Predation in State and Nation

AuthorBrandon R. Davis
Date01 April 2021
DOI10.1177/2153368718785229
Published date01 April 2021
Subject MatterArticles
RAJ785229 205..225 Article
Race and Justice
2021, Vol. 11(2) 205-225
Predation in State
ª The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/2153368718785229
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Brandon R. Davis1
Abstract
U.S. criminal justice policies have created the uniquely American style of mass
incarceration. Since 1973, America has seen a sustained and substantial rise in its
incarcerated population and the formation of a carceral state. Currently, the United
States imprisons 2.23 million people, which amounts to 23% of the world’s total
incarcerated population. The most important takeaway is that the carceral state is an
institution of predation, and predatory institutions create, maintain, and reproduce
difference through the use of violence. I argue that the racial state is the predatory
state, but the predatory state is not necessarily always the racial state. The predatory
state is different from the racial state in that is applies violence toward various
intersections of marginalization. This article contributes to the theoretical develop-
ment of the concept of predation by its machinations through the institution of
criminal justice. I discuss the predatory state, violence, and race. Next, I examine some
of the ideas surrounding the collective knowledge, memory, and guilt, as well as the
epistemologies, of race. Additionally, I discuss racial ignorance and selective knowing.
Lastly, I offer Ferguson and Baltimore as case studies in the relationship between
predation, identity, and violence as they affect criminal justice.
Keywords
critical race theory, criminological theories, mass incarceration, race and policing,
criminal profiling, race and policing, bias in the criminal justice system, race and
public opinion, African/Black Americans, race/ethnicity
There are various ways in which states relate to their citizens. We call these relation-
ships political regimes. There are communist, socialist, fascist, totalitarian, authoritar-
ian, partially democratic (oligarchic), (military) dictatorships, and monarchies to name
1 Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
Corresponding Author:
Brandon R. Davis, Brown University, Box 2005, 8 Fones Alley, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
Email: brandon_davis@brown.edu

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Race and Justice 11(2)
few. The state is the sovereign entity and the political regime is how it relates to the
polis. The power of the state to target and effectively decrease the quality of life and
political power of specific groups of individuals has been evident throughout history.
Racial and ethnic minorities and other undesirable groups (religious, nomadic, etc.)
have been the state’s primary targets (Mustard, 2003). In U.S history, the state has
supported the colonization and genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of
Africans, Jim Crow segregation, and discrimination against immigrants of various races
and ethnicities, including in contemporary history Hispanics and Muslims. The
American state has demonstrated time and time again its capacity and willingness to
target and apply violence toward marginalized groups.
Lowndes, Novkov, and Warren (2008) argue that “because of the nature of race—
its evolving and dynamic status as a structure of inequality, a political organizing
principle, an ideology, and a system of power—historical, institutional and discursive
modes of analysis are necessary to study it adequately” (p. 1). American political
development scholars have produced vigorous scholarship on the racial state. It is
argued to have developed amid liberalism’s awkward dance with race and has given
way to a fascination with racial identity, which reproduces political, social, and
economic exclusions (Goldberg, 2002). I argue that the racial state is the predatory
state but the predatory state is not necessarily always the racial state. The predatory
state is different from the racial state in that is applies violence toward various
marginalized groups. Systems of differentiation include race but also class, gender,
nationality, religion, and sexual orientation. In this article, I use the term predatory
state, in lieu of racial state, because predation is a means of social control which is and
has been applied toward various marginalized groups throughout history. The concept
of predation is rooted in power, and states exercise power as a means of producing
social control (Rosenbaum, 1986). Predation itself is a relationship and can only be
understood as such. Predation is not absolute. It is a systemic, discrete, and effective
social control apparatus that has been meticulously ingrained within the modern
liberal state, making its manifestations difficult to detect. Arendt (1970) aptly titles
this rule by Nobody. Nobody, she says, is the most tyrannical ruler because there is no
one person to be held accountable. Nobody rule is oppression without an oppressor. As
such, the predatory state is Nobody.
Under the predatory state, laws and institutions have emerged that aid in the
establishment and maintenance of unearned privilege. My central argument here is
that the predatory state exists and operates at all levels of government and through all
its institutions. In this article, I focus on the effect predation has as applied through the
institution of criminal justice. Crime and punishment are institutional outputs and
more importantly, punishment is not directly correlated with criminal activity.
McNeely and Pope (1981) find that race has a direct impact on the ecology of justice
and on the organizational characteristics of the institution of criminal justice. The
expansion of the criminal justice system represents an unprecedented expansion of
predaceous governmental power into the everyday lives of—some—Americans,
which produces severe adverse consequences for those individuals, their families, and
communities (Travis, Western, & Redburn, 2014; Western, 2006).

Davis
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The predaceous characteristics of the U.S. criminal justice system are not absolute,
but they are intersectional, as is evident in the classed, gendered, racial, spatial, and
generational concentration of mass incarceration (Travis et al., 2014). The level of
predation one is subject to varies with one’s intersectionality or social identity. There
are no social identities outside of the state. Social identities are maintained and pro-
duced by the state through interactions with institutions. Deviancy itself is a social
construction. It is assigned or incorporated within marginalized social identities. The
primary institution utilized for managing deviant social constructions has been
criminal justice, the primary tool utilized is violence, and the primary targets have
been racial and ethnic minorities. This situates racial identities within the predatory
state (as opposed to the contract state), which simultaneously creates and recreates
epistemologies of race that support the usage of violence, justifying marginalization.
In this article, I discuss the dual state and the relationship between predation, race, and
violence, as they impact the application of criminal justice. I examine how ideas
surrounding collective knowledge, memory and guilt, and epistemologies of race are
key to the maintenance of the predatory state. Next, I discuss how racial ignorance and
selective knowing perpetuate racial control. Lastly, I offer Ferguson and Baltimore as
case studies of predaceous relationships.
The Dual State
The state is defined as an organization that can “inflict sanctions without risk of
disavowal and can disavow sanctions by others” (De Jasay, 1985, p. 76). The state is a
community that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. No state uses
violence alone to maintain social order nor enjoys perfect legitimacy because legiti-
macy is not an attribute of a nation but a state of mind of its people. J. S. Mills (1859)
wrote that there is a circle around every individual that government in any form should
not infringe upon. He believed that there is a time in a person’s life when their
individuality ought to operate uninhibited. Rouseeau (1971) argued that we have
chosen to place ourselves under a state to protect our life, property, and to escape
instability. He believed this worked collectively in the common interest of all citizens.
For this purpose, in a contract state, such as the United States, all citizens are subject to
the rule of law. The Supremacy Clause in the U.S. Constitution states the “ . . . United
States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be
bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the contrary
notwithstanding.” The rule of law protects citizens from the illegitimate use of vio-
lence. There is nothing that more clearly distinguishes a contract society from a
noncontract society than the rule of law. This is important because the state has a
monopoly on violence, and in a contract society, the use of violence presupposes the
rule of law, due process, and formal equality. Thus, the primary function of the
government is to protect civil liberties and civil rights, and the use of violence is
legitimate only if it is based on an approved set of principles endorsed by the polis
(Tomasi, 2012). This is how a just society, a contract state, manages the equitable
distribution of justice.

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Race and Justice 11(2)
This is not to say that the classical liberal tradition surrounding the development of
the modern liberal state is without fault in the formation of the predatory state. West
(2002) argues that the...

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