The Hidden Arm of the Law: Examining Administrative Justice in Gun Carry Licensing

Abstract

Responding to calls to “decenter” American penality beyond the carceral apparatus, this article ethnographically examines administrative process and dissects how it interlocks with criminal justice. To do so, it draws on an admittedly unusual, but theoretically generative, case: administrative gun boards, charged with issuing, denying, revoking, and suspending licenses to conceal carry a firearm. While scholars have examined gun ownership and gun carrying as a social practice, less attention has been paid to gun licensing as a state practice. Drawing on observations of over 900 cases from gun board meetings in two counties in Michigan, this paper examines how administrative process mimics, supplements, and facilitates criminal justice through three mechanisms: procedural pains, in which administrative process resembles criminal justice; parallel punishment, in which administrative process supplements criminal justice through withholding of benefits, entitlements or licenses; and valve‐turning, in which administrative process funnels, or threatens to funnel, claimants into the criminal justice system. Revealing how administrative process and criminal justice become mutually reinforcing, the findings extend and integrate scholarship that shows the material, symbolic, and psychic implications of criminal justice contact, on the one hand, with the increased tendency of administrative contexts to resemble criminal justice institutions, on the other.

Credentialing Decisions and Criminal Records: A Narrative Approach*

“…The precise legal structure of this decision‐making setting is specific to New York; although the EEOC guidelines contain many of the same factors, no other state currently has a law mirroring Article 23‐A's terms. Unique cases, however, can be “theoretically generative” (Carlson, : 346), and we strongly suspect this situation is not in fact unusual. Other states also use administrative law judges to review license‐denial appeals through individualized hearings, and at least seven states explicitly direct licensure agencies to consider evidence of rehabilitation in the decision process (Love, ).…”

“…As a result, two agencies—the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Executive Office for Immigration Review—“reach[ed] radically different decisions” (p. 523). As Carlson (: 352) detected in her study of the licensing process for carrying a concealed firearm in Michigan, administrative processes “can accommodate punitive sensibilities” while also enabling decision makers to “practice leniency … for those deemed worthy.” Similarly, the occupational licensure context presents a tension between punitive and rehabilitative goals. Restrictions designed to enhance public safety may lead to a more punitive stance toward people with criminal records, whereas a policy that enables applicants to submit evidence and contest denial decisions serves a reintegrative goal.…”

The Veil of Bureaucracy: How Officials Evade Partisan Politics in Participatory Settings

“…I extend this research by analyzing how firearm legislation is enacted at the local political level. Important work has emerged in this area, with attention to how gun laws are rendered through state processes (Carlson 2017), which materialize against the backdrop of public opinion, political ideology, and elections (Steidley 2018). I build on this research by examining how local legislative bodies negotiate firearm law at the intersection of politics, ideology, and identity.…”

Introduction: Judicialization of Social Problems and Governance of Security in Comparative Perspectives

“…While criminalization is still the primary face of social control, an increasing number of scholars have been pointing to a variety of forms and processes of judicialization and penalization, either within criminal law regimes (e.g. preventive justice, Ashworth and Zedner 2014) or relying on regulatory, administrative, civil, or hybrid legal regimes (Beckett and Herbert 2008, Leerkes and Broeders 2010, Velloso 2013a, Macaulay 2013, Spivakovsky 2014, Oliver and Urda 2015, Calatayud 2016, Persak 2016, Zedner 2016, Carlson 2017, Fortin 2018, Calatayud et al 2019, Brandariz 2021; among many others).…”