Penal Imperialism: The Rise and Return of Transnational Penal Orders

Vanessa Barker

Abstract

Penal imperialism is a form of penal power used to advance extra-territorial authority and control over populations and lands outside the nation-state boundary. It is imperial in the sense that it draws on colonial histories and colonizing power to control populations and domains beyond national borders. It is imperial as it relies on military power and the (no less coercive) noblesse oblige of foreign aid to achieve its aims. It is penal as it relies on criminal justice tools, staff, its material and symbolic violence, to lend it legitimacy and effectiveness. Like colonialism, penal imperialism involves a wide range of practices and actors operating in a transnational space that crosses borders and boundaries and is not reduceable to nation-state actors (although they play an outsize role). These separate elements taken together make up a new legal order, a structural shift, that confines, contains, and even punishes people for taking the decision to cross a border. Penal imperialism is likely to make poorer people of color around the globe unfree and unequal at the service of richer and whiter democracies and welfare states.

To develop this theoretical and conceptual map, I draw upon post-colonial social theory (Go 2015; Bhambra date), southern theory, and transnational legal ordering (Halliday and Shaffer 2015; Aaronson on CJ TLO), global methods (Darian-Smith and McCarty 2017) and critical humanitarian studies (Ticktin 2011; Fassin date), border criminology and penal humanitarianism (Bosworth 2017; Aas and Gundhus date) and penal history.

Empirical examples are taken from the history of penal colonies and contemporary developments in foreign aid, EU-Turkey deal, NATO’s role in migration control.