The Development of State Theory in the Sociology of Punishment.

This paper examines the development of state theory in the sociology of punishment and its implications for research. Recently, scholars have turned their attention towards the role of politics, particularly contentious racial politics, and the retrenchment of social welfare as a way to explain how and why America has come to rely heavily on mass incarceration. Despite the common focus on political factors, scholars have used wide ranging, inconsistent, and sometimes outdated views of the state and political institutions, leading to some questionable findings. The state has been presented as a black box, a mere reflection of already existing social relations, an instrument of class control, a mode of repression or management. Instead, I suggest we conceptualize the state as a set of mutual obligations between rulers and ruled. It is a set of rules, institutions, and actors invested with authority and responsibility and maintains near control over legitimate forms of violence within a specified territory. The state is both an institution and an actor subject to and an agent of changing historical conditions. It is the dynamic interaction between the state and social groups in civil society that shapes, in part, not only punishment but the character and meaning of social order in a particular society. With this conceptualization, the paper integrates insights from the governance of crime literature and political sociology. By doing so, it hopes to contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of the state and its effects on punishment in the production and reproduction of social order. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]