816643
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Introduction
Variation in global incarceration rates has emerged as a key area of focus for
punishment scholars in recent years. While numerous studies highlight imprison-
ment trends within individual nations such as the United States, cross-national
research is valued for its ability to help illuminate broader patterns the world over
as well as inform theoretical development (Stamatel, 2009). One prominent line of
thought in cross-national studies of incarceration draws on the group threat thesis,
which points towards racial and ethnic hostility as a predictor of state actions like
imprisonment, to explain a positive relationship between the presence of minority
groups within a state and incarceration rates cross-nationally. Building on the
arguments of scholars such as Herbert Blumer (1958) and Hubert Blalock (1967)
regarding racial and ethnic relations, this growing body of research contends that
punitiveness—and incarceration in particular—rises in states in which members of
dominant groups may perceive threat from rising minority presence (Jacobs and
Kleban, 2003; Miethe et al., 2017; Ruddell, 2005; Ruddell and Urbina, 2004, 2007).
Incarceration, according to this argument, is a direct response to growing ethnic
minority group presence within a state (King and Wheelock, 2007).
Although results commonly confirm the relationship between minority group
presence and punitiveness (Ousey and Lee, 2008; Stults and Baumer, 2007), an
empirical link between incarceration rates and group threat is lacking in much
of this research. Indeed, a core assumption of this scholarship is that the presence
of ethnic minority groups in a state necessarily corresponds to ethnic conflict or
perceptions of threat. Such work generally relies on measures of the quantity of
minority groups within nations to sustain the group threat thesis (for exceptions,
see Ousey and Unnever, 2012; Unnever and Cullen, 2010). We contend, however,
that minority presence alone does not confirm ethno-political conflict. A more
adequate linkage between ethnic diversity and punitiveness remains to be
established.
To advance an understanding of the relationship between punishment and con-
ditions of socio-political conflict, we draw on Andreas Wimmer’s (2002) concep-
tion of ethnic politics. This line of thought contends that ethnic conflict impacts
political practice globally, not because of inherent propensity for competition
between ethnic groups, but because governments controlled by a single dominant
group wield state apparatuses to privilege insiders and exclude others as a means of
consolidating control and asserting legitimacy (Wimmer, 2008; Wimmer et al.,
2009). As such, we approach incarceration as an ethno-political resource with
which dominant ethnic groups might enhance their own legitimacy and repress,
manage, and exclude outside groups. Our analysis of ethnicity and punitiveness
moves beyond measures of ethnic fractionalization to instead examine factors such
as ethnic population exclusion from governance and a nation’s colonial legacy—
often bound in a developmental history of ethnic-based dominance. Where schol-
ars of punishment disparities within individual nations have demonstrated that
majority group stakeholders may mobilize criminal justice institutions to exclude
4Punishment & Society 22(1)
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