Shifting Sands: The reconfiguration of neoliberal youth penality

Gray, Patricia; Smith, Roger

doi:10.1177/1362480619872262

Shifting Sands: The reconfiguration of neoliberal youth penality

Gray, Patricia; Smith, Roger

Authors

Patricia Gray

Professor Roger Smith roger.smith@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

This article begins by tracing the emergence of ‘therapeutic surveillance’ as a new formula for neoliberal disciplinary power. It maps and interrogates the reconfiguration of a hybrid array of neoliberal rationalities and technologies for the penal governance of young people who offend. It then engages with the challenges posed by critical realists to the governmentality position by questioning how human agency can contest, subvert and resist the dystopian reach of ‘therapeutic surveillance’ in action. While ‘therapeutic surveillance’ is steeped in a disciplinary logic of individualization and responsibilization, we argue that it also opens the space for a more transformative youth penality to be articulated; one which challenges the constraints of structural disadvantage in the pursuit of social justice. The article concludes by arguing that newly emerging youth justice configurations which have appeared in response to dramatic cuts in public spending offer a plausible or transformative challenge to the regulatory logic of neoliberal youth penality.

Citation

Gray, P., & Smith, R. (2021). Shifting Sands: The reconfiguration of neoliberal youth penality. Theoretical Criminology, 25(2), 304-324. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480619872262

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Jul 2, 2019
Online Publication Date	Sep 18, 2019
Publication Date	May 1, 2021
Deposit Date	Sep 4, 2019
Publicly Available Date	Sep 20, 2019
Journal	Theoretical Criminology
Print ISSN	1362-4806
Electronic ISSN	1461-7439
Publisher	SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	25
Issue	2
Pages	304-324
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480619872262

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).