Beyond criminocentric dogmatism: Mapping institutional forms of punishment in contemporary societies

Abstract

This article aims to question the role criminal justice and criminal law play in structuring the set of dominant conditioning questions in criminology. Based on socio-legal approaches and past fieldwork in immigration control, I argue that the punitive use of non-criminal-based normative systems (such as immigration law) is not a new trend and that, therefore, we are not assisting a ‘criminal contamination’ of other justice systems, but the re-emergence and consolidation of different punitive logics. In that sense, I suggest that criminal justice acts as an epistemological obstacle, being a major barrier to perceive such nuances. Instead, I propose a wider conception of the penal field which operates as a mobile (kinetic sculpture) and includes the criminal law realm, but also other institutional normative systems that configure ‘less’ prominent locations of punishment, such as: regulatory criminal law, civil courts, immigration law, military law, parole boards and other administrative legal systems that play an increasing role in social reaction. I ultimately argue that criminologists should also focus on such administrative-based justice systems in order to better address and resist punitiveness.