Neo-colonial penality? Travelling penal power and contingent sovereignty

Eva Magdalena Stambøl

doi:10.1177/14624745211025745

Abstract

The article explores the relevance of neo-colonial theory for criminology, and its contribution to understanding why and how penal policy and models travel from the global North to the global South. An empirical example is employed to review arguments for and against ‘penal neo-colonialism’ and to tease out the theory’s strengths and limitations; namely the European Union’s ‘penal aid’ to shape West African countries’ penal policies and practices to stop illicit flows and irregular mobility to Europe. The article further discusses neo-colonial theory’s concepts of agency, power and sovereignty by comparing them to similar poststructuralist perspectives on the ‘contingent sovereignty’ of ‘governance states’. Moreover, by drawing on a theoretical discussion on statehood in African studies, it looks at how the sovereignty of African states has been conceptualized as hollowed out ‘from above’ as well as ‘from below’. In doing so, the article contributes to a recent criminological debate that has problematized the relationship between (travelling) penal power and state sovereignty.

Highlights

Recent criminological contributions have argued that penal power can travel beyond the nation-state, especially along postcolonial ties, problematizing its relationship to state sovereignty (Bosworth, 2017; Lohne, 2020)
Neo-colonial theory has the state as its unit of analysis – and explores to what extent a state’s sovereignty is compromised by external actors’ co-option and influence: a neo-colonial country is one which is economically dependent on aid, trade and loans from hegemonic states in the global North or international financial institutions, which is permeated by external actors, and where the political elites become more accountable to the donors than to the population
As Western intervention into Southern countries’ penal sectors tends to take place as part of state-building efforts in countries labelled as ‘fragile’ or ‘failed’, the article draws on a theoretical debate on statehood in African studies to further explore the concept of sovereignty and its relationship to penal power: seeing how scholars have understood African states’ sovereignty as being hollowed out from ‘above’ and from ‘below’

Summary

Introduction

Recent criminological contributions have argued that penal power can travel beyond the nation-state, especially along postcolonial ties, problematizing its relationship to state sovereignty (Bosworth, 2017; Lohne, 2020). The following section draws on an empirical example to show the utility and relevance of neo-colonial theory for criminology and the sociology of punishment, namely for explaining why and how European penal power travels to West Africa.

Results

Conclusion