Penal exports, penal power and the state

• In Event: Macro Approaches to Criminal Policy and Punishment

Abstract

What are criminal justice exports, and what do they mean for criminologicial understandings of penal power and the state? The globalization of crime and its control challenges the methodological nationalism characterizing much of criminological thought. However, criminal justice exports remains a fragmented area of study - scattered across literatures on penal policy transfer, penal reform, border criminologies, and colonial penality - with little attention to how such practices play into the nature of contemporary penal power. Combining an extensive literature review with methodological reflections on crafting an original empirical database on Scandinavian criminal justice exports (1990-2021), this paper offers a conceptual framework for analyzing the forms, trajectories, legitimating discourses, and social functions of criminal justice exports. As such, the paper contributes to the understanding of penal power and the state by turning critical attention to criminal justice exports as a particular kind of foreign policy tool.

Authors

• Kjersti Lohne, University of Oslo

• Katrine Antonsen, Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo