Renouncing criminal citizens:Patterns of denationalization and citizenship theory

This article examines the underlying aims of denationalization of criminal offenders by framing the discussion within citizenship theory. It argues that such citizenship revocation policies exclude individuals who are perceived as non-ideal citizens under a complex vision of citizenship that combines communitarian and liberal undertones, which has significant consequences for detecting those with weak claims to membership. To develop this argument, the article advances in the following way. I first argue that the ‘protective’ function of citizenship, which has so far shielded domestic offenders from expulsion, has been eroding due to increasing reliance on denationalization. I then show, by employing an original study of European policies, that the ‘protective’ function of citizenship is eroding not only in general terms, but that it furthermore targets citizens of a particular profile that is continuously changing. Finally, I argue that recent revocation policies that are premised on security concerns, promote a complex vision of citizenship that combines elements of communitarian and liberal conceptions of belonging and works to exclude citizens of foreign descent who, at the same time, repudiate liberal values. Consequently, the status of the criminal rather than non-citizen, gains prominence in determining those at risk of exclusion from the polity

Crime that 'withered away'? Democratic backsliding and non-punitive populism

The article explores the relationship between democratic backsliding and governance of crime. By focusing on Serbia, which began to democratize in 2000 but started to backslide already in 2012, the article argues that governance of crime has been largely insulated from the damaging impact of the overall process of democratic decline and has been characterized by mostly moderate and inert penal tendencies. While the autocratic inclinations of the political regime have grown substantively in the last decade, crime has lost salience as a tool for political manipulation: the article proposes that this was mostly owing to an overarching political elite’s narrative that depicts Serbia as a successful and well-governed country, in which (most) crime has ‘withered away’. The article concludes by calling for research that better grasps the specificities of various forms of backsliding to understand the role of penality within them and by assessing the coherence of this finding with some of the key ideas developed within the punishment and society literature