Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Christie (2000) argues that there “are no natural limits” to criminalization due to the subjective manner in which situations perceived as problematic can be defined as crime. Not considered in this line of argumentation, is the manner in which situations perceived as problematic can be treated as crime without the designation. This paper explores administrative mechanisms deployed by government officials that aim to carve-out those deemed to pose a risk to the nation-state through legally codified mechanisms that structure-out evidentiary thresholds, procedural guidelines and accountability structures contained within criminal law. This is accomplished by laying the foundations for the authorization of detention in other legal domains. By examining the criminalization of certain forms of warfare (Butler, 2004), (non)citizenship (Wacquant, 1999), the merely suspicious (Ericson, 2006), disease (Rose, 2007) and the seemingly offensive (Duff & Marshall, 2006) by other means, I will illustrate how the coercive, ordering and stigmatizing powers of the late modern state have expanded and exceeded the traditional boundaries of the criminal justice system. While such configurations share with the criminal justice system a concern for public safety, there is little space for societal reinscription as the frameworks are driven by a precautionary logic (Sunstein, 2005) that seek to protect ‘us’ by disposing of ‘them’ (Larsen & Piché, 2007). The proliferation and normalization of detention as a disposal tactic in other spheres poses considerable challenges to penal abolitionists who must now contend with additional spaces of control that act as appendages intensifying the expansion of an already wide net.