Transgressions and Standards: A Language for Penal Abolition

• In Event: Penal Abolition: Session 1 of 3

Abstract

Given the ubiquity of “crime,” to speak of “criminal behavior” as deviant nullifies the very concept of deviance (abnormal, out of the ordinary, etc.). This has implications for criminology and criminal justice which propose norm theory (that human beings conventionally follow established norms/laws) and deviance theory (that human beings infrequently deviate from norms/laws and proportionately few act in such ways with any regularity). After demonstrating that empirically the opposite is the case, I argue that penal abolition must base itself on the language and theory of transgression (that the vast majority of human beings regularly act in ways that transgress the norms and laws they establish) and a new standard (that human beings are both maintainers and transgressors of the social orders they establish). I argue that by adopting such new language and abandoning the mythological language of “crime,” abolitionists can impact academic and public discourse. My paper challenges “criminal justice” logic that ignores the continuity of the past in the present (white supremacy, neocolonialism, racial capitalism, class oppression and gendering enslavement), and that fortifies discourse and practice from recognizing, eliminating and standing accountable by rectifying centuries of white privilege, heteronormativity, and the oppression of nonwhite, resource challenged, etc. bodies.

Author

• Michael J. Coyle, California State University, Chico