Whither neoliberal penality? The past, present and future of imprisonment in the US
| Published date | 01 April 2019 |
| Date | 01 April 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474517751911 |
| Author | Leonidas K Cheliotis,Sappho Xenakis |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Punishment & Society
Whither neoliberal
2019, Vol. 21(2) 187–206
! The Author(s) 2018
penality? The past,
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474517751911
present and future of
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imprisonment in the US
Sappho Xenakis
Birkbeck, University of London, UK
Leonidas K Cheliotis
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Abstract
Debates about the trajectory of prison rates in the US, on one hand, and about the
prospects of the neoliberal international order, on the other hand, suggest the time is
ripe for a reappraisal of penological scholarship on the relationship between neoliber-
alism and imprisonment. With the aim of responding to this challenge, this article
considers the relevance of the so-called ‘neoliberal penality thesis’ as a framework
through which to interpret recent and ongoing developments in US imprisonment.
We first set out the core propositions of the thesis and engage with a range of critiques
it has attracted regarding the role of crime and government institutions, the evolution
and functions of state regulation and welfare provision, and reliance on imprisonment
as an indicator of state punitiveness. We then outline the principal arguments that have
arisen about the direction of contemporary prison trends in the US, including since
Donald Trump was elected to the presidency and took office, and proceed to distil their
commonly opaque treatment of the intersections between neoliberalism and impris-
onment, also clarifying their respective implications for the neoliberal penality thesis in
light of the main critiques levelled previously against it. In so doing, we go beyond the
penological field to take into account concerns about the vitality of neoliberalism itself.
We conclude that international politico-economic developments have cast considerable
doubt over the pertinence of neoliberalism as an organising concept for analysis of
emergent penal currents.
Corresponding author:
Sappho Xenakis, School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, UK.
Email: s.xenakis@bbk.ac.uk
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Punishment & Society 21(2)
Keywords
decarceration, deglobalisation, imprisonment, neoliberalism, neoliberal penality,
political economy of punishment, Trump
Introduction
Across the Western world over the last five decades or so, many states have
witnessed an immense growth in their rates of imprisonment. The parallel rise of
neoliberal dogma and policy has stimulated a wave of research exploring the
apparent connection between neoliberalism and imprisonment. Neoliberalism
has come to be interpreted as a creed of governance in which free market principles
are preeminent, government intervention in social provision is eschewed, and pri-
vate enterprise is privileged. The ascendance of neoliberal thought in policy-
making has in turn driven a shift in the structure of capitalism, towards a form
in which the domestic and international activities and profits of finance capital
have been unleashed, thereby resolving what had been mounting pressures on the
profitability of capitalism in its Fordist, production-focused iteration. Yet neolib-
eral agendas have not advanced equally or uniformly everywhere; in different
jurisdictions, neoliberal policy-making has proved expressive of divergent views
about the route required to achieving an unfettered market, including, to that end,
the proper size and role of the state in social and economic fields (Gamble, 2009). It
is little surprise that the contested and pluralistic character of neoliberalism has
thwarted the emergence of a consensus regarding its relationship with imprison-
ment. Whilst it has generally been contended that higher imprisonment rates con-
stitute an essential dimension of state punishment under neoliberalism, it has also
been argued conversely that the reduced use of imprisonment would align more
closely with neoliberal precepts, and attention has been drawn to the contingent
and manifold articulations of neoliberal penality across time and space (see e.g.
O’Malley, 2015).
Debates about the recent, present and future trajectory of prison rates in the
US, against the background of questions accumulating about the vitality of neo-
liberalism as such, suggest there is pressing need for a reappraisal of penological
scholarship on the connection between neoliberalism and imprisonment. With a
view to providing just such an appraisal, this article focuses on the US as a case
study, a choice justified both by the central place accorded to the US in prior work
on the relationship between neoliberalism and incarceration, and by the role com-
monly ascribed to the US as a key disseminator of neoliberal policy-making and
the prime originator of the global neoliberal system. We begin by setting out the
core propositions of the so-called ‘neoliberal penality thesis’ and proceed to engage
with a range of critiques it has attracted concerning the part played by crime and
government institutions, the evolution and functions of state regulation and wel-
fare provision, and reliance on imprisonment as an indicator of state punitiveness.
Xenakis and Cheliotis
189
We then outline the principal arguments that have emerged over the direction of
contemporary prison trends in the US, and distil their typically opaque treatment
of the intersections between neoliberalism and imprisonment, also clarifying their
respective implications for the neoliberal penality thesis in light of the main cri-
tiques raised so far against it. In so doing, we go beyond the penological field to
take into account doubts that have arisen about the prospects of the neoliberal
international order itself.
The neoliberal penality thesis
A large number of penologists concur that neoliberalism plays an adverse role in
penal matters. No broad consensus exists, however, as to what this role precisely
entails or how significant it actually is. For some writers, such as Garland (2001)
and Simon (2007), neoliberalism has been a key backdrop to growing state puni-
tiveness in the US and elsewhere, but not its cause. For others, such as Lacey
(2008), neoliberalism has been a driving force, albeit one that has been mediated by
a variety of institutional forces.1 And then there are scholars who have put forward
what has come to be known as the ‘neoliberal penality thesis’. Here, the rise of
neoliberalism is singled out as the primary propellant of state punitiveness, with
concurrent variables receiving recognition yet ultimately treated as of lesser
importance.2
In line with the long tradition of research into the relationship between systems
of production and the use of punishment, the neoliberal penality thesis starts from
the premise that the degree and form of state punitiveness in a society are largely
determined not by crime trends but by economic and fiscal forces. At the same
time, proponents of the neoliberal penality thesis insist on the distinctiveness of
punishment under neoliberalism as compared to under capitalism per se, typically
evoking imprisonment trends to contend that state punitiveness has grown and
continues to be at its most acute in jurisdictions where neoliberalism has advanced
fastest and furthest.
In what is arguably the clearest and most influential exposition of the neoliberal
penality thesis, Wacquant (2009a, 2009b) suggests that neoliberalism entails the
articulation of four specific ‘institutional logics’: economic deregulation, welfare
retrenchment, the cultural trope of individual responsibility, and the expansion of
the state’s penal apparatus. That Wacquant treats the growth of the penal state as
an integral component of neoliberalism is because, in his view, the former helps to
manage the social reverberations of ‘advanced social insecurity’ that socio-
economic policies pursuant to the latter generate amongst the lower and middle
classes. At the bottom of the class structure, Wacquant explains, the threat and
reality of punishment work to contain the disorders stoked by the ‘objective’ inse-
curity of the poor, faced as they tend to be not only with long-term unemployment
or highly flexibilised conditions of work but also with severely weakened welfare
protections. At the same time, ‘punishing the poor’ creates a convenient outlet for
the ‘subjective’ insecurity experienced by the middle classes, ‘whose prospects for
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smooth reproduction or upward mobility have dimmed as competition for valued
social positions has intensified and the state has reduced its provision of public
goods’ (Wacquant, 2009b: 300). Punishment of lower socio-economic classes there-
by eventually provides a means by which political leaders can compensate for
legitimacy lost in pursuit of neoliberal socio-economic agendas (see also
Cheliotis, 2013; De Giorgi, 2006).
Notwithstanding some disagreement over the relative significance of class vis-a`-vis
race (see e.g. Gottschalk, 2015), it is commonplace in neoliberal penality scholar-
ship to illustrate neoliberalism’s ascribed penal proclivity by reference to unjustifi-
ably high rates at which poor citizens with a racial minority status
(e.g. dispossessed African Americans in the US) are over-represented amongst
incarcerated populations in different neoliberal societies. Attentive to the rapid
rise of immigration from disadvantaged parts of the world over recent decades,
a small but growing number of neoliberal penality scholars have also began
extending their analyses to the treatment accorded by recipient societies to foreign
migrants, and...
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