Extrajudicial Punishment and the Criminal Question

Abstract

Abstract Punishment and Society scholars tend to study particular institutions and spaces where punishment is imposed by the state (such as the prison), usually after a conviction in a criminal court. This chapter questions the boundaries of the field. It argues that extrajudicial punishment plays a central role in penality and that, particularly in postcolonial contexts, rates of imprisonment do not adequately reflect levels of penal punitiveness. The term ‘extrajudicial punishment’ is used here to refer to punishment-like phenomena which are inflicted by civilian or state actors, in response to an allegation of criminality or lawbreaking. In South Africa, extrajudicial punishment plays out on multiple scales, across space and time, in and through varying jurisdictions, and disproportionately targets and affects poor black people. While this is also the case in Western (and other) contexts, it is more exaggerated, more visible, and more violent in the postcolony. Thus, studying penality in postcolonial contexts is instructive for theorizing about the contradictions of liberal penal forms.