Abstract
This book provides a much-needed interrogation of the presumably inexorable domination of neoliberal rationality over the modern criminal justice system. Emma Bell suggests that, although neoliberalism is undoubtedly a “political mutation” partially responsible for recent intensification of punishments and the broadening of punitive metrics to include crimes of “nuisance” and “incivility,” these are neither novel developments nor are they explainable only in terms of neoliberal domination. The state, far from irrelevant in the contemporary criminal justice system, reasserts itself through ever more abstract and bureaucratic welfarist approaches to criminal justice, much as it did in the nineteenth century. More attention to crime has meant the creation of more civil agencies to deal with criminal justice. The costs associated with such a move to more agencies with more involvement in the rehabilitation of the individual run directly counter to the neoliberal tenets of cost-efficiency and self-governance. Similarly, the focus on widening the scope of criminality to include youth and “nuisance” criminals points to a classical liberal belief in the possibility of rehabilitation founded on a view of the individual as a rational autonomous subject. Bell argues that the punitive turn is more about asserting the legitimacy of the state than about merely upholding a generalized neoliberal presumption of containing or regulating marginal populations.
Bell writes primarily against the findings of Wacquant, who has argued that neoliberalism both founded and currently drives the increased punitiveness of the modern state. As Bell convincingly demonstrates in Criminal Justice and Neoliberalism, the image of the neoliberal state as some sort of omniscient and irreducible behemoth is seductive, but yields sloppy generalizations. Bell sees this causal linkage as too simple, arguing instead that “it is the extension rather than the total displacement of welfarist approaches, combined with an emphasis on individual responsibility for the crime problem which has been the prime driver of punitive policies in recent years in Britain” (p. 3). What makes Bell’s study so valuable, then, is its willingness to delve deeper into her topic than others have previously done. She questions the status quo of criminal justice thought in order to render our current conditions more precisely. Her analyses are elaborate, insightful, and carefully considered within the context of the United Kingdom, first, and the Western world, second. This is an indispensable book for all interested in neoliberalism and criminal justice in our contemporary context.