Series Editor’s Preface

The Clarendon Studies in Criminology series aims to provide a forum for outstanding theoretical and empirical work in all aspects of criminology and criminal justice, broadly understood. The Editors welcome submissions from established scholars, as well as manuscripts based on excellent PhD dissertations. The Series was inaugurated in 1994, with Roger Hood as its first General Editor, following discussions between Oxford University Press and Oxford’s then Centre for Criminological Research. It is edited under the auspices of three centres: the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford, the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge, and the Mannheim Centre for Criminology at the London School of Economics. Each supplies members of the Editorial Board and, in turn, the Series General Editor or Editors. In Drugs, Race, and the Politics of Modern Slavery Law: When Enemies Become Victims, Insa Lee Koch provides an authoritative contribution to the literature on modern slavery, drug trafficking and the making of post-colonial statecraft. Drawing on five years of multi-nodal and multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork and situating the analysis within critical social and decolonial theory, she demonstrates that while the concept of and legislative response to modern slavery can provide victims of exploitation with a defence for drug offending, it also allows for harsher punishments for those accused of human trafficking. This clear and compelling monograph lays bare the narratives of young men at risk of involvement in the trade in illicit drugs, as well as those of their families. It reveals powerful and often poignant accounts that challenge the claim that we are witnessing a shift from enemies to slaves. Immersing herself in the ‘Park End’ community and working closely with the mothers, sisters, aunts of the young men who live spread out across the country, Koch’s empathy comes to the fore in the voices of the women she spent time with, and who are too often blamed for their children’s criminal activities. In sharing their experiences, motivations, and perspectives, Koch not only seeks to understand their stories but to advocate for them. Koch’s further empirical work on statecraft and precedent making explores multiple layers and competing discourses and practices among frontline workers and the courts; all, she finds, in different ways, engaging in racial statecraft. State actors, she stresses, fail to see in contemporary framing exploitative colonial pasts that resurrect the image of the slave master in the body of racialized and working-class youth as the ultimate ‘enemy within’. So too may they fail to be mindful of the constants of inequality, austerity, and racism that can militate against perceptions of vulnerability of certain young men. Indeed, even those within the system who seek to help young people, such as defence lawyers, can inadvertently entrench these enemy logics. At a time when the state aims to present the benevolent narrative of saving vulnerable young people, it has, Koch argues, resurrected a colonial logic of redemption constructing racialized and working-class youth as in need of saving. While rich in empirical data, this multi-sited ethnography does not fail in its contribution to legal and interdisciplinary scholarship. It reveals much about the risks of policing and punishing along bifurcated lines, with some seen as victims, others as traffickers, ‘enemies’ within the war on gangs, exposing approaches that reproduce punitive logics at the expense of the most marginalized populations. We are delighted to welcome this new addition to the Clarendon Studies in Criminology. Mary Bosworth and Carolyn Hoyle General Editors Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford September 2025