Rethinking the Punitive Turn

Abstract

This article examines the thesis that the recent punitive shift taken by western states can be explained in terms of what Christie calls the `subordination of law and order systems to the purposive logic of the rational bureaucratic state' (Christie, 1996). While accepting that this `subordination to modernity' thesis has considerable explanatory power, this article argues that it is nevertheless limited in terms of providing an adequate explanation of the punitive shift. While it is true that it can help explain how punitive solutions may evolve out of rationalizing tendencies integral to the modern state, this thesis cannot account for what Garland (1996) terms the `criminology of the other' and the contribution of this to the current punitive turn. Not only is this `criminology' irreducible to the rationalizing forces specific to modernity, it is also a form of `criminology' the appearance of which marks a decisive attack upon other attributes of modernity around which modern penal systems were also constructed; in particular, as this article will examine, the `restricted economy of limits' that historically established the normative parameters within which modern penal systems emerged. To interpret the punitive turn, this article argues that it is necessary to trace its genesis not only to a purification of modernity, but also and in a different respect to its dissolution and replacement by what, after Bataille, will be termed an `economy of excess'.