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The enemy on the border

Critique of a programme in favour of a preventive state

University of Hamburg, Germany

So-called enemy penology is the invention of a German professor of criminal law. In a Foucauldian perspective, however, it turns out not to be a singular phenomenon. Instead it is a programme asserting itself as a strategy for solving contemporary security problems; it also assumes its place among developments that should be seen in the national as well as in the international area of criminal justice and security policy. These developments provoke a transformation of the constitutional state, challenging its hitherto valid principles and rearranging the relation between violence and right. This transformation occurs surreptitiously, since the security strategies promoting it do not appear violent, but, instead, preventive. They are based on a demarcation making certain distinctions — like those between a threatening enemy and a population that has to be protected — possible and appear unambiguous. Enemy penology is exemplary of prevailing tendencies in security policies, going all the way to Guantánamo. In the following, these will be read in a Foucauldian perspective as a renaissance of sovereign power in the name of population management.

Key Words: bio-power • constitutional state • crime prevention • governmentality

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