Crisis and Criminal Justice

How does the political and economic crisis - both on a national and international level - affect the criminal justice system (legislation, police, prosecution, judiciary, prisons)? How does it, more specifically, affect individual rights, the balance of powers, and the democratic order?

Decline of Democracy Yascha Mounk & Roberto Stefan Foa (2016/2017) The Danger of Deconsolidation: The Democratic Disconnect. July 2016. Journal of Democracy. And January 2017. The Signs of Deconsolidation. - Political scientists long assumed that “democratic consolidation” was a one-way street, but survey evidence of declining support for democracy from across the established democracies suggests that deconsolidation is a genuine danger. The Danger of Deconsolidation: The Democratic Disconnect. In recent years, parties and candidates challenging key democratic norms have won unprecedented popular support in liberal democracies across the globe. Drawing on public opinion data from the World Values Survey and various national polls, we show that the success of anti-establishment parties and candidates is not a temporal or geographic aberration, but rather a reflection of growing popular disaffection with liberal-democratic norms and institutions, and of increasing support for authoritarian interpretations of democracy. The record number of anti-system politicians in office raises uncertainty about the strength of supposedly “consolidated” liberal democracies. Guatemala. Italy. Hungary. Greece Tsipras. Turkey. (Wilders. AfD. Denmark, Finland, Norway ...).

Legislation gives more powers to the police - and in some instances to prosecutors, liberating them from political influence, conferring the potential of an independent political role (PT) to prosecutors and judges. Involvement of military in domestic criminal policy. Estrangement between an ever more outspoken political right (Bolsonaro) and a fragmented "left" and grassroot movements (Marielle Franco).

Police more powerful. But relevance of video.

Prosecution: powerful in Brazil.

Judiciary:

Prisons: Overload. They used to be symbols of state pride and power (Takagi). Today they are the same in the U.S. - a return to old splendor with little humanity. But they are a symbol of the state's absence and impotence in other coutnries. Large rund-down prisons.

Crisis or Crises?

The Drug Wave of 1968: Implications for Criminal Policy. A second frontline beside the Cold War. The Secret State and the erosion of civil liberties. Punitiveness, Enemy criminal law. Devaluation of marginalized persons. Gropnik.

The Financial Crisis of 2008: Implications for social cohesion. Growing inequality. Less empathy. Aggravating prior tendencies towards a dual state. Sovereign police. Police killings. Competing forces of order. Extrajudcial killings. Prison as privilege.

The Global Crisis of 2018: Populism unchained. Belligerence. Destructive malignant narcissism. Desublimation.

Consequences

Individual rights on the way out
Balance of powers: increasing powers for the executive branch (state of exception), immunisation of military and police. Legislative branch? Corruption? Brazil: Judiciary thanks to PT policy (Vanessa Ruales 2018).
Competing powers: problem for democracy and voting. General disillusionment with democracy.
Prison expansion and overcrowding. Why?

The Prison Crisis

The State and the Prison

Paul Takagi (1975): Walnut Street served to legitimize the idea of a state prison, which meant the creation of a state apparatus. To put it differently, the transformation that was to occur had implications far beyond the matter of penal reform. The political process toward creating a state prison system re ected in miniature the problems of the Confederation in centralizing the powers of the state. The demand for a strong centralized government was to guarantee the development of a new economic order on the one hand, and on the other, to solve the problem of law and order.

Eastern State Penitentiary (1829) had cost nearly $780,000, one of the most expensive buildings of its day in the United States.

What does it look like? What does it look like in rich and in poor countries? In ex-slaveholder and ex-convict republics?

In equal societies and in unequal ones?

In 2003, Finland was second highest and Norway and Sweden were joint fourth highest for age-adjusted public expenditure on educational institutions

Where does it come from? The role of drug policy. Seychelles.
Which functions does it fulfill and which not?
What does the prison crisis signify in terms of social theory and the future for humankind?

The Way Out

The ethical one: see Gropnik and NO PRISON
The probable one: see Harari and Helotes

===1. The financial crisis and the divided global village

Equality is happiness, but the real world is polarising

2. It is especially bad in ex-slaveholder societies, where freed slaves turn into the new helotes (Harari)

3. Populism as an instinctive revolt with paradoxical consequences

Lack of education elects clowns and radical rambos with no experience, who are therefore vulnerable to influencers, i.e. lobbies, that turn their policies around

Tendency to elect autocrats (philippines, nativist iran, near east)

4. Affects the criminal justice system at large:

4.1 legislation tends towards measures and decrees, harsher and more unprofessional - Doppelstaat

4.2 StA und Polizei: StA hat weniger Gewicht, außer lava jato. Polizei weitgehend souverän. Militarisierung. PPP

4.3 Strafvollzug: hier finden sich die Überflüssigen, soweit sie nicht außerjustiziellen Exekutionen zum Opfer gefallen sind. Massaker. Heloten werden hier diszipliniert. Israel. BR, weltweit.

5. Demokratischer Prozess: Wahlen, Parteien, Oligarchien - fed up, Burnheim: Losverfahren?

10. Why not abolish prisons? In reichen Ländern ginge das vielleicht - wären da nicht die unsachgemäßen Gründe (falsches Signal etc.).

In armen Ländern sind die Verhältnisse schlimm. Da wäre Abolition noch dringender.