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Governing through crime as commonsense racism

Race, space, and death penalty `reform' in Delaware

University of Delaware, USA

Kerry Dunn

University of Pennsylvania, USA

Ruth Fleury-Steiner

University of Delaware, USA

This article explores momentous changes to Delaware's death penalty statute in 1991, reforms that made it one of the USA's premier killing states. Reflecting on media coverage of a high profile crime and the legislative debates that led to the law change sheds light on how static conceptions of spaces (i.e. `the dangerous city') and persons (i.e. `non-white invaders from Philadelphia') reveal lawmakers' commonsense racism as inextricably bound to such momentous legislative action. By situating the decision in the context of the intense urgency to act set in motion by a high profile racially charged crime and a taken-for-granted compliance to an aggressive pro-death legal formalism, lawmakers appeared to act in a manner that was racially neutral. However and perhaps most strikingly, the debate lacked any dissenting voices of representatives from racially aggrieved communities long neglected by the state. Such a racially insensitive rush to appear `tough on crime' reveals how Delaware lawmakers acted according to a commonsense of racialized persons, places, and channels that enforced racial hierarchy (i.e. actions that hurt minorities and favor whites). More broadly, we argue that Haney-Lopez's (2003) theory of commonsense racism helps to clarify Simon's (2007) theory of governing through crime as it applies to the `toughening' of already punitive criminal laws at the state level, if not especially the death penalty.

Key Words: death penalty • law reform • political geography

Punishment & Society, Vol. 11, No. 1, 5-24 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1462474508098130


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