Seminar

Criminal Leviathans:
Why Gangs Govern Prisons and Peripheries

Benjamin Lessing
University of Chicago

Criminal Governance in a High-Capacity State?
Exploring Modes of Criminal Regulation in Chicago, USA

Juan Albarracín
University of Illinois

Chairs
Juan Masullo & Andrea Ruggeri
University of Milan 

10 June 2026, h. 14:15-17:30
Seminar Room (Passione)
Department of Social and Political Sciences
Via Passione, 15 - Milan

Abstract of Benjamin Lessing's talk
Why have many of Latin America's largest criminal organizations flourished in the face of muscular state repression? How has prison, modern states' main tool for punishing crime, become a headquarters for organizing it? Above all, if states seek to monopolize the legitimate use of force, why has criminal governance over civilians in dense urban peripheries near to the core of state power persisted—indeed expanded—over decades? I argue that state repression—especially mass incarceration, drug repression, and discriminatory and violent policing—can strengthen criminal organizations, giving them resources and incentives to govern as form of state-distancing. By imposing order inside overcrowded and abusive prisons, "criminal leviathans" like Brazil's Primeiro Comando da Capital gain subjects' loyalty while inducing state agents to withdraw to perimeters. High incarceration rates and anti-gang crackdowns extend prison-gang authority to peripheries. There, the same dynamic plays out: governance wins residents' loyalty and leads police to withdraw to perimeters, protecting drug-trafficking gangs from losses to police raids. Criminal governance as state-distancing makes law-enforcement harder, which is why gangs do it, but it simultaneously solves a deeper problem for the state writ large, providing order at no direct cost, often more than the state would have on its own. Duopolies of violence persist across decades and administrations, I argue, because these fiscal benefits undermine states' incentives for Weberian monopolization.

Bio

Benjamin Lessing is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He studies armed conflict and governance by criminal groups that do not seek formal state power, such as drug cartels and prison gangs. He is the author of the books Making Peace in Drug Wars (Cambridge, 2018) and Criminal Leviathans (Cambridge 2027). He holds a PhD in Political Science and an MA in Economics from UC Berkeley, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford. Prior to his graduate training, Lessing lived in Rio de Janeiro for five years as a Fulbright scholar and researcher for NGOs including Amnesty International, Oxfam, Justiça Global, and Viva Rio.

Abstract of Juan Albarracín's talk

In recent years, our knowledge of criminal governance–the regulation of criminal markets and social life by criminal groups–has grown significantly. However, most of our existing theories and empirical studies of criminal governance are derived from the study of Latin American cases that–although far from being weak states–are characterized by having extensive "gray zones of criminality" in which state actors play decisive roles in the operation of criminal markets. How does criminal governance operate in high-capacity states in which the gray zone of criminality is narrower, the power differential between criminal groups and the state is more significant, and state actors face greater legal constraints when confronting criminal groups? In this presentation, we introduce an ongoing project (and its findings) that explores criminal governance by open-air, retail drug-trafficking gangs in Chicago, USA. In contrast to drug-trafficking gangs in other contexts, gangs in Chicago have a territorial presence, but cannot fully exercise territorial control. At the same time, although a high-capacity state sets more effective limits to these groups in their use of space and violence, the state engages in policies of conditional repression–largely due to effective legal restrictions and opportunity costs–permitting the survival of some criminal activities and their criminal regulation.

Bio

Juan Albarracín is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois Chicago. He is the co-author (with Guillermo Trejo and Lucía Tiscornia) of Accountability Shock. Why Transitional Justice Prevents Criminal Wars in New Democracies (Cambridge University Press, 2026) and has published articles in the Journal of Peace Research and Political Research Quarterly, among other journals. His current book project Undermining Democracy from the Peripheries. Criminalized Electoral Politics in Brazil is under review by a major university press.