Feeling the absence of justice: Notes on our pathological reliance on punitive justice
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| Author | Anastasia Chamberlen,Henrique Carvalho |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12458 |
Received: 12 April 2021 Accepted: 14 July 2021
DOI: 10.1111/ho jo.12458
SPECIAL ISSUE
Feeling the absence of justice: Notes on our
pathological reliance on punitive justice
Anastasia Chamberlen1Henrique Carvalho2
1Anastasia Chamberlen is Associate
Professor of Sociology, Sociology
Department, University of Warwick
2Henrique Carvalho is Associate
Professor of Law and Co-Director of the
Criminal Justice Centre, School of Law,
University of Warwick
Correspondence
Schoolof Law, University of Warwick,
CoventryCV4 7AL
Email:h.carvalho@warwick.ac.uk
Fundinginformation
IndependentSocial Research Founda-
tion,Grant/Award Number: Early Career
Fellowship
Abstract
This article critically examines our relationship with jus-
tice in contemporary Westernliberal settings, with a par-
ticular focus on why our pursuit of justice is intimately
entangled with punitive logics. It starts by arguing that
we have a predominantly pathological approach to jus-
tice, in the sense that it follows a logic that is akin to
that displayed in contemporary sensibilities regarding
bodily pain. We deploy Drew Leder’s concept of ‘dys-
appearance’ to discuss how, in Western liberal societies,
justice is primarily experienced negatively as a phe-
nomenon; that is, we mainly become conscious of justice
through the painful and episodic experience of injustice.
We then explore this phenomenological quality of jus-
tice which, we argue, is linked to how the pursuit of jus-
tice in these settings predominantly takesa hostile, puni-
tive aspect. The article concludes by exploring how this
punitive impulse can be resisted, through what we term
a ‘lived sense of justice’.
KEYWORDS
carceral justice, criminal justice, embodiment, justice, pain,
punishment, punitive justice, punitiveness, restorative justice,
transformative justice
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits
use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or
adaptations are made.
© 2022 The Authors. The HowardJournal of Crime and Justice published by Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Howard J. Crim. Justice. 2022;61:87–102. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hojo 87
88 THE HOWARDJOURNAL OF CRIME AND JUSTICE
1 INTRODUCTION
The body conceals itself precisely in the act of revealing what is Other. (Leder, 1990,
p.22)
This article critically analyses the predominance of punitive approaches to justice in Western,
liberal democratic societies, advancing the proposition that such predominance is the result of
a pathological relationship to justice. By pathological we mean that in these societies, we are
obsessed with matters of justice, and that the tone and orientation of our engagement with such
matters have a compulsive, immediatist and hostile character. In spite of growing recognition
for the need for more integrative, solidary and socially-aware approaches to justice in these set-
tings (Barry, 2005; Cooper, Dhawan & Newman, 2019), we continually see justice primarily in
ways that are dominated by punitive logics and outcomes. In political, media and public dis-
course alike, the main focus of justice claims is on specific, often individualised instances of
harm and violation, and particularly on identifying those responsible for such violations and
holding them to account. Even when other, broader issues are acknowledged in connection
with these injustices, they mostly appear as complementary concerns, subsidiary to the need for
retribution.
Criminological scholarship has extensively explored the phenomenon of punitiveness as an
emotional and cultural practice related to criminal justice. Since David Garland’s (2001)seminal
book The culture of control, there has largely been a consensus in such scholarship that, since the
late 20th century,criminal justice policy and practice adopted a retributivist agenda that departed
from the more welfarist objectives that were advanced for most of that century. Politicians more
openly expressed ‘punitive sentiments’ which were then reflected in a more ‘draconian’regime of
penalties (Garland, 2001). This shift in orientation both fuelled and was fuelled by a more active
media sensationalism that signalled the return of a sort of ‘gothic populism’ (Valier, 2002;see
also Bottoms, 1995; Chamberlen & Carvalho, 2019; Jennings et al., 2017; Newburn & Jones,2005)
in which punitiveness became a stable feature of much public discussion on issues of crime and
justice (Costelloe, Chiricos & Gertz, 2009; van Marle & Maruna, 2010). Such discourses privileged
a language of blame, guilt and responsibilisation, driven by a sense of fear, anger and aggression
towards offenders.
Despite this consensus regarding the role of punitiveness on the shaping of our cultural and
institutional discourses and practices around justice, there have been limited efforts to properly
examine and illustrate the broader impact of punitive logics beyond the institutional confines of
criminal justice, with few notable exceptions (on this, see Carvalho, Chamberlen & Lewis, 2020).
This neglect has hindered a more comprehensive appreciation of the psychosocial influence of
punitiveness on our perception and experience of justice, and on our engagement with it. This
article draws an analogy which can arguably illustrate and ground an exploration of this perva-
sive cultural and affective rooting of punitiveness in our social imagination, and of how it affects
our self-understandings and relationships with the world around us. Furthermore, we believe
this approach can highlight the importance of thinking about justice as a personal and social
phenomenon and practice, and not simply casting it as a set of legal and political institutions.
So, while we critique punitive justice as predominantly performed by states and criminal justice
institutions, we seek to recognise that the punitiveness enacted in those criminal justice rituals
is intimately related to how we, as individuals and societies, often feel about, and have come to
understand, justice.
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