The Hidden Arm of the Law

Examining Administrative Justice in Gun Carry Licensing

Bibliographic Data

ID4085489
AuthorsJennifer Carlson (0009-0003-6668-8565)
Year2017
Volume51
Issue2
Pages346-378
Publication date2017-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLaw & Society Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0023-9216 • E-ISSN: 1540-5893
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/lasr.12263
OpenAlexW2613639077
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited57

Responding to calls to "decenter" American penality beyond the carceral apparatus, this article ethnographically examines administrative process and dissects how it interlocks with criminal justice. To do so, it draws on an admittedly unusual, but theoretically generative, case: administrative gun boards, charged with issuing, denying, revoking, and suspending licenses to conceal carry a firearm. While scholars have examined gun ownership and gun carrying as asocialpractice, less attention has been paid to gun licensing as astatepractice. Drawing on observations of over 900 cases from gun board meetings in two counties in Michigan, this paper examines how administrative processmimics,supplements, andfacilitatescriminal justice through three mechanisms: procedural pains, in which administrative process resembles criminal justice; parallel punishment, in which administrative process supplements criminal justice through withholding of benefits, entitlements or licenses; and valve-turning, in which administrative process funnels, or threatens to funnel, claimants into the criminal justice system. Revealing how administrative process and criminal justice become mutually reinforcing, the findings extend and integrate scholarship that shows the material, symbolic, and psychic implications of criminal justice contact, on the one hand, with the increased tendency of administrative contexts to resemble criminal justice institutions, on the other

Criminal justice · Criminology · Economic Justice · Law and economics · Political science · Punishment (psychology · Scholarship · Sociology · Theory of criminal justice · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Gun Ownership and Violence Research · Law · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Psychology

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