Judicialization of Social Problems and Governance of Security in Comparative Perspectives

The judicialization of social problems and the governance of security has changed substantially in the last decades, both by harshening criminal punishment and by widening the scope of penalization processes. Traditionally, democratic societies tend to manage problematic conflicts and “dangerous” populations through legal institutions anchored in the following liberal triad: legal rules, balanced rights, and sanctions, being them mostly associated to criminal law and trials. While criminalization is still the primary face of social control, an increasing number of scholars are pointing to a variety of forms and processes of judicialization and penalization, either within criminal law regimes or relying on administrative, civil, regulatory and even hybrid legal regimes.

This session is part of the activities of the RCSL Working Group “Judicialization of Social Problems”. We welcome empirical studies, qualitative or quantitative, on the routines and practices of various legal institutions contributing to the judicialization of social problems and the governance of security. Themes may include, but are not limited to, criminalization processes, other forms of judicialization (regulatory, immigration, civil, hybrid regimes, etc.), access to justice in criminal and administrative regimes, multijurisdictional governance or social control, legal pluralistic forms of conflict resolution, and judicial aspects of policing and governmental agencies. By putting different papers about multiple contexts and jurisdictions into conversation, we hope to illuminate how law and legal regimes (State-based or not) are mobilized to govern security and social problems, the dynamics of access to justice, and the forms of resistance related to new security projects.