Punitive State

the war machine of neoliberal penality

Abstract

This is a theoretical study on the construction of neoliberal penality through a belligerent criminal policy. Here, the initial intent is to explicitate a belligerent and authoritarian punitive recrudescence, based on an interlocution with the theoretical-methodological framework of Brazilian critical criminology. At the same time, grounded in a materialist perspective, this study also undertakes an economic analysis, presenting the correlation between war-like penal control and neoliberalism. The hypothesis is that the State, in its exercise of maintaining public order, succumbs to economic demands that now combine with symbolic and authoritarian agendas, transforming social control into an apparatus of internal warfare. In this sense, the article also seeks to assess the extent to which Brazilian criminal policy adheres to a certain 'neoliberal rationality' and what this represents in terms of the persistence and contemporary relevance of this economic approach in current punitive practices.