Responsibility, Criminalization, and Political Economy

Abstract

One of the most important and distinctive themes of Lacey’s recent work has been the analysis of penal practices from the perspective of political economy. However, it is arguably the case that ‘political economy’ is primarily viewed as a dimension of the context in which the criminal law develops rather than as a method of legal analysis. In this chapter I explore the meaning and critical potential of the concept of political economy—how it is used by Lacey, the different traditions that she draws on—and what the perspective and theory of political economy contributes to our understanding of criminal law. I seek to deepen the relevance of political economy to the analysis of criminal responsibility by exploring how the development of the modern conception of English criminal law in the early nineteenth century was itself shaped by contemporary understandings of political economy. Most historical work on the development of the modern criminal law has focused on the impact of utilitarianism to show how changes in penal laws and institutions were linked to new efforts to shape individual conduct in society. However, equally important to the intellectual and political culture of the early nineteenth century were understandings of the new ‘science’ of political economy. This chapter explores the ways in which theories of political economy shaped the modern criminal law in this period and thereby to open up new possibilities for exploring connections between criminal law, criminal responsibility, and political economy—and thus for critical criminal law theory.