Towards abolitionism

Scheerer, Sébastian

doi:10.1007/bf00728493

Cited by 17 publications

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“…In the 1980s, the “unfinished” was still seen as an acceptable temporary answer: interpreted as a “sensitizing theory” allowing the formulation of “new kinds of questions,” abolitionism could still, Scheerer (1986: 10) argued, postpone confronting the problem of “the dangerous few.” In the 1990s and 2000s, abolitionists intimated more strongly that the movement would lack traction so long as it has difficulty radically problematizing penal responses to exceptional violence (Bianchi, 2007; de Haan, 1992; Scheerer, 2007). Although the problem of “the dangerous few” is still oftentimes bypassed in the abolitionist literature (Carrier and Piché, 2015b; Parkes, 2022), penal abolitionists do confront it by a dual rhetorical strategy: criminalization and penalization are constructed as failing instruments to produce safety, and as destructive responses expanding and compounding violence (e.g.…”

Section: Abolitionism(s) and “The Dangerous Few”mentioning

confidence: 99%

Monstrosity, correctional healing, and the limits of penal abolitionism

Carrier

2022

Crime, Media, Culture

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Despite gaining significant cultural and academic currency, penal abolitionism remains unable to radically problematize the punishment of individuals found responsible of exceptionally disturbing acts of criminalized violence. Through an empirical examination of a recent Canadian controversy over penal governance articulated to the transfer of a “monster” to a correctional healing lodge, the article makes legible our difficulties in communicating about appropriate responses to exceptional criminalized incidents which would forgo the use of afflictive sanctions as retaliatory harms. Engaging penal abolitionism empirically, theoretically and normatively, the article notably suggests that the limits of penal abolitionism can be explicated by the fact that its critique is premised on an instrumentalist conception of penalty which neglects the communicational function of punishment.

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Section: Abolitionism(s) and “The Dangerous Few”mentioning

confidence: 99%

Monstrosity, correctional healing, and the limits of penal abolitionism

Carrier

2022

Crime, Media, Culture

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“…[...]Em um trecho provocativo sobre as vitórias abolicionistas do passado, o criminologista alemão Sebastian Scheerer lembra-nos que "nunca houve uma transformação social significante na história que não tenha sido considerada irreal, estúpida ou utópica pela grande maioria dos especialistas, mesmo antes do impensável se tornar realidade" 66 Isso é algo também argumentado por Zizek 67 (2015), sobre o deslocamento da ideia de impossível. Por isso, pega-se o fio do raciocínio dele para acender algumas questões: "a própria ideia de transformação social radical parece um sonho impossível; contudo, a palavra "impossível" deveria nos fazer parar para pensar" 68 .…”

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