糖心网页版

The point of departure for this blog is the apparent frequency of criminalization strategies in early government responses to the Corona virus. While much attention has been given to the of global health responses 鈥� also in the of Corona 鈥� less systematic focus has been given to the partial criminalization of infectious diseases as a strategy of global health governance.

As the scope of the Corona outbreak is broadening, the number of countries deploying criminalization measures is also rapidly increasing.

has introduced harsh regulations to deal with the Corona virus, including 鈥榤edical-related crimes鈥� involving harassment and violence against medical personnel, refusal to submit to quarantine and obstructing dead body management. have criminalized the breach of travel restrictions and misleading authorities or spreading false rumours. plans sentencing the violation of quarantines. will flog or jail people who spread false rumours. A prankster is facing jail-time for Corona 鈥榟ooliganism鈥�. In the US, prospective quarantine violators from the infamous Diamond Princess were facing fines or jail time.

Beyond governments鈥� need to be seen doing something in the face of public panic across the Global East and the Global North, how should we think about this propensity to reach for penal measures?

disease and whom we blame are highly symptomatic of who we are and how we organize our relations with others, in particular the practices and life forms of marginalized elements of society. This will also likely be the legacy of Corona. Moreover, current global health responses to infectious diseases remain bound up with both colonial-era and historical command-and control trajectories of response and needs to be understood in context.

Three categories of criminalization

In this blog, I map out three categories of criminalization. My assumption is that the Corona response will likely involve all three in some form or other. I take the broad conceptualizations of criminalization in circulation in legal, policy and media discourse as the starting point: this includes criminal law sanctions and administrative and disciplinary sanctions as well as popular perceptions of the uses of penal power and social 鈥榗riminalization-talk鈥�. The idea is that criminalization can be understood as a strategic tool with multiple constitutive uses in the global health field.

In the following, I outline three different things that criminalization 鈥榙oes鈥� in the global health field, which may serve as a resource for thinking about how criminalization will shape approaches to the Corona virus.

First, I am interested in the direct and indirect criminalization of health care delivery through the criminalization of individuals infected with or suspected of being infected with specific infectious diseases. The problem with this approach is that it risks aggravating humanitarian suffering because it is either premised on criminalizing the practices and attributes of groups that are already in a marginal position, or that with infection, patients immediately become socially or economically 鈥榤arginalized鈥� which allows for criminal interventions.

This category of criminalization covers transmission, exposure, interaction with 鈥榲ulnerable groups鈥� (such as children), failure to disclose or simply physical movement. It relies significantly on the mobilization of othering and of metaphors of fear. The global health response may also be undermined through the de facto criminalization of individuals by way of the use of compulsory health powers such as surveillance, contact tracing, compulsory examination and treatment, regulation of public meeting places, quarantines and forced isolation of individuals.

These regimes might be so repressive as to have severe humanitarian impact on the populations concerned. Human suffering here does not emanate from the inability to offer health care but from the human rights violations arising from how fear and stigma fuel criminalization of 鈥榲ulnerable/deviant /threat groups (such as drug users, those with precarious migration status, sex workers and the LGBTI population) and how criminalization in turn produces further deviance and marginalization. of early phases of epidemics is that certain groups are singled out as risky and characterized as dangerous, allowing for repressive public health interventions.

Notably, in the context of HIV/AIDS, criminalization, and quarantine and individual responsibility for disclosure have been considered as key tools to halt or limit transmission, despite innovations in treatment that radically transform the nature and lethality of HIV/AIDS. Globally, prosecutions for non鈥恉isclosure, exposure or transmission of HIV frequently relate to sexual activity, biting, or spitting. At least 68 countries have laws that specifically criminalize HIV non鈥恉isclosure, exposure, or transmission. are known to have applied other criminal law provisions in similar cases.At the same time, fear of harassment, arrest and detention may deter people from using health services. A 鈥榙eviant鈥� social status combined with health status may lead to discrimination and ill-treatment by health care providers. Criminalization is linked to high levels of harassment and violence, reported by lesbian, gay, transgender people and sex workers around the world (see and ).

For the fast-moving but relatively low-mortality Corona-virus, these lessons indicate that a marginalized social status can contribute to exacerbating transmission and constitute a barrier to adequate health care, potentially increasing mortality.

Secondly, criminalization and repressive public health measures and discriminatory barriers are also a complicating factor during emergencies caused by other factors. As seen in the context of Ebola, general violence as well as violence against health care workers efforts to end outbreaks.

Humanitarian emergencies confront public health systems with often overwhelming challenges. In the midst of this, criminalization of individuals who are infected or perceived as risky or dangerous further compromises the ability to address preexisting epidemics and hamper transmission, thus exacerbating the impact of the overall impact of the crisis.

Third, in situations when the disease itself is the emergency, criminalization and the attendant practice of quarantines directly hampers efforts. , quarantines have been used for a wide range of diseases including venereal disease, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, leprosy and cholera. Quarantines are co-constructed through the longstanding tradition of framing infectious disease through criminalization, whereby stigma, medicalization and incarceration have worked together to produce colonial bodies construed as racial and sexual threats to national security (see and ).

Quarantine was a widely employed tool against Ebola in Sierra Leone and Liberia. As noted by commentators, according to the logic underlying quarantines 鈥樷��. While resistance becomes a proof of deviance and of the necessity of segregation, in the case of Ebola, quarantines may compel fearful communities to suspected cases.

In the contemporary context, with an international human rights framework on health suggesting that rights-based approaches to disease prevention and mitigation should be foregrounded, between criminalization-oriented public health measures and fundamental rights and liberties are likely to proliferate, as illustrated by the US government鈥檚 budding 鈥樷��.

This blog has provided an initial map of how criminalization may shape the Corona response. In sum, when criminalization is pegged directly onto suffering human bodies, criminalization hinders global health interventions in three ways. Criminalization might be so repressive that it has severe health-related impacts on the populations concerned. Criminalization also undermines and exacerbates challenges already faced by the public health infrastructure during an emergency. Finally, the repercussions of criminalization are most impactful in situations when the disease itself is the humanitarian crisis and where criminalization directly hampers efforts to contain and mitigate epidemics.

• This post was first published at the , 1 March 2020.
• Kristin Bergtora Sandvik (S.J.D Harvard Law School 2008) is a professor of legal sociology at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo and a Research Professor in Humanitarian Studies at 糖心网页版. Her work focuses on refugee governance, technology, innovation and criminalization in emergencies. Her most recent publications deal with humanitarian wearables and digital dead body management in aid.