Introduction to the special issue on the state of the State
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480617724909 |
| Author | Lisa L Miller,Vanessa Barker |
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Introduction |
724909TCR0010.1177/1362480617724909IntroductionTheoretical CriminologyIntroduction
research-article2017
Introduction
Theoretical Criminology
2017, Vol. 21(4) 417 –421
Introduction to the special
© The Author(s) 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480617724909
DOI: 10.1177/1362480617724909
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Vanessa Barker
Lisa L Miller
The aim of this special issue is to examine the constitutive relationship between the state
and penal orders—that is, the uses and structures of criminal law and punishment.1 It
investigates how various criminal justice tools—its staff, sanctions, and symbolic
resources—help to produce and reproduce particular political entities and how particular
political configurations lead to specific penal outcomes. Just as the early modern state
depended upon and claimed a monopoly of violence against rule violators to establish its
political authority and legitimacy (Garland, 1996; Weber, 1919), 21st-century demo-
cratic states continue to use penal power to produce social order. As our contributors
show, building on foundational work, policing practices, criminal law, and penal sanc-
tions have been used to shore up political power, define political communities, reflect
economic inequalities, and reproduce social, gendered, and racial hierarchies. But they
seek to go further, to develop new ways of thinking, mapping, and conceptualizing this
mutually constitutive relationship, and to challenge taken for granted concepts of the
state and its relationship to punishment. Contributors analyze under-explored sites of
penal power, and by doing so recast our understanding of its forms and functions.
Over the past few decades, changes in migration, global economic arrangements, and
patterns of violence, have posed new challenges for modern states, and new forms of
punishment have emerged that are directly tied to state sovereignty, degrees of citizen-
ship, and national identity. These developments have pushed scholars to reconsider
extant theories, which often treat state form as exogeneous to penal orders. Many of
these new punishment forms and practices—particularly with respect to national bor-
ders, immigrants, and marginalized populations—pose challenges to the legitimacy of
the state, in particular around principles of equality, citizenship, and territory. Mass
migration due to civil conflict and economic devastation, for example, has put pressure
on Europe’s most robust welfare states (e.g. Sweden), resulting in the deployment of
routine criminal justice processes and procedures to national borders. And violent con-
flict and criminal activity pose particularly difficult challenges for countries transitioning
418
Theoretical Criminology 21(4)
to democracy over the past few decades (e.g. South Africa), as well as those struggling
with longer histories of violence (e.g. Brazil).
Contributors take up these issues and others as they examine the role...
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