Kramer 44 Neoliberal states and ‘flexible penality’: Punitive practices in district courts Ronald Kramer Abstract Based on qualitative fieldwork conducted in the Auckland District Court, this article argues that contemporary modes of punishment under neoliberal governance are characterised by three inter-related trends: A tendency to expand the frontiers of criminality; the development of multiple juridical spaces, each accompanied by distinct forms of legal consciousness amongst professionals; and institutional practices informed by numerous logics of power. I use the term ‘flexible penality’ to summarise these worrying trends and close by considering alternatives to our growing dependence on criminal justice systems to manage the problems that accompany neoliberal regimes. Introduction The rise of neoliberalism has led to renewed interest in how broader social forces shape the nature of penal regimes (O’Malley, 1999a; Wacquant, 2010; Pratt & Eriksson, 2013). For some scholars, imprisonment rates constitute the most obvious manifestation of shifts in punishment and it is therefore not surprising that much recent scholarship has focused on the use of prison. However, prison is only one of the punitive sanctions utilised by criminal justice systems and constitutes an ‘end point’ for only a portion of those who are pushed through the institutions of criminal justice. This article explores the relationship between neoliberalism and punishment through an empirical focus on district courts in New Zealand. Although the empirical study is to be extended by analysing other district courts and conducting further interviews with legal professionals, initial data has been gathered by unobtrusive observations conducted in the Auckland District Court, several interviews with lawyers, and document analysis. Low-level courts are an important site to study because they process most of the people charged with a criminal offence and rely on a wide variety of strategies to regulate and control