Criminal Justice as State Racism: Race-Making, State Violence, and Imprisonment in the USA, and England and Wales

Abstract: This article uses Michel Foucault’s account of state racism from “Society Must Be Defended” to understand racialized violence in the criminal justice systems of the USA and England and Wales. Foucault argues that modern states make race in order to exercise the sovereign power to kill, by both directly killing racially defined groups and through “indirect murder…or, quite simply, political death. I argue that both the US and English criminal justice systems exercise state racism directly and indirectly, including through police shootings and imprisonment. This state racism extends to multiple groups who are racialized as non-White, including Black people, immigrants, and indigenous peoples. Given the connection that Foucault identifies between sovereignty and racialized state violence, I suggest that ending racism in these criminal justice systems requires developing non-racist forms of national identity and reconceptualizing sovereignty to delegitimize the state’s power to kill.Citation: Pemberton, S. X. (2015) ‘Criminal Justice as State Racism: Race-Making, State Violence, and Imprisonment in the USA, and England and Wales’, New Political Science, 37(3), pp. 321–345. doi: 10.1080/07393148.2015.1056429. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com