ClassCrits Conference Call for Papers
posted by Frank Pasquale
The ClassCrits blog has a number of interesting posts up recently. The group has announced a call for papers for a September conference; here is the notice:
ClassCrits IV, “Criminalizing Economic Inequality”
This workshop, the fourth meeting of ClassCrits, takes as its theme the criminalization of economic inequality. The dominance of “free market” economic theory and policy has been accompanied in the U.S. by increasing reliance on the criminal justice system to make and enforce economic policy. The criminal justice system is increasingly used to control persons and groups whose participation in formal markets is marginal at best. Many aspects of traditional immigration law have morphed into “crimmigration”, appropriating domestic criminal law enforcement tools and redefining whole communities of workers and their families as “illegal people.” States and municipalities have criminalized the lives of homeless people, including those who are mentally ill.
International markets in heroin, cocaine, and marijuana are the targets of a “war on drugs” fought through criminal justice (and military) methods. Criminal law is used to deter and punish sex trafficking, and the criminal justice system buttresses, or substitutes for, welfare policy. At the same time, corporate wrongdoing has been lightly punished, if at all, and the drumbeat against “government” as the enemy of the people continues unabated. In this sense, economic inequality has not been “criminalized” at all. Quite the opposite, powerful interests encourage American citizens to see economic inequality as natural and good. Criminalizing Economic Inequality will provide an opportunity for legal scholars, economists, policymakers, activists, and others to critically examine the relationship between state power and market power in upward redistribution and the continued spread of laissez-faire ideology.
Proposals are due May 6th to classcrits@gmail.com. Anyone familiar with the work of Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi will find much of interest here. I hope to attend the conference and get more involved in this important group. One need only compare the treatment of one loan applicant and the total lack of prosecutions of top financial executives to see the enduring relevance of the conference themes.
April 15, 2011 at 1:13 pm
Posted in: Civil Rights, Conferences, Current Events, Financial Institutions
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Responses (3)
Associate - April 15, 2011 at 3:01 pm
Most adherents of “laissez-faire ideology” favor decriminalizing drugs and ending militaristic policing.
Frank - April 15, 2011 at 4:11 pm
Associate, I do agree that Radley Balko (and others listed here: http://balkin.blogspot.com/2011/02/reducing-mass-incarceration-its-not.html ) have developed a libertarian critique of (and activism against) penal excess.
However, I also think that it is largely left-leaning politicians in the US (like Jim Webb) who’ve tried to improve things politically…and who reap lots of political flack from a “tough on crime” right.
Admittedly, at this point, the two parties are so close together on war/crime issues that the Joe Arpaio route to electoral success may be just as plausible for Dems as for Republicans.
Martha McCluskey - April 18, 2011 at 2:02 pm
Certainly there are some interesting convergences between right and left thinking on criminal law and policy. Nonetheless, proponents of free-market economics have often also been in the forefront of campaigns to criminalize the poor or workers — I’m thinking of the rhetoric and law reforms focusing on punishing “welfare fraud” and “workers’ compensation fraud”. One problem is that professed libertarians like Richard Esptein back strong government power to crack down on “fraud”, as consistent with or necessary to a laissez-faire vision. But then that view of “fraud” allows for plenty of ideological bias and double standards — the self-dealing deceptive actions of financial industry executives or in corporate tax evasion can seem like productive innovation, not theft. Further, the prevailing free market theory (pre-crisis at least) that corporate fraud is self-correcting and so need not be addressed by government seems not to have applied equally to non-rich human beings engaged in similar actions.
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