This book considers how neoliberal criminal law constructs racialised ‘hypercriminals’.

In a world of fake news and virtual reality, where social media posts seem more real than the materiality of racial capitalism, this book develops the idea of ‘hypercriminality’, as a means of explaining how racial disproportionalities in the criminal legal system persist, despite discourses of a post-racial meritocracy. Drawing on critical race theory, the work of Judith Butler, and Jean Baudrillard’s conception of the hyperreal, the book considers how neoliberal legal discourse constructs and reproduces hyperreal racialised legal subjects. The simulated violent figure of the racialised gang member, rioter, drug dealer, or sexual predator is made to appear ‘real’ through legal and evidential concepts such as dangerousness or bad character. The belief that this simulation is real is deployed to justify the carceral state and masks the structural, and racialised, violence of capitalism itself. Revealing the ‘hypercriminality’ of racialised legal subjects, the book thus offers a timely critical legal intervention that aims to advance the urgent project of decarceration, abolition, and transformative justice.

The book will appeal to scholars and students working in the areas of criminal law and evidence, criminology, criminal justice, socio-legal studies, and critical race theory.

Sarah Corbett-Batson is an Associate Professor at The University of Law, London, and a criminal defence barrister at One Pump Court.