Managerialist penal discourse and social exclusion

Abstract

The managerial penal ideology advocates a rationalization of the governance of the penal system, which should ensure its effectiveness and efficiency in preventing the risks of offenses. To do this, it promotes strategies aimed at identifying particularly dangerous categories of individuals (using actuarial tools, on a statistical basis) and neutralizing, through the action of the penal system, those risks. This conception of the penal system as an instrument for the massive management of criminal risks is subject to numerous objections, both moral and methodological. But there’s no doubt that the bitterest criticism that can be made of managerial discourse is the fact that it often appears combined with classism. This combination tends to focus the prevention of criminal risks mainly on the phenomena of social deviation of the underclass, in a very discriminatory way.