The Empire’s coming home: Liberalism, Exclusion and the Punitiveness of the

British State

British Society of Criminology Annual Conference

University of Liverpool

July 2014

J.M. Moore

The “New Punitiveness”

• Increased Imprisonment– More people– For longer

• Increased surveillance and supervision• Reduced tolerance• Targeting of working class and black and

minority ethnic communities• Criminal Justice -v- Welfare Solutions

Histories of Punishment

• Civilising• From Physical to Carceal

– ‘Instead of losing a hand, imprisonment for ten years’. (Christie 2000:46)

• Alternatives to imprisonment• Decline of the prison• Rise of Welfare

The Lost Empire:Colonial Omissions from Penal Histories

• Mutiny and brutal repression• Criminal Tribes Act • Godna, fingerprinting and bertilage• Prison and Slavery• Further Mutiny and more brutal

repression• Genocide, torture, rape,

concentration camps

Mills Liberalism:

‘Inclusionary discipline’

I regard it as required by first principles, that the receipt of parish relief should be a peremptory disqualification for the franchise. (Mill 1997b:472)

If it is asserted that all persons ought to be equal in every description of right recognised by society, I answer, not until all are equal in worth as human beings……a person who cannot read, is not as good, for the purpose of human life, as one who can. (Mill 1997c:323)

Mills Liberalism:

the homogeneous race

“Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the workings of representative government, cannot exist”

Mill 1977b:547

Mills Liberalism:

‘exclusionary exceptions’

“Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with Barbarians, providing the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.”

Mill 1977a:224

• From– criminality and crime control, – rights and responsibilities, – inclusion and exclusion,

• To– race, – terror, – religion, – culture – and immigration