Visions of crime control in neo-liberal ideology'

It has become something close to orthodoxy in criminology and the sociology of punishment to claim that neo-liberalism has been the driving force behind the punitive upsurge of recent decades. That claim has even acquired a name – ‘neo-liberal penality’. Despite this, neo-liberalism remains an elusive phenomenon. It is typically a pejorative label pinned on political actions by critics and little consensus exists about how to theorize neo-liberalism – as a policy, political rationality, governmental technology, or simply rhetorical cover for the interests of footloose capital. As a result, we lack a careful appraisal of what neo-liberals – or, more accurately, economic libertarians – think about crime and justice. In this paper – which forms part of a wider project on ideologies in crime control – I aim to conduct just such an appraisal. What vision of a better politics of crime is to be found within neo-liberal thought-behaviour? What crime control commitments flow from the core claims of neo-liberalism and what are their cognitive value and emotional appeal? Why have advocates of competing ideological positions found creative inspiration in neo-liberal ideas? By addressing such questions, I aim to strip neo-liberalism of its often assumed status as post-ideological orthodoxy and return it to the arena of ideological conflict - as one way of thinking about political authority and governance.