Social Control, Judicialization of Social Problems and Governance of Security in Comparative Perspectives

The governance of security and social problems has changed substantially in the last decades, both by harshening criminal punishment (punitive turn) and by widening the scope of penalization processes (shadow carceral state, Beckett & Murakawa, 2012). Traditionally, democratic societies tend to manage security-related conflicts and “dangerous” populations through legal institutions anchored in the following liberal triad: legal rules, balanced rights and sanctions, mostly associated to criminal law and trials. While criminalization is still the primary face of social control, an increasing number of scholars are pointing to a variety of forms and processes of judicialization and penalization, either within criminal law regimes (e.g. preventive justice) or relying on regulatory, administrative, civil, and even hybrid legal regimes.

The workshop is composed by empirical studies on the routines and practices of various legal institutions contributing to the judicialization of social problems and the governance of security. Themes include criminalization processes, other forms of judicialization (regulatory, immigration, civil, etc.) and also legal pluralistic forms of conflict resolution. By putting multiple contexts and jurisdictions into conversation, we aim to address a certain void in social control studies in two senses: 1) by emphasizing the judicial aspects of social control processes, rather than the deviance and punishment properties of them; and 2) by moving beyond the frontiers of criminal law in order to explore other forms of judicialization and governance. By doing so, we will open the “black box” (Latour, 1999) of criminalization and social control, illuminating its internal complexity; that is, how Law and particular legal regimes (State-based or not) are mobilized in contemporary security projects. This will help understanding the extent and scope of neo-liberal forms of governance that subverts the traditional liberal triad of legal rules, balanced rights and sanctions, as well as, the consequences and deterioration of rights related to such legal arrangements.

The workshop will be organized in seven sessions and all sessions will cover South American, North American and European contexts in different aspects of social control and judicialization processes. Session 1 will discuss security policies, practices of policing and law reform in Brazil, France, Spain, and Canada, exploring criminal justice, prevention, youth justice and restorative justice initiatives. Session 2 will explore connections among criminal law, immigration law and regulatory law in Argentina, Chili, Canada and Netherlands. Session 3 will examine judicial practices, hearings and Jury trials in Brazil, Mexico and France. Session 4 will cover judicialization, urban control and local governance in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Toronto and Basque Country. Session 5 will discuss administrative control and psychiatrization in Montréal, judicialization of domestic violence against women in Brazil, and the treatment, incarceration and reform of young offenders in Quebec and in France. Session 6 will explore Security and Criminal Justice Policies in Brazil, France and Spain. And Session 7 will discuss access to justice in European intercultural contexts involving Roma population, the differential administration of illegalities in the contexts of State crimes in Colombia, and the governance of legal and illegal drug markets (Brazil and Canada).

Finally, given the diversity of geographical contexts and legal regimes that will be covered, we hope to enrich the understanding of the literatures on social control, judicialization of social problems and the governance of security. In this sense, we anticipate three main kinds of contributions to the socio-legal scholarship in these areas. First, empirical contributions, by describing judicial practices and the political dimensions of law in different contexts. Second, theoretical contributions, by exploring judicialization and social control processes beyond and in addition to criminalization. And third, disciplinary and theoretical contributions, by emphasising law and socio-legal approaches (sociology of law and legal anthropology) in the study of social control, a topic often dealt through sociology of crime/ deviance, sociology of punishment and criminological approaches. The variety of scholarship and the comparative character of the workshop will provide a unique opportunity to build relations, to nuance judicial practices and to contribute to security projects that respect the