Although carceral expansion in the United States’ neoliberal age appears paradoxical at first glance, building on Loïc Wacquant, this paper highlights that the Reagan and Clinton administrations instrumentalized punitive criminal justice to evoke a (racialized) sense of security in light of the social insecurity their neoliberal policies had created (neoliberal punitive turn). The paper then analyzes the TV series The Wire’s negotiation of the interlocking effects of neoliberalism and the “War on Drugs”; the show maintains that neoliberalism has fuelled the drug trade and other crime, while the “War on Drugs” has reproduced the very social conditions it was implemented to combat. Finally, the paper argues that the neoliberal punitive turn’s paradoxicality indeed resides in the affective regimes it has conjured, which position corporations as persons deserving of public aid (read: empathy), while the poor (of Color) are dehumanized and not only denied empathy, but even punished for their poverty
