Harcourt argues that the way we think about markets has distorted the way we think about criminal justice, to the detriment of both spheres. He calls to task the conceptualization of market exchange as “free" and “natural," an idea he traces back to the 18th-century French Physiocrats, and finds reinforced in modern neoliberal theory. This “illusion" continues to contribute to the expansion of American penality, as those who bypass the natural order of the market system are subject to policing and punishment by a government whose primary purpose is to protect the unfettered operation of capitalism.
Author(s): Bernard E. Harcourt
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Year: 2011
Language: English
Pages: 336
City: Cambridge, Mass
Copyright
Contents
The Paris Marais and the Chicago Board of Trade
1 Beccaria on Crime and Punishment
Beccaria, the Philosophe
Beccaria, the Rational Action Theorist
Beccaria, the Cameralist
2 Policing the Public Economy
Beccaria’s Elements of Public Economy
“Of Police”
Eighteenth-Century Police des Grains
Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments
Beccaria, the Disciplinarian
3 The Birth of Natural Order
Adam Smith’s Reading of Quesnay
The Doctor and the Tutor
Marx’s Reading of Quesnay
The Natural Law Reading of Quesnay
The Rule of Nature
4 The Rise of Legal Despotism
The Unitary Executive
Le Mercier, Intendant of Martinique
Natural Order and Inequality
5 Bentham’s Strange Alchemy
Jeremy Bentham on Punishment and Political Economy
Readings of Adam Smith
Bentham’s Reading of Smith
Readings of Bentham
A Final Word
6 The Chicago School
Ronald Coase on Welfare Economics
The Rebirth of Natural Order
Converging on Coase
Hayek and the Road to Spontaneous Order
Hayek and the Chicago School of Economics
The Benthamite Tradition
Becker on Crime and Punishment
The Lawyer Defines Crime
The Efficiency of the Market
Contesting the Competitiveness of the Market
Efficiency and Natural Order
The Birth of Neoliberal Penality
Readings, Appropriations, and Self-Presentation
7 The Myth of Discipline
Fantastic Disciplinary Inventions
Revisiting the Police des Grains
The Y-9498 and Y-9499 Cartons
Rereading the Tracts
8 The Illusion of Freedom
Revisiting Le Mercier’s Intendance in Martinique
The Genesis of the Chicago Board of Trade
Regulating Price and Entry
Regulating Trading Hours
Regulating Options
Regulating Corners
Regulating “Bucket Shops”
Futures Trading and Redistribution
Reexamining Contemporary Exchanges
9 The Penitentiary System and Mass Incarceration
Naturalizing Wealth Distributions
An Archeology of Regulation
The Expansion of the Penal Sphere
The Condition of Possibility
The Market Revolution and the Birth of the Penitentiary
The Market Revolution
Andrew Jackson and the Second Bank
The Birth of the Penitentiary
Growth of the Penal Sphere during the Market Revolution
10 Private Prisons, Drugs, and the Welfare State
The Crime and Punishment Nexus
Western Europe and Comparative Penality
The Question of Illicit Drugs
Privatization of Prisons
A Prolegomenon
Note
The Paris Marais and the Chicago Board of Trade
1. Beccaria on Crime and Punishment
2. Policing the Public Economy
3. The Birth of Natural Order
4. The Rise of Legal Despotism
5. Bentham’s Strange Alchemy
6. The Chicago School
7. The Myth of Discipline
8. The Illusion of Freedom
9. The Penitentiary System and Mass Incarceration
10. Private Prisons, Drugs, and the Welfare State
A Prolegomenon
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
