Gatekeeping Predation: How Morality Prompts Selective Inclusion Within the Criminal Legal System

• In Event: Privatization in the Criminal Courts

Abstract

Predatory inclusion is the process through which marginalized people gain access to a resource or opportunity under exploitative conditions. Previous work considers this phenomenon in for-profit education, housing, consumer credit, and criminal justice. Across contexts, scholars consistently illustrate the reproduction of inequality as previously excluded populations are charged exorbitant prices for inclusion into seemingly stabilizing opportunities. We build on this work to show how powerful actors gatekeep predation by using logics of deservingness to create exclusion within inclusion. That is, moral judgements dictate who is deemed worthy of the “opportunity” to be predated upon. To do so, we utilize two qualitative studies. First, we analyze observations from a rural Midwestern court to show how judges present surety bonds as an opportunity for people charged with crimes. Second, we draw on 19 interviews with Texan bail agents and ethnographic observation within a bail bond agency to understand who gains access to bail assistance. While prior scholarship finds that historic exclusion creates the conditions for predatory inclusion, our focus reveals that access to predatory “opportunities” is not guaranteed. Moreover, we posit that framing systems of predatory inclusion as opportunities allows for continued justification of their existence and invisibilizes their role deepening inequality.

Authors

• Faith Deckard, University of California, Los Angeles

• Erin Eife, George Mason University