Revolutionary and Counter-revolutionary Sentiments in Carceral States

• In Event: Roundtable: Hate Crimes & Discrimination

Abstract

Criminology and sociolegal scholarship on criminal justice has much to offer and much to gain from in-depth studies of how the moral practices of carceral regimes mediate the legitimacy of modern states. Speaking to the conference theme, this paper challenges criminologists and legal scholars to examine how revolutionary and counter-revolutionary sentiments are constructed through criminal justice institutions. The beliefs that reproduce the legitimating ideologies of liberal democratic states are fundamentally moral ones. Scholars have shown how moral beliefs generate popular and political investment in punishment, however less work has focused on how these same institutions harness sentiments on the part of those acting in the name of the state which also move against sovereign, liberal power. This paper brings together a broad scholarship on morality in legal and criminal justice contexts (Simon 2020, Liebling et al. 2021, Liebling 2004, Merry 1990), and theoretical work on counter-revolutions (Hobsbawm 1994, Mayer 1971, Panah 2002). It argues that the durability of ideologies legitimating liberal democracies and carceral states can be best understood through close attention to the on-the-ground critiques of sovereignty, labor, and subjectivity held by actors working on behalf of the state within criminal justice systems.

Author

• Johanna Romer, University of Essex