Off-the-Cuff Law-Making: Policing Pandemic Dispossession in Spain

Jiménez-Franco, Daniel (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Aguerri, Jesús C. (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Forero-Cuéllar, Alejandro

Resumen: This article presents a discussion concerning the role of police rationale(s) in Spain within the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, where exceptionalist strategies aimed at curtailing the spread of the virus came to dramatically strengthen existing social divisions. In line with some authors who have already approached this phenomenon from different disciplines, our premise is that most serious emergencies boosted by Covid-19 were not a mere matter of public health, but rather a particularly harmful expression of accumulation by dispossession. Thus, rather than a flaw in the system produced by an exceptional friction between public security and public health, securitarian performances deployed by neoliberal states can be read as symbiotic strategies, from both law and order and business as usual approaches, to manage the social “externalities” of capitalist predatory strategies. As we will argue, phenomena such as the reinforcement of the policing consensus, police production of law, or the authoritarian turn favored by the Covid-19 health crisis must all be analyzed in this context.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.1007/s10612-023-09702-y

Año: 2023

Publicado en: Critical criminology 31, 2 (2023), 363-378
ISSN: 1205-8629

Factor impacto JCR: 1.4 (2023)

Categ. JCR: CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY rank: 51 / 113 = 0.451 (2023) - Q2 - T2

Factor impacto CITESCORE: 3.3 - Law (Q1) - Sociology and Political Science (Q1)

Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 0.422 - Law (Q1) - Sociology and Political Science (Q2)

Tipo y forma: Article (Published version)

Área (Departamento): Área Trabajo Social y Serv.Soc (Dpto. Psicología y Sociología)