Bestrafung, Entpolitisierung, rassistische Einordnung

In the USA Blacks are overrepresented in prisons, in the European Union we have the same phenomenon with immigrants from postcolonial states and certain ethnic groups. In both cases the overincarceration is not caused by a special propensity to criminal acts of these groups, but by a certain neoliberal strategy to react with the penal system against urban poverty. In the case of the EU it is also a ritual response to processes of immigration, producing boundaries, which allow to confirm a European citizenship. The further result of this strategy is depoliticization of social and political problems as well as a certain racialization.