Punishment, political economy and crisis: Disciplining labour through state-corporate surveillance in the ‘neoliberal heartlands’
| Author | Sappho Xenakis |
| DOI | 10.1177/14773708221089233 |
| Published date | 01 May 2022 |
| Date | 01 May 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue: Penal changes, crises, and the political economy of punishment |
Punishment, political economy
and crisis: Disciplining labour
through state-corporate
surveillance in the ‘neoliberal
heartlands’
Sappho Xenakis
Birkbeck, University of London, UK
Abstract
The aim of this article is to advance the politico-economic analysis of punishment in contexts of
crisis. To this end, the article examines punitive state interventions in the ‘neoliberal heartlands’of
the UK and the US, as set against a backdrop of multidimensional crises that have reconfigured
political landscapes, the relationship between labour and capital, and the mode and scope of
state punishment. Through a focus on the treatment of socio-economically embedded undocu-
mented migrants, the article highlights the increasingly diffuse punitive repercussions stemming
from the growing multi-sectoral, corporate-facilitated surveillance of the labour force.
Keywords
Political economy, punishment, state-corporate surveillance, imprisonment, Windrush Scandal,
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
The appeal of political economy approaches to the study of punishment has been notably
uneven over time, often emerging during times of crisis or change and falling out of
favour during times of stability. After a small flurry of political economy scholarship
on punishment in the early decades of the 20th century, stagnant imprisonment rates
over ensuing decades in a number of the world’s stronger economies persuaded many
that the state’s use of punishment was essentially homeostatic, independent of both
crime rates and the economy (see Blumstein and Cohen, 1973; Zimring, 2010). The
1970s then saw a series of ruptures take place: the end of the gold standard and the
Corresponding author:
Sappho Xenakis, School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, UK.
Email: s.xenakis@bbk.ac.uk
Special Issue: Penal changes, crises, and the political economy of punishment
European Journal of Criminology
2022, Vol. 19(3) 332–348
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/14773708221089233
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Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, followed by the oil crisis and recession,
ushering in an era of both neoliberalism and rising imprisonment. These parallel devel-
opments were particularly pronounced in the UK and even more so the US –the core
‘neoliberal heartlands’, as they have been characterised by Bob Jessop (2016) –with
the US’postwar dominance of the international economic order beginning to loosen at
the same time that the country rapidly became a global outlier in terms of imprisonment
rates (Zimring, 2010). In the wake of this moment of upheaval, scholarly attention
returned to the relationship between politics, the economy, and punishment. Rolling
politico-economic tensions in the intervening years have appeared to sustain a stream
of attention to this theme. Yet, as a variety of crises have successively reconfigured pol-
itical landscapes, the relationship between capital and labour, and the deployment of state
punishment, the question arises as to the continued purchase in the post-2008 period of
politico-economic theorisations of penality that were used to frame accounts of the use of
punishment over preceding decades.
In seeking to answer this question, some attention is required at the outset to broader
debates about what exactly the concept of ‘crisis’entails. Should a crisis only be consid-
ered an epoch-making juncture, ‘a strategic moment in the structural transformation of the
state’, as International Relations scholar Colin Hay (1999): 331 has put it? Or should it be
accepted that not all crises produce great transformations (Neep, 2018)? The very variety
of interpretations that are in use underscores the contingency of understandings of ‘crisis’
(Brassett, 2018). An acknowledgement therefore of both the constructed nature of crises
and the range of their potential impact –from superficial to transformative –is the starting
point here for evaluating how tenable politico-economic theorisations of penality remain
over timeframes marked by tumultuous political, economic and social developments.
This article reflects more specifically on elements of broad transformations over recent
decades that have, according to some interpretations, merited the designation of a multi-
dimensional crisis in some advanced economies, affecting their economic, social and pol-
itical realities, and considers the ramifications of these shifts for the politico-economic
theorisation of penality. After offering a review of the role played by crisis and the treat-
ment accorded to concepts of continuity and rupture in scholarship on the political
economy of punishment, the article goes on to explore the degree to which pertinent ana-
lytical frameworks are able to speak to the widespread changes that have occurred to the
systems and practices of disciplining labour in the UK and the US. The article draws on
the treatment of socio-economically embedded undocumented migrants to explore more
particularly the increasingly diffuse punitive repercussions generated by the rise of multi-
sectoral, corporate-facilitated surveillance of the labour force. Finally, the article consid-
ers what this effective expansion of the state’s punitive and disciplinary repertoire might
mean for politico-economic approaches to the study of punishment going forward.
Crisis in the political economy of punishment
Crises, broadly conceived, have regularly been an integral component of scholarship on
the political economy of punishment. Many scholars have determined there to have been
sufficient continuity preceding and ensuing crises to legitimate the persistence of models
Xenakis 333
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