Alessandro De Giorgi – Re-thinking the Political Economy of Punishment (2006)

Re-thinking the Political Economy of PunishmentThe imposition of a penalty in response to an offense or crime, intended to deter, reform, or incapacitate. (2006) by Alessandro De Giorgi is a key work of 21st-century critical criminology. Building on the ideas of Karl Marx, Rusche & Kirchheimer, and Michel Foucault, De Giorgi analyzes the transformation of punishment in the age of neoliberalism. His core thesis is that penal policy increasingly serves the exclusion of “surplus” populations—especially precarious workers, the unemployed, and migrants. He formulates a theoretically grounded critique of both functionalist and economically reductive punishment models, linking this critique to an analysis of emerging control regimes in Western democracies.

Social Context and Theoretical Framework

The book was written in the context of rising incarceration rates in the United States, global neoliberal restructuring of welfare states, and a repressive turn in migration policy. De Giorgi uses these developments as a springboard to revisit the classical approach of Georg Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer’s Punishment and Social Structure (1939), reinterpreting and adapting it for contemporary conditions.

While Rusche & Kirchheimer viewed penal policy as an expression of the prevailing mode of production, De Giorgi emphasizes that the relationship between punishment and the economy has fundamentally changed in the transition to post-Fordism. Integration is no longer the focus—exclusion is. De Giorgi blends Marxist categories with Foucault’s analytics of power and governmentality, especially in his analysis of new forms of „punitive exclusion.“

Incarceration Rates in the U.S. (1940–2010)

The incarceration rate—measured as the number of prisoners per 100,000 people—is a key indicator of a country’s punitive tendencies. At the time of De Giorgi’s publication in 2006, the U.S. incarceration rate had reached a historic high of 752. In comparison, Germany’s rate in the same year was only 93 (see World PrisonA prison is a secure institution where individuals are confined by the state as a form of punishment, pretrial detention, or social control. Brief).

These figures powerfully illustrate the global shift in penal policy and support De Giorgi’s thesis of the prison as a system for “managing surplus bodies.”

Core Arguments

One of De Giorgi’s central arguments is that punishment in neoliberalism increasingly serves as a tool for the management of surplus bodies. In a labor market that no longer guarantees full employment, the prison loses its classical disciplinary function. Instead, it becomes a space of containment and visibility for social exclusion—especially for groups that are neither economically useful nor politically represented.

At the same time, De Giorgi critiques a narrow political economy of punishment that explains penal policy solely in terms of labor market demands. He calls for a power-analytic expansion: punishment is not only economically functional but also symbolically charged and politically motivated. Neoliberal penal policy operates through discourses of security, criminality, and illegality—producing exclusions that it simultaneously legitimizes.

He places particular emphasis on the criminalization of migration. Immigration detention, border policing, and the construction of the “illegal other” are central elements of a new penal economy in which control, not integration, is key. MigrationThe movement of people from one country or region to another for residence, work, or protection. is no longer framed as a social issue but as a security risk—with harsh repressive consequences.

With this approach, De Giorgi distances himself from David Garland’s normative integration model and from Jonathan Simon’s concept of “governing through crime,” which emphasizes the political use of fear and criminality. Instead, De Giorgi focuses on the material exclusionary mechanisms of neoliberal penal regimes.

De Giorgi thus provides a theoretically rich analysis of the neoliberal turn in criminal justice—one that builds on classical MarxismA socio-economic theory that analyzes class struggle, capitalism, and historical materialism as drivers of social change., Foucault, Garland, and Wacquant, while also opening new empirical fields such as border politics, urban governance, and global security policy.

Key Points

Reception and Critique

Re-thinking the Political Economy of Punishment was widely received in Anglo-American criminology. It is considered a major contribution to the renewal of Marxist theories of crime and a bridge between classical thinkers (like Rusche & Kirchheimer) and contemporary voices (like Loïc Wacquant and Jonathan Simon).

Commentators have praised De Giorgi’s ability to synthesize complex theoretical approaches and apply them to empirical contexts. Some critics, however, note that he only hints at concrete alternatives to current penal policy. Nonetheless, the book is regarded as a key text for understanding neoliberal penal regimes and as foundational for critical migration and security studies—especially regarding processes of so-called crimmigration. This refers to the increasing overlap of immigration and criminal law, where migration is criminalized and subjected to punitive measures such as detention, surveillance of immigration status, and prosecution of undocumented presence.

References

• De Giorgi, A. (2006). Re-thinking the Political Economy of Punishment: Perspectives on Post-Fordism and Penal Politics. Aldershot: Ashgate.
• Rusche, G. & Kirchheimer, O. (1939). Punishment and Social Structure. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Wacquant, L. (2009). Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham: Duke University Press.
• Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and Punish. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.
• World Prison Brief (n.d.). Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research. https://www.prisonstudies.org/