Power to the people: Violent victimization, inequality and democratic politics
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480612471151 |
| Author | Lisa L Miller |
| Date | 01 August 2013 |
| Published date | 01 August 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Theoretical Criminology
17(3) 283 –313
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480612471151
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Power to the people: Violent
victimization, inequality and
democratic politics
Lisa L Miller
Rutgers University, USA
Abstract
Contemporary scholarship on punishment, politics and society generally treats
democratic politics and crime policy as a dangerous mix. In this view, when crime comes
onto democratic political agendas, it generates perverse political incentives that result
in politicians pandering to and/or manipulating mass publics bent on harsh punishment.
In this article, I argue that an examination of violent victimization complicates this
conventional wisdom. Using violence as a framework, I challenge three fundamental
assumptions about the relationship between democracy and crime. From there, I
suggest how different democratic institutional arrangements might facilitate broader
public participation in crime politics, and how that participation can lead to promoting
less, rather than more punishment.
Keywords
Democracy, inequality, politicization, politics, punishment and society, race and class
Introduction
Contemporary scholarship on crime, politics and society typically regard robust demo-
cratic politics and crime policy as a dangerous mix (Jacobs and Kleban, 2003; Lancaster,
2011; Tonry, 2007; Weisberg and Petersilia, 2010; Windelsham, 1998; Zimring and
Johnson, 2006). Indeed, few spectacles vex advocates of criminal justice reform more
than the bloodthirsty mob pursuing the suspected law-breaker. Scholars of comparative
criminal law and punishment, for example, have lamented the constitutional structure of
the United States, which, they argue, requires elected officials to be hi ghly responsi ve
Corresponding author:
Lisa L Miller, Department of Political Science, Rutgers University, 89 George Street, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
Email: miller@polisci.rutgers.edu
471151TCR17310.1177/1362480612471151Theoretical CriminologyMiller
2013
Article
284 Theoretical Criminology 17(3)
to public opinion from multiple quarters, even if that opinion is ‘mercurial or mean-
spirited’ (Tonry, 2007: 26).
In this article, I re-frame and challenge key assumptions about the relationship
between democratic politics and crime.1 In doing so, I argue for greater attention to vio-
lent victimization—especially murder—in order to puzzle through the political implica-
tions of serious violence. What do rising or high rates of violence mean for democratic
politics, particularly for the political agency of those communities most affected by
crime? Exploring this question reveals a more complex relationship between democratic
participation and the politics of crime than we have heretofore imagined, in part because
high or rising rates of violence expose communities not only to repressive state practices,
but also to real suffering from predatory behavior. Under these conditions, the political
agency of these communities can be activated to hold political actors accountable, not
only for punishing perpetrators once violence has already occurred, but for addressing a
wide range of problems, including the social conditions that generate rising rates of
violence in the first place.
While the literature on the relationship between democratic politics and crime
remains unsettled, with a few exceptions, the weight of the analysis suggests that the
greater the capacity for pressure from mass publics, the more punitive the State will be.2
Jacobs and Kleban (2003: 748, emphasis added), for example, conclude their cross-
national analysis with the alarming warning those that those who ‘dislike the recent
expansions in incarceration that have occurred in so many of the advanced democracies
should not seek political arrangements that give the public greater influence’ (for simi-
lar claims, see Tonry, 2007: 26; Whitman, 2003: 200; Windelsham, 1998; Zimring and
Johnson, 2006: 278).3
These critiques are rooted in a number of assumptions about crime, punishment and
democratic politics, and here I address three of the more fundamental of these assump-
tions: that crime rates are only marginally related to the politics of crime and punish-
ment; that mass publics are ill informed, impulsive and largely, if not entirely, punitive;4
and that the political process is driven not, primarily, by real anxiety about violence but,
rather, by politicians who are motivated to shore up the authority and legitimacy of gov-
ernment institutions.5 In this view, crime and punishment make good politics as politi-
cians seek to capitalize on public anxieties about violence as a means of strengthening
their political capital. At the core of anxiety about democratic politics and crime, then, is
a deep mistrust of the ability of the public writ large to understand crime and justice
issues, and the susceptibility of politicians to a perverse set of political incentives that
result in pandering to mass publics demanding ever harsher punishment.
I challenge each of these assumptions by building on extant work that complicates the
democracy–punishment narrative through attention to institutional dynamics (see Barker,
2009; Lacey, 2008; Miller, 2008; Weaver, 2007; see also Garland, 2001, Dzur, 2010 and
Stuntz, 2011 for related arguments). In doing so, I argue that thinking more analytically
about violent victimization can reconfigure our understanding of the relationship between
democratic politics and crime by revealing the complex political demands of communi-
ties exposed to high rates of violence, as well as repressive state practices, and the varia-
tion in institutional capacities across democratic systems to respond to these communities.
By de-coupling violence from the politics of crime and punishment, we have overlooked
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