The state recruits delinquents as an unaccountable parallel police and thug army

Evidence

It is also an instrument for the illegality with which the very exercise of power surrounds itself. The political use of delinquents – as informers and agents provocateurs – was a fact well before the nineteenth century. But, after the Revolution, this practice acquired quite different dimensions: the infiltration of political parties and workers’ associations, the recruitment of thugs against strikers and rioters, the organization of a sub-police – working directly with the legal police and capable if necessary of becoming a sort of parallel army – a whole extra-legal functioning of power was partly assured by the mass of reserve labour constituted by the delinquents: a clandestine police force and standby army at the disposal of the state. It seems that, in France, it was around the Revolution of 1848 and Louis Napoleon’s seizure of power that these practices reached their height (Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire …, 63–5). Delinquency, solidified by a penal system centred upon the prison, thus represents a diversion of illegality for the illicit circuits of profit and power of the dominant class. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 430

Categorization

• XREF: Parallel to the Party’s semi-legal enforcement apparatus in Oceania — surveillance power that operates through, not against, the criminalized underclass. — connects to: Police, prison, and delinquency form a self-reinforcing circuit producing delinquents — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 432; Police used ex-convicts to maintain lower-class hostility toward delinquents — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 436; Militarized manhunting combines warfare and policing into a new state violence — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 164 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does the sub-police / parallel army described here compare to modern private intelligence and strike-breaking forces?

Related

• Government-funded mobs paired clerical elites with police recruits (similarity 0.91)
• Police used ex-convicts to maintain lower-class hostility toward delinquents (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Police used ex-convicts to maintain lower-class hostility toward delinquents #corroborates (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 436
• Police, prison, and delinquency form a self-reinforcing circuit producing delinquents #expands (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 432
• Militarized manhunting combines warfare and policing into a new state violence #complicates (0.75) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 164