The Hidden Arm of the Law: Administrative Justice in Gun Carry Licensing

• In Event: 213 - Regular Session. Deviance and Social Control

Abstract

Responding to calls to “decenter” US studies of punishment beyond the carceral apparatus, this paper ethnographically examines administrative justice and dissects how it interlocks with criminal justice. Administrative justice involves decision-making processes in administrative contexts, such as welfare fair hearings, gun board licensing, and driver’s license hearings, that lie outside of the purview of the formal criminal justice system. Nevertheless, this paper shows that administrative justice facilitates, mimics and supplements criminal justice through three processes: valve-turning, pains of provision, and parallel punishment. To illustrate, it uses an unusual case: administrative gun boards, which are charged with issuing, denying, revoking and suspending licenses to conceal carry a firearm. The paper draws on observations of over 900 cases from gun board meetings in two counties in Michigan to provide insight into the administrative state as an organ critical to contemporary US penality.

Author

• Jennifer Carlson, University of Arizona