Thursday, March 14, 2024

Members' Publications: March 2024 Edition

As compiled by Dr. Kaitlyn Quinn

LAW AND SOCIETY ASSOCIATION

Collaborative Research Network: Punishment and Society

Organizers:

Ashley Rubin, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, USA

Natalie Pifer, University of Rhode Island

 

RECENTLY PUBLISHED WORKS

March 2024

 

ARTICLES

Annison, Harry, Lol Burke, Nicola Carr, Mathew Millings, Gwen Robinson, and Eleanor Surridge. 2023. “Making Good? A Study of How Senior Penal Policy Makers Narrate Policy Reversal.” The British Journal of Criminology. OnlineFirst. [Access it here, open access]

This paper provides insights into the predominant styles of political reasoning in England and Wales that inform penal policy reform. It does so in relation to a particular development that constitutes a dramatic, perhaps even unique, wholesale reversal of a previously introduced market-based criminal justice delivery model. This is the ‘unification’ of probation services in England and Wales, which unwound the consequential privatization reforms introduced less than a decade earlier. This paper draws on in-depth interviews with senior policy makers to present a narrative reconstruction of the unification of probation services in England and Wales. Analogies with desistance literature are drawn upon in order to encapsulate the tensions posed for policy makers as they sought to enact this penal policy reform.

Brangan, Louise. 2024. “States of Denial: Magdalene Laundries in twentieth-century Ireland.” Punishment & Society. OnlineFirst. [Access it here, open access]

On the first day at a Magdalene Laundry, women and girls who had been sent there had their hair cut off, their names replaced, and their possessions taken. In the days and weeks that followed, everything else was stripped from them. How do we make sense of this carceral regime? The new conceived wisdom is to describe Magdalene Laundries as places of containment and confinement, as tantamount to prisons. This paper suggests that Magdalene Laundries were far worse than the prison. I argue that rather than discuss Magdalene Laundries as sites of confinement, we should instead understand them as sites of erasure. That is because the pains of this form of detention were drawn not from the loss of liberty, but the loss of self. The article is based on 33 oral history interviews with women who survived Magdalene Laundries and archival research regarding the nuns and religious, who ran these institutions. We also learn that Magdalene Laundries were important social institutions that open a window onto Irish life in the twentieth century. Magdalene Laundries operated with an undiluted formula that all Irish citizens were expected to subscribe to: a culture of conformity that prided obedience, self-denial and moral purity.

Brayne, Sarah, Sarah Lageson, and Karen Levy. 2023. “Surveillance Deputies: When Ordinary People Surveil for the State.” Law & Society Review 57(4): 462-488. [Access it here, open access]

The state has long relied on ordinary civilians to do surveillance work, but recent advances in networked technologies are expanding mechanisms for surveillance and social control. In this article, we analyze the phenomenon in which private individuals conduct surveillance on behalf of the state, often using private sector technologies to do so. We develop the concept of surveillance deputies to describe when ordinary people, rather than state actors, use their labor and economic resources to engage in such activity. Although surveillance deputies themselves are not new, their participation in everyday surveillance deputy work has rapidly increased under unique economic and technological conditions of our digital age. Drawing upon contemporary empirical examples, we hypothesize four conditions that contribute to surveillance deputization and strengthen its effects: (1) when interests between the state and civilians converge; (2) when law institutionalizes surveillance deputization or fails to clarify its boundaries; (3) when technological offerings expand personal surveillance capabilities; and (4) when unequal groups use surveillance to gain power or leverage resistance. In developing these hypotheses, we bridge research in law and society, sociology, surveillance studies, and science and technology studies and suggest avenues for future empirical investigation.

Coldsmith, Jeremiah and Ross Kleinstuber. 2023. “Fighting Crime or Needless Time? Disentangling the Reciprocal Effects of Life Without Parole and Violent Crime Using Structural Equation Models.” Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 89: 109-142. [Access it here]

In recent decades, the use of capital punishment has declined, but in its place, a ‘new death penalty’ has arisen: life without parole (LWOP), which is being used far more frequently and for more crimes than capital punishment ever was. Yet, LWOP has received far less scholarly attention than the death penalty. Because of its greater scale, assessing the effects of LWOP on crime has important policy implications and is a better test of extreme penalties. Existing studies of LWOP focus on humanitarian issues and ignore its potentially reciprocal relationship with crime. Therefore, we use available LWOP data to fill these gaps in the literature, using models specifically designed to control for potential reciprocal effects. The results indicate there is no reciprocal causation between LWOP and violent crime and, at best, LWOP’s impact on crime is small, temporary, and, most importantly, no greater than the impact of life with parole.

Crewe, Ben. 2024. “‘Sedative Coping’, Contextual Maturity and Institutionalization Among Prisoners Serving Life Sentences in England and Wales.” The British Journal of Criminology. OnlineFirst. [Access it here, open access]

Based on a longitudinal study of life-sentenced prisoners in England and Wales, this article seeks to make sense of what it characterizes as ‘sedative coping’. In doing so, it brings together analytic conclusions from the existing research literature that appear highly inconsistent, but which indicate the centrality of emotion in the experience of serving a long prison sentence. Specifically, it highlights the forms of emotion management and suppression involved in coping with the trauma of such circumstances, and the post-release impact of sustained forms of emotional self-preservation. This focus helps us better understand the connection between ‘mature coping’ in custody and the post-release difficulties that life-sentenced prisoners often describe.

Gacek, James, Jennifer Turner, Bastien Quirion, and Rosemary Ricciardelli. 2023. Mettre en lumière la lumière: L'éclairage carcéral, le travail correctionnel et le bien-être. [Translation: Shining a Light on Lighting: Prison Lighting, Correctional Officer Workspace and Well-being] Revue Criminologie 56(2): 67-92. [Access it here, open access]

In this article, we analyze the experience and concerns of Canadian federal correctional officers (COs) regarding their work environment. Drawing on prison geography, and recognizing the importance of the links between architecture, physical arrangements and the lived experience of space, we studied the effect of light (or its absence) on the work environment and the well-being of ACs. The participants whose comments are reported in this article (n = 60) were recruited as part of a large longitudinal study (Ricciardelli et al., 2021). After noting that limited access to natural light is often justified by safety considerations, we first analyzed the impact of this absence of natural light on the work experience and on health and the well-being of the ACs. We then examined alternative measures to address safety issues by using excessive light sources. These two aspects allow us to recognize the existence of a lighting problem specific to the prison environment. Although access to natural light is strictly controlled, we nevertheless note that light constitutes, by nature, a particularly difficult aspect to regulate in a prison environment. The results of this study make it possible to highlight the problems linked to the diffusion of light in the prison space and to underline the perverse effects of the prison environment on the conditions of care. We conclude this article by setting out recommendations concerning lighting arrangements and improving the conditions in which COs and prisoners find themselves.

Gibson-Light, Michael. 2023. “The Ghosts Inside: The Historic Struggle to Reclassify Prison Labor, 1967–1979.” The Prison Journal 103(4): 489-512. [Access it here]

The 1970s saw incarcerated laborers engage in an unprecedented battle to secure recognition, rights, and protections. This article traces the rise of the Prisoners Union, the largest and most prominent organization of its sort, as it endeavored to elevate the standing of captive labor. Through qualitative analysis of archival materials, this work unpacks penal laborers’ classification struggles aimed at advancing status in the penal field and rejoining the ranks of the working class. Investigating this movement's successes and failures enhances empirical knowledge of prison organizing as well as theoretical understandings of classification struggles, and helps contextualize historic penological developments.

Jiang, Jize and Apei Song. 2024. “Strong Control and Weak Service: Enforcing Drug Treatment in China.” Journal of Drug Issues. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

The proliferation of drug treatment services, crafted under harm reduction and evidence-based principles, is touted as a benevolent approach for drug offenders, foregrounding their rehabilitation and reintegration into the community, and embodying the ideal of penal welfare. Despite extant studies on the functional effectiveness on recidivism among drug offenders, little research has situated the operational significance of drug treatment programs within a broader project of the Chinese state’s efforts to govern a rapidly modernizing society. To bridge this gap, this study examines the implementation of drug treatment in the Chinese justice system by unravelling the processes and logics that assemble strong control and weak service in practice. The analysis suggests that Chinese drug treatment programs both reflect and reinforce the state-centric logic of the Chinese approach to social governance, functioning to enhance the state’s legitimacy and strengthen its capacity for social control. We contend that when state interests and political ideologies are prioritized over drug offenders’ recovery, concerns and needs of drug offenders are downplayed and the rehabilitative effectiveness of those programs is diminished. Future research and policy implications for ameliorating drug treatment programs are also addressed.

Lageson, Sarah. 2023. “Criminally Bad Data: Inaccurate Criminal Records, Data Brokers, and Algorithmic Injustice.” University of Illinois Law Review: 1771-1810 [Access it here, open access]

This Article considers a widely overlooked consequence of having a criminal record in the digital age: the spread of inaccurate or outdated criminal record information. Remarkably common, errors in criminal record data quickly multiply across digital platforms and are nearly impossible for people to manage. Error can begin in governmental sources and spread into the private sector or can be introduced by data aggregators as information across jurisdictions and agencies is compiled into databases and web content. For the subject of the record, error can pose enormous obstacles to securing employment and housing, particularly as automated decision-making and algorithmic governance transform traditional institutional processes. Yet, those who are harmed have very few rights regarding the ability to identify and remedy data error.

Part I of the Article introduces the issue of data error in criminal background checks and describes the scope of the problem. Parts II and III describe how and why criminal record data occurs and detail the specific harms through several theoretical lenses: data error as a due process and equal protection harm, as an informational privacy harm, and as a reputational harm. Part IV analyzes legal obstacles that limit remedies, with a particular focus on the practical obscurity doctrine, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, standing, and various legal immunities available to governments and the private sector. The analysis shows how regulating criminal record data has failed in a digital environment and how existing law fails to protect people from unfounded and illegal discrimination on the basis of inaccurate criminal record information. Part V argues that bad data should be conceptualized under broader critiques of racialized, algorithmic injustice and offers solutions for better regulating and using criminal records.

McNeill, Fergus. 2023. “Rehabilitation, Recognition and Misrecognition.” Kriminologia 3(2): 109-120. [Access it here, open access]

The paper is a lightly edited transcript of McNeill’s plenary address at the Finnish Society of Criminology (Suomen Kriminologinen Yhdistys ry) Conference, which took place at the University of Eastern Finland in Joensuu on 3-4th November 2022. It explores whether and under what circumstances rehabilitation might be seen as a form of violence reduction or, conversely, as a form of state-imposed symbolic violence.

Melossi, Dario. 2023. “Bonifica Umana: The Psychoanalysis of Human Reclamation.” The Journal of Architecture. OnlineFirst [Access it here, open access]

The concept of land reclamation has often been associated with a metaphorical meaning that extends it to the reclamation of human beings, i.e. in Italian, bonifica umana. This short essay departs from a famous statement by Sigmund Freud who, inspired by a well-known Dutch case, likened the work of psychoanalysis to that of reclaiming land from the sea. The essay then goes on to discuss the policies of reclaiming land under Fascism in Italy in the 1930s, the work of bonifica. Such work was soon called a process of bonifica integrale and finally of bonifica umana, with which it was intended as a proper programme of ‘human reclamation’, based on the eugenic ideas of medical scientist and researcher Nicola Pende as well as in the new Code of Criminal Law inaugurated by the regime in 1930. In other words, in the same way in which, according to Freud, the rational agency of the ego is supposed to emerge, with the help of psychoanalysis, from the chaos of the id, so too the programme of comprehensive and human reclamation was supposed to develop a new rational fascist society and humanity from the pre-existing ‘deadly marshes’, which would metaphorically represent the chaos of social and human life before the establishment of the new fascist regime. Finally, this essay considers the question of whether such views are inherent to the general direction of Western rationalism or are historically confined to Fascism.

Melossi, Dario. 2023. “Servitude for a Time: From the Permanent Slavery of the Unfree to the Slavery Pro Tempore of the Free.” Punishment and Society 25(5): 1207-1232. [Access it here, open access]

I consider the forms of control, which went “untreated” by 1970s “revisionist” penality literature (in other words, I wonder whether the categories of human beings who are (mostly) not found in prisons have something in common). I take as starting point that the “temporary slavery” which is the punishment of imprisonment, emerged historically as related to the “free” condition of those punished. Forms of control instead for the “unfree” are not to be included in “(penal) imprisonment” and could be understood as “domestic” forms of control expressed, originally, in the idea of “Pater Familias.” This form of control is not punishment but is a permanent condition deemed appropriate for given categories of human beings, such as “children,” “women,” “slaves,” and what I call “the mad and other non-persons.” I first examine how imprisonment (as punishment) emerged, after the end of servitude in Europe, as a sort of “memory of slavery,” to enforce a principle of subordination dedicated to “the free.” Then, I look at the mechanisms of social control for those who are not socially perceived as “free.” Finally, I attempt at sketching the process of expansion of mechanisms of subordination—for the free and the unfree—beyond European borders.

Philips, Miray and Joachim J. Savelsberg. 2023. “Social Fields, Journalism, and Collective Memory: Reporting on the Armenian Genocide in Legal, Political, and Commemorative Field Events.” Memory Studies. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

Conflictual processes unfolding in legal and political social fields as well as commemorative events differentially shape social memories, including memories about genocides, in line with their rules of the game and institutional logics. News media subsequently process mnemonic struggles—carried out in law, politics, and commemorations—submitting them to the rules and norms of journalism before their messages reach the public. This article explores these processes for struggles pertaining to memories of the Armenian genocide. It is based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 259 English language newspaper articles published in the United States that report about a court case, a legislative process, and commemorative events. Our analysis identifies distinct patterns of representations. Differences are in line with the institutional logics of the legal and political fields and the epistemic potential of commemorative rituals, even as they interact with the logic of the journalistic field that mediates those accounts.

Ravid, Itay and Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg. 2023. “Virtual Criminal Law Dualism.” University of Illinois Law Review: 1453-1472. [Access it here, open access]

Since the start of the new millennium, technological and societal changes have initiated a transition from physical to virtual spaces. This far-reaching phenomenon has extended to the law and legal institutions, including the criminal law domain. This essay coins the term “virtual criminal law dualism” to describe the dynamic relationship between the virtual and physical spaces in the criminal law sphere. We contend that the transition to virtual spaces has manifested in two distinct aspects. The first relates to formal doctrinal, procedural, and institutional changes that the mainstream criminal law and procedure have undergone due to the emergence of virtual spaces and technological developments (“changes from within”). The second relates to the transformation of criminal law and procedure that occurs under the influence of activities taking place in virtual platforms (“changes from the outside”). By exploring the simultaneous developments stemming from the transition to virtual spaces, we analyze the meaning of these developments, discuss their implications, and offer future directions regarding their potential expansion. We argue that the interplay between virtual and physical spaces is normatively neither encouraged nor discouraged in and of itself. Its value relies on the overarching objectives of the criminal legal system and its capacity to further those objectives.

Ravid, Itay and Rotem Dror. 2023. “140 Characters of Justice? The Promise and Perils of Using Social Media to Reveal Lay Punishment Perspectives.” University of Illinois Law Review: 1473-1532. [Access it here, open access]

For centuries, penal theorists have debated two key criminal justice questions: justifying state punishment power and determining proper punishment levels. Moral philosophers offered several theories to address these questions. Over time, calls emerged to move beyond theories and to consider community views on punishment rationales in criminal law and policy design, an approach that gained support alongside meaningful critique. Concurrently, social science advancements enabled empirically deepening understanding of public attitudes about punishment, largely through surveys and experiments.

One domain, however, remained untouched by those calling to assess lay intuitions of justice: social media. Such oversight is puzzling in light of social media’s potential to reveal public perceptions without scientific intervention. This Article thus engages with two main questions. First, a methodological question: whether social media discourse can be used to reflect laypeople’s attitudes about criminal culpability and punishment, and second, a normative question: should it be used for these purposes?

To answer these questions, the Article first synthesizes current scholarship about the promises and challenges of using social media data to study human behavior and applies it to the context of punishment justifications. The Article moves beyond theory, however, and utilizes recent technological developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) and Law and Natural Language Processing (“NLP”) to offer a novel empirical exploration of the potential promise of social media discourse in assessing community views on justice and punishment.

While our findings offer some support for the potentiality of using social media to assess laypeople’s attitudes regarding punishment, we also expose the complex challenges of utilizing such data, particularly for penal law and policy design. First, due to a host of methodological challenges, and second, due to normative challenges, particularly social media’s polarizing nature and the ambiguity around who’s voice is amplified through these platforms. The Article thus urges caution when leveraging social media to evaluate the public’s perceptions of justice.

Savelsberg, Joachim J. and Brooke B. Chambers. 2023. “Darfur Model, Rwanda, and the ICTR: John Hagan’s Sociology of Genocide Continued.” Law & Social Inquiry 48(4): 1232-1250. [Access it here, open access]

Core contributions from John Hagan’s scholarship on genocide are at stake in this article. First, this article examines, for the Rwandan genocide, the applicability of Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond’s multi-level causal model of genocide, developed in Darfur and the Crime of Genocide. Asking how causal factors and processes highlighted in that model play out in scholarship on the Rwandan genocide, it moves toward answering the question of external validity versus historical specificity. Second, the article examines, again with a focus on Rwanda, the relationship between social scientific explanation and judicial thought. While it highlights—in line with the first author’s previous work—how judicial narratives address or select out core factors highlighted in the Darfur model, the article focuses—in line with Hagan’s Justice in the Balkans—on the question of what knowledge social science can nevertheless gain from court proceedings. An analysis of a sample of cases processed by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda identifies overlaps with social science analyses, but it also highlights distinctions.

Soto, Michael and Joachim J. Savelsberg. 2023. “Collective Memories and Community Interventions: Peace Building in Northern Ireland.” Studies in Social Justice 17(3): 360-383. [Access it here, open access]

This paper examines the role of community interventions in post-conflict settings. The focus is on peacebuilding through the shaping of collective memories, achieved through the transformation of social ties. By addressing community interventions, this paper opens the black box between interventions by formal institutions (such as peace treaties, trials, or truth commissions) and outcomes. It is based on a study of one specific cross-community initiative in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which – in 2012 – employed a Transitional Justice Grassroots Toolkit. Document analysis is complemented by interviews with participants and organizers to reveal the role of pedagogical practices, mediated by cohort effects, in facilitating cultural transformation through group interactions. This paper suggests how community interventions can change collective memories, cultural trauma, and related identities of the conflict, away from their polarized and polarizing forms, and it explores implications for future peace and social justice.

Super, Gail. 2024. “Porous Penality and the Myth of Liberal Punishment: Lessons from South Africa.” The British Journal of Criminology 64(1): 107-123. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

Drawing on Walter Benjamin, this paper discusses the relationships between law, violence, and punishment. The main argument I make is that state punishment is BOTH a violent and logically contradictory practice and that the state’s legal right to punish often spills over into extralegal penal violence, perpetrated by a range of actors against the racialized poor. I use the term penal violence to refer to all forms of violence which are aimed at enforcing law or punishing a perceived transgression of law or norms. The paper focuses on the infliction of penal violence in South Africa on/in three different scales and jurisdictions: Makwanyane and violence in prisons; police and prosecutorial violence; and extralegal civilian violence.

Thomas, Christopher. 2024. “Racial Reckoning Protests, the Capitol Insurrection, and Asymmetric Social Facts: A Mixed-Methods Study of Public Opinion.” Journal of Experimental Criminology. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

This mixed-methods explanatory study combines national digital survey experiments and structural topic modeling of open-ended questions to examine whether news images from George Floyd protests and the Capitol insurrection affected feelings about the police differentially depending on respondents’ primary news environment. Survey experiments were conducted on 990 respondents in June 2020 and 1,174 respondents in January 2021, at the heights of the events. The study found that respondents who get their news primarily from conservative sources had substantially warmer feelings about the police after seeing Floyd protest images but not after seeing Capitol insurrection images. Topic modeling and qualitative analysis suggest this group distinctively perceived Floyd protesters as “looters” and “rioters,” discussing the Floyd protests but not the insurrection in terms of racialized chaos and anxiety. Findings suggest asymmetric affective dynamics driven by the racialized anxiety of consumers of mainly conservative news when seeing images of racial justice protests.

Tomczak, Philippa, Kaitlyn Quinn, Catherine Traynor, and Lucy Wainwright. 2023. (Re)constructing Prisoner Death Investigations: A Case Study of Suicide Investigations from England and Wales. Law & Social Inquiry. OnlineFirst. [Access it here, open access]

Because states must rebut the presumption of responsibility, all prisoner deaths must be investigated. These investigations frequently illustrate the tip of an iceberg of rights abuses and systemic hazards but have largely escaped analysis in prison-monitoring scholarship. Focusing on suicides, we assemble some of the first evidence illustrating how the staff of the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, who investigate prisoner deaths in England and Wales, seek to prevent further deaths. Ombudsman investigations are widely regarded as ineffective, yet there are competing constructions regarding why this is and what could be done to improve outcomes. As a result of organizational norms and constraints, ombudsman staff have offered narrow accounts of prisoner suicides, focusing on the failure of frontline staff to comply with prison policies. By contrast, prison staff and coroners have focused on systemic hazards or “accidents waiting to happen,” including imprisoning people with severe mental illness, illegal drugs, unsafe facilities, and inadequate staffing. These differing constructions lock penal actors into an unproductive cycle of blame shifting that contributes to high suicide numbers. We reconceptualize prisoner deaths as occurring at the intersection of systemic hazards, organizational contexts, and individual errors. We hope that this reconceptualization facilitates broader investigations that are more likely to prevent prisoner deaths.

Turner, Jennifer, Rosemary Ricciardelli, and James Gacek. 2023. “The ‘Pains of Employment’? Connecting Air and Sound Quality to Correctional Officer Experiences of Health and Wellness in Prison Space.” The Prison Journal103(5): 610-632. [Access it here]

This article highlights Canadian federal correctional officers’ (COs) sensory engagements with their workplace to reveal how, in particular, air quality and sound quality generate physical feelings that create health and wellness concerns. These “pains of employment” support calls to improve prison space. However, these sensations conflate with perceptions of space, which infer that prisoners, not infrastructure, create poor environments. Such perceptions seemingly influence COs’ approaches to prisoner management. Accordingly, the physical quality of prison air and sound not only shapes CO constructions of health and wellness, but also has the potential to influence how they discharge their role.

 

BOOKS/BOOK CHAPTERS/EDITED COLLECTIONS

Liao, Wenjie and Joachim J. Savelsberg. 2023. “Law.” Pp. 595-608 in Handbuch zur sozialwissenschaftlichen Gedächtnisforschung, edited by Mathias Berek, Kristina Chmelar, Oliver Dimbath, Hanna Haag, Michael Heinlein, Nina Leonhard, Valentin Rauer, and Gerd Sebald. Springer. [Access it here]

This chapter provides a critical review of literature on the intersection of law and collective memory. It synthesizes common themes, identifies gaps, and suggests future directions. Existing research reveals a dialectical relationship where law and collective memories are mutually constitutive. Future research should investigate how global, national and local contexts mediate this relationship, and how the law-memory nexus manifests itself at the micro-level of legal consciousness.

Maier, Katharina, Rosemary Ricciardelli, and Fergus McNeill. Eds. 2023. Punishment, Probation and Parole: Mapping out ‘Mass Supervision’ in International Contexts. Emerald. [More information here]

In many countries, community-based penalties such as probation, electronic monitoring and parole are the most common sanctions used in the punishment of criminalized individuals. Despite the widespread use of community-based penalties, these forms of penalization or punishment remain a less studied feature of punishment research today.

Punishment, Probation and Parole maps this lacuna in knowledge and scholarship while charting a path to fill it. Bringing together a series of key conceptual papers by leading scholars, the chapters explore the various dimensions and forms of community-based penalties as they are constructed and experienced in different times and places, producing different socio-penal effects. Addressing pressing debates and emerging concepts, this much-needed collection serves to chart directions for future researchers to explore in the field of community-based penalties.

Rubio Arnal, Alejandro and Fergus McNeill. 2023. “Exploring Social Re/habilitation and Developing a New Conceptualisation of Re/integration” in Social Rehabilitation and Criminal Justice, edited by Federica Coppola and Adriano Martufi. Routledge. [Access it here]

One of us has previously argued that the personal, legal, social and moral aspects of re/habilitation are often inter-dependent. More generally, theory and research on desistance, resettlement, rehabilitation, reentry and re/integration all refer to the salience of social reaction for life after punishment. In this chapter, relying on findings from a recent participative study of men’s post-prison re/integration in Glasgow, we further develop understandings of the importance of social reaction in processes of rehabilitation and re/integration. We do so primarily by exploring two specific and contrasting local examples of social reaction to returning prisoners in Glasgow, Scotland. The first concerns the stigmatising, degrading and inefficient process of seeking support from a Community Homeless Service. The second concerns the re/integrative, empowering and supportive process of entering, becoming part of and contributing to a community called ‘A Place to Change’. Our exploration of these two contrasting examples reveals how the ways in which these services engage with punished people is shaped by and affects other domains of their re/integration, such as the material, the judicial-legal, the personal, the civic-political and the moral. From this analysis, we develop and propose a six-form model of re/integration that supports but extends current models, highlighting the interactive and temporal character of this phenomenon.

Savelsberg. Joachim J. 2023. “Media and Transitional Justice.” In The Oxford Handbook of Transitional Justice, edited by Lawrence Douglas, Alexander Hinton, and Jens Meierhenrich. Oxford University Press. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

Using a field theory approach, this chapter explores journalism’s work for, against, and as transitional justice (TJ). Seeking to spread delegitimizing representations of atrocities and repression, TJ institutions depend on media communication. Journalism’s objectivity rule aids TJ institutions, but the juridification of journalistic products may lead to a literal and uncritical transmission of TJ narratives, buying into the institutional logic and other constraints of TJ justice mechanisms. Other features of the media field work against TJ. They include market orientation and the resulting striving for attention-grabbing stories; constraining features of journalistic genres, limiting depth and contributing to a flattening of accounts; tensions between journalistic and judicial habitus; cognitive and spatial disconnects between journalists and TJ institutions; and national filters that impede the transmission of global TJ scripts to national and local levels. When authoritarian regimes follow periods of mass violence, regimes are likely to instrumentalize (politicize) media reporting. Finally, the media may work as TJ when they engage in public shaming of those deemed guilty and reawaken collective memories of past abuses. They may even (re-)ignite interventions by formal TJ institutions. Finally, in all three scenarios of the media for, against, and as TJ, informal social contexts, communities, and opinion leaders filter media messages before they settle in the minds of recipients: a three-step flow of communication.

 

PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP

Brangan, Louise. 2023. “New ‘Healing’ Prison in Ireland Points to Long History of Progressive Penal Reform.” The Conversation. [Access it here]

Is there only one kind of progressive prison? In the 1970s, the Irish Prison Division thought the prison was the problem, not the prisoners.

Lageson, Sarah and Rob Stewart. 2023. “Faulty background checks are violating privacy and ruining lives.” The Hill. September 28. [Access it here]

Monday, October 9, 2023

Members' Publications: October 2023 Edition

 As compiled by Dr. Kaitlyn Quinn

LAW AND SOCIETY ASSOCIATION

Collaborative Research Network: Punishment and Society

Organizers:

Ashley Rubin, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, USA

Natalie Pifer, University of Rhode Island

 

RECENTLY PUBLISHED WORKS

October 2023


ARTICLES

Ben-Natan, Smadar. 2023. “The Boundaries of the Carceral State: Accounting for the Role of Military Incarceration.” Theoretical Criminology. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

This article extends the study of carceral expansion—currently encompassing criminal, civil, and immigration enforcement—by examining the role of military (and, within that, extraterritorial) incarceration. Drawing on the case of military incarceration of civilians in Israel/Palestine, which since 1967 has accounted for between one-third and one-half of the entire prisoner population, it demonstrates the consolidation of a single carceral apparatus that normalizes military detention and incorporates non-citizens detained in extraterritorial locations. Involving both institutional and spatial dimensions, the article illuminates how the boundaries of the carceral state are relatively independent of formal sovereign borders, legal categories, and institutional arrangements, identifying the military as a carceral state agency. The study thus suggests a framework for an integrated study that accounts for the actual scope of the carceral state and its paradoxical modes of exclusionary inclusion.

Burkhardt, Brett C., Mark Edwards, Scott Akins, and Christopher T. Stout. 2023. “Understanding Public Preferences for Policing Homeless Individuals in the United States: Results from a National Survey.” Deviant Behavior44(10): 1462-1479. [Access it here]

The United States has a large and growing homeless population. In the name of public order, municipalities across the country have criminalized behaviors associated with homeless people in public spaces (e.g. panhandling) and tasked police with responding to violations. What should police do in these encounters? This study reports on a nationwide survey experiment that asked US residents whether police should arrest, help, or ignore a homeless individual in several hypothetical scenarios. We estimate (1) aggregate preferences for police response, (2) the association between respondent demographics and individual preferences, and (3) the effect of experimentally manipulated identity – gender and background – of a homeless person on preferences. Results reveal that a helping response from police is generally preferred to arresting or ignoring. An arrest response received greater support from people who perceived homelessness to be a problem locally, as well as men and Republicans. The identity of the homeless individual had little effect on preferred police responses. With respect to public and policy debates about homelessness, these results suggest that there is relatively little public appetite for a heavy-handed police response, though this may not hold in areas where many people perceive homelessness to be a source of problems.

Corda, Alessandro. 2023. “Collateral Consequences and Criminal Justice Reform: Successes and Challenges.” Crime and Justice 52. [Access it here]

Collateral consequences of criminal convictions such as occupational restrictions, ineligibility for welfare benefits, and disenfranchisement from voting have drastic and long-lasting effects. They hinder successful reintegration into society of people with criminal records and undermine efforts to reduce recidivism. In recent years, awareness that they are counterproductive and often undermine public safety has increased. There is growing recognition of their detrimental effects on individuals, families, communities, and the economy. Non- and bipartisan efforts are underway to change these laws and policies, mostly at the state level, but many changes so far have been limited in ambition and scope. More, bolder, and more comprehensive changes are needed. Reforms should not only reduce the sheer number of collateral restrictions and eliminate or mitigate their adverse effects but also incorporate awareness of their existence and knowledge of their effects into the day-to-day operations of the criminal justice system.

Corda, Alessandro. 2023. “Reshaping Goals and Values in Times of Penal Transition: The Dynamics of Penal Change in the Collateral Consequences Reform Space.” Law & Social Inquiry. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

Over the past decade, reform efforts in the area of collateral consequences of conviction have succeeded in emancipating themselves from standard discourses and dynamics in the US criminal legal reform space. This article draws on concepts and insights from the literature on penal transformation to explore the unique interplay of goals and values that have led to recent collateral consequences reforms. It identifies three major drivers of change that have had a significant impact, particularly, on softening occupational licensing restrictions for individuals with a criminal history and passing criminal record clearance legislation. First, advocates of the economic libertarian agenda joined forces with civil libertarian groups to reduce occupational licensing hurdles for criminal record holders. Second, an attitude promoting redemption and second chances through criminal record clearance reform has been championed, in particular, by the Christian right. Third, economic concerns by employers seeking to hire individuals with a criminal record have become more pronounced in tight labor markets, both pre- and post-pandemic. The analysis concludes that, although much remains to be done, ongoing reforms represent a significant reshaping of the collateral consequences landscape. A logic of unworthiness toward individuals with criminal records, however, remains hard to eradicate and can easily resurface in the current unstable phase of penal transition.

Corda, Alessandro, Marti Rovira, and Andrew Henley. 2023. “Collateral Consequences of Criminal Records from the Other Side of the Pond: How Exceptional is American Penal Exceptionalism?” Criminology & Criminal Justice23(4): 528-548. [Access it here]

In this article, we highlight the existence and expansion of so-called ‘collateral consequences’ (CCs) of criminal records in Europe to challenge the prevalent view that these are features of the claimed ‘American exceptionalism’ within the penal field. First, we consider how CCs have been widely presented as a quintessential example of American penal exceptionalism within extant scholarship before problematising the adoption of such a framework from a European perspective. Second, we demystify the issue of CCs within Europe by highlighting the deleterious effects which CCs have on the lives of European people with a criminal record. Third, we consider precisely what can be regarded as ‘exceptional’ about CCs in the United States as compared to Europe by analysing key areas of possible differentiation. We conclude by cautioning against the view that European penality is necessarily – and always homogeneously and consistently – ‘progressive’ in relation to its treatment of criminal records and criminal record subjects. We also suggest that far greater attention and vigilance is required from criminologists and criminal justice scholars regarding the expansion and operation of CCs in Europe.

Corda, Alessandro, Marti Rovira, and Elina van 't Zand-Kurtovic. 2023. “Collateral Consequences of Criminal Records from a Cross-National Perspective: An Introduction.” Criminology & Criminal Justice 23(4): 519-527. [Access it here]

Hanan, M. Eve and Lydia Nussbaum. 2023. “Community Accountability.” Hastings Women’s Law Journal 34(2): 5-34. [Access it here]

“Community accountability” is a phrase commonly used by transformative and restorative justice practitioners. Yet the meaning of both “community” and “accountability” are far from stable and clear. This Essay offers some preliminary thoughts on the contextual nature of “community accountability” based on the authors’ ongoing research into the ways in which transformative and restorative justice advocates conceptualize and implement alternatives to legalism and punishment. 

The ambiguity inherent to words like “community” and “accountability” offers a way to disengage from society’s existing, broken systems and opens the door to generating new norms. Indeed, we see these words as poised to be imbued with fresh meaning derived from the ethical, epistemic, and practical work of groups exploring or offering alternatives to criminal and juvenile legal systems. Yet, ambiguity and instability in language can be dangerous. One danger is that new terms like “accountability” may obscure the fact that nothing substantial has changed. New principles and practices could replicate objectionable practices in criminal and juvenile systems. Another danger is that when an ambiguous term like “community” becomes a heuristic device, its use enables value-based assumptions based on romantic or nostalgic notions that communitarianism is an inherent good and that “community” is a font of moral authority.

Jouet, Mugambi. Forthcoming. “A History of Post-Roe America and Canada: From Intertwined Abortion Battles to American Exceptionalism.” Michigan Journal of Gender & Law. [Access it here]

This Article explores why abortion is being recriminalized in the United States in sharp contrast to the historical evolution of reproductive rights. Its thesis is that abortion exemplifies American exceptionalism in the original sense of the phrase that America is an “exception,” especially within the Western world. Yet the Article demonstrates that American exceptionalism should not be misunderstood as historical determinism or cultural essentialism. By the early 1970s, America was converging with peer Western democracies in liberalizing abortion. This process of convergence was ultimately impeded by the growing polarization of modern America. The United States’ persistent battles over abortion became increasingly peculiar as the rest of the Western world came to widely accept or tolerate a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.

This evolution is brought to light through an in-depth comparative history of America and Canada, neighboring nations whose abortion histories have been intertwined in intriguing and overlooked ways. When the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973, it heartened Canadian reformers who repeatedly cited Roe as a model to follow. The Supreme Court of Canada would not decriminalize abortion before 1988 in its landmark Morgentaler decision—fifteen years after Roe. This history, documented with original English- and French-language sources, reveals as much about America as about Canada. If both countries had seemingly converged in liberalizing abortion, the outcome of their landmark court decisions would markedly differ. In Canada, the anti-abortion movement gradually collapsed in the decades following Morgentaler, as in much of the West. In America, by contrast, the pro-choice movement was on the retreat as anti-abortion forces gained ground.

When the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe in its 2022 Dobbs decision, it not only exacerbated polarization within American society, but also the divide between America and the Western world. If abortion is not usually thought of as an issue of criminal law in modern times, it is once again within the sphere of criminal liability in parts of America. A multidisciplinary perspective will reveal how the United States’ distinctive legal, sociopolitical, and religious landscape has shaped an enduring battle over abortion reflecting wider features of American exceptionalism.

Jouet, Mugambi. Forthcoming. “Humanity, Race, and Indigeneity in Criminal Sentencing: Social Change in America, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.” NYU Review of Law & Social Change. [Access it here]

The role of systemic racism in criminal justice is a growing matter of debate in modern Western democracies. The United States’ situation has garnered the most attention given the salience of its racial issues and the disproportionate attention that American society garners around the world. This has obscured major developments in Canadian society with great relevance to increasingly diverse Western democracies where minorities are highly over-incarcerated. In recent years, the landmark Anderson and Morris decisions recognized that the systemic racism that Black people face in Canada should be considered as mitigation at sentencing. These historic cases partly stem from the recognition of social-context evidence as mitigation for Indigenous defendants under a groundbreaking 1996 legislative reform that remains little known outside Canada’s borders. While Australia and New Zealand have also recognized certain mitigation principles for Indigenous defendants, Canada is arguably the country that is now making the most concerted effort to tackle systemic racism in criminal punishment.

Conversely, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected this approach in McCleskey v. Kemp, an influential 1987 precedent holding that statistical proof of systemic racism in sentencing is essentially irrelevant. The situation might someday change in America, as suggested by the Washington State Supreme Court’s 2018 abolition of the death penalty in State v. Gregory, which deviated from McCleskey in accepting evidence of systemic racism. However, Gregory was only decided under state law and it is too early to tell whether more American states will inch toward the developments occurring in Canada.

These ongoing shifts should be situated in a wider historical context, as they do not merely reflect modern debates about systemic racism or Canada-specific matters. This Article captures how they are the next step in the long-term, incremental evolution of criminal punishment in the Western world since the Enlightenment. For generations, the principles of individualization and proportionality have enabled judges to assess mitigation by considering a defendant’s social circumstances. Considering evidence of systemic racism or social inequality as mitigation at sentencing is a logical extension of these principles. The age-old aspiration toward humanity in criminal justice may prove a stepping stone toward tackling the over-incarceration of minorities in modern Western democracies.

Jouet, Mugambi. 2023. “Death Penalty Abolitionism from the Enlightenment to Modernity.” American Journal of Comparative Law 71: 46-97. [Access it here]

The modern movement to abolish the death penalty in the United States stresses that this punishment cannot be applied fairly and effectively. The movement does not emphasize that killing prisoners is inhumane per se. Its focus is almost exclusively on administrative, procedural, and utilitarian issues, such as recurrent exonerations of innocents, incorrigible racial discrimination, endemic arbitrariness, lack of deterrent value, and spiraling financial costs. By comparison, modern European law recognizes any execution as an inherent violation of human rights rooted in dignity. This humanistic approach is often assumed to be “European” in nature and foreign to America, where distinct sensibilities lead people to concentrate on practical problems surrounding executions. 

This Article demonstrates that, in reality, the significant transatlantic divergence on abolitionism is a relatively recent development. By the late eighteenth century, abolitionists in Europe and America recurrently denounced the inhumanity of executions in language foreshadowing modern human rights norms. Drawing on sources overlooked by scholars, including the views of past American and French abolitionists, the Article shows that reformers previously converged in employing a polyvalent rhetoric blending humanistic and practical objections to executions. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s that a major divergence materialized. As America faced an increasingly punitive social climate leading to the death penalty’s resurgence and the rise of mass incarceration, abolitionists largely abandoned humanistic claims in favor of practical ones. Meanwhile, the opposite generally occurred as abolitionism triumphed in Europe. These findings call into question the notion that framing the death penalty as a human rights abuse marks recent shifts in Western Europe or international law. While human rights have indeed become the official basis for abolition in modern Europe, past generations of European and U.S. abolitionists defended similar moral and political convictions. These humanistic norms reflect a long-term evolution traceable to the Renaissance and Enlightenment. But for diverse social transformations, America may have kept converging with Europe in gradually adopting humanistic norms of punishment.

Jouet, Mugambi. 2023. “Guns, Mass Incarceration, and Bipartisan Reform: Beyond Vicious Circle and Social Polarization.” Arizona State Law Journal 55: 239-89. [Access it here]

Gun violence in modern America persists in the face of irreconcilable views on gun control and the right to bear arms. Yet one area of agreement between Democrats and Republicans has received insufficient attention: punitiveness as a means of gun control. The United States has gravitated toward a peculiar social model combining extremely loose regulations on guns and extremely harsh penalties on gun crime. If someone possesses a gun illegally or carries one when committing another crime, such as burglary or drug dealing, draconian mandatory minimums can apply. These circumstances exemplify root causes of mass incarceration: overreliance on prisons in reaction to social problems and unforgiving punishments for those labeled as “violent” criminals. Contrary to widespread misconceptions, mass incarceration does not primarily stem from locking up petty, nonviolent offenders caught in the “War on Drugs.” Most prisoners are serving time for violent offenses. Steep sentence enhancements for crimes involving guns illustrate how American justice revolves around counterproductive, costly practices that disproportionately impact minorities.

This multidisciplinary Article envisions future reforms with the capacity to transcend America’s bitter polarization. A precondition to change is not for conservatives and liberals to wholeheartedly agree on issues like systemic racism or the right to bear arms. Rather, possibilities for penal reform are likelier when each side can come to the negotiating table for its own reasons. A paradigm shift in conservative America may prove especially indispensable, as Republicans tend to be more supportive of harsh punishments and Democrats are unlikely to achieve reform nationwide on party-line votes. This shift has already occurred to an extent given the rise of penal reform in red states. But both conservatives and liberals have failed to significantly reduce mass incarceration by recurrently excluding “violent” offenders from reform initiatives.

The Article explores how conservatives and liberals could gradually converge toward sentencing reform on gun crime. This could ultimately have a ripple effect on American sentencing norms, leading them closer to those of Western democracies with more effective and humane penal systems. Such bipartisanship is less elusive than it might seem. A rehabilitative approach toward gun crime fits with the evolution of American conservatism, which believes that guns should not be vilified since they are part of the nation’s identity. Similarly, the rehabilitation of people convicted of gun crime is consistent with cornerstones of modern American liberalism, namely stricter gun control and opposition to mass incarceration as an unjust, racist system. As opposite sides will probably retain much of their worldview even if their perspectives evolve to a degree, new ways of thinking could help bring reformers together. These social transformations cannot be predicted but should be theorized.

Jouet, Mugambi. 2023. “The Abolition and Retention of Life Without Parole in Europe: A Comparative and Historical Perspective.” European Convention on Human Rights Law Review. [Access it here]

Life without parole is increasingly recognised as another death penalty in dooming prisoners to die behind bars. On the tenth anniversary of the ECtHR’s landmark Vinter decision, abolitionism and retentionism characterise its state in Europe. In abolishing irreducible life sentences, Vinter crystallised a long-term evolution in prisoners’ rights since the Enlightenment. Meanwhile, enduring animosity towards prisoners has led to their rights repeatedly becoming the stage for wider debates concerning the legitimacy of European institutions. The United Kingdom’s threats to leave the ECtHR notably enabled it to exempt itself from Vinter. Still, the European project retains numerous supporters, which helps explain why the abolition of life without parole is making progress in continental Europe, as compared to the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Ultimately, the article demonstrates that prisoners’ rights are both a microcosm of broader questions regarding European integration and a benchmark of human dignity’s historical evolution.

Kerrison, Erin M. T. and Jordan M. Hyatt. 2023. “COVID-19 Vaccine Refusal and Medical Distrust Held by Correctional Officers.” Vaccines 11(7):1237-1254. [Access it here]

This study explores COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among prison security staff and the extent to which they trust varied sources of information about the vaccines. Cross-sectional survey data were obtained from a state-wide sample of corrections officers (COs, hereafter; n = 1208) in February 2021. Group differences, disaggregated by demographic characteristics, were examined using F-tests and t-tests. Despite the comparatively limited risk of contracting the virus, non-security staff reported they would accept a COVID-19 vaccine at no cost (74%), compared to their more vulnerable CO counterparts (49%). We observed vaccine refusal correlations between COs’ reported gender, age, and length of time working as a CO, but none with their self-reported race. Vaccine refusal was more prevalent among womxn officers, younger officers, and those who had spent less time working as prison security staff. Our findings also suggest that the only trusted source of information about vaccines were family members and only for officers who would refuse the vaccine; the quality of trust placed in those sources, however, was not substantially positive and did not vary greatly across CO racial groups. By highlighting characteristics of the observed gaps in COVID-19 vaccine acceptance between COs and their non-security staff coworkers, as well as between corrections officers of varied demographic backgrounds, these findings can inform the development of responsive and accepted occupational health policies for communities both inside and intrinsically linked to prisons.

Koehler, Johann and Tony Cheng. 2023. “Settling Institutional Uncertainty: Policing Chicago and New York, 1877–1923.” Criminology 61(3): 518-545. [Access it here]

We show how both the Chicago Police Department and the New York Police Department sought to settle uncertainty about their propriety and purpose during a period when abrupt transformations destabilized urban order and called the police mandate into question. By comparing annual reports that the Chicago Police Department and the New York Police Department published from 1877 to 1923, we observe two techniques in how the police enacted that settlement: identification of the problems that the police believed themselves uniquely well equipped to manage and authorization of the powers necessary to do so. Comparison of identification and authorization yields insights into the role that these police departments played in convergent and divergent constructions of disorder and, in turn, into Progressivism's varying effects in early urban policing.

LaChance, Daniel. 2023. “The Death Penalty in Black and White: Execution Coverage in Two Southern Newspapers, 1877-1936.” Law & Social Inquiry 48(3): 999-1022. [Access it here]

In the immediate aftermath of Reconstruction, coverage of executions in the Atlanta Constitution and the New Orleans (Times-)Picayune occasionally portrayed African Americans executed by the state as legally, politically, and spiritually similar to their white counterparts. But as radical white supremacy took hold across the South, the coverage changed. Through an analysis of 667 newspaper articles covering the executions of Black and white men in Georgia and Louisiana from 1877 to 1936, I found that as lynching became the principal form of lethal punishment in the South, accounts of Black men’s legal executions shrank in length and journalists increasingly portrayed them as ciphers, nonentities that the state was dispatching with little fanfare. In contrast, accounts of white men’s executions continued to showcase their individuality and their membership in social, political, and religious communities. A significant gap between the material reality and the cultural representation of capital punishment emerged. Legal executions in Georgia and Louisiana overwhelmingly targeted Black men. But on the pages of each state’s most prominent newspaper, the executions of white men received the most attention. As a result, capital punishment was increasingly represented as a high-status punishment that respected the “whiteness” of those who suffered it.

Lynch, Mona. 2023. “Prosecutors as Punishers: A Case Study of Trump-Era Practices.” Punishment & Society. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

Recent punishment and society scholarship has addressed the limits of policy reforms aimed at reducing mass incarceration in the U.S. This work has focused in particular on the political dimensions of penal legal reform and policy-making, and the compromises and shortcomings in those processes. Nearly absent in this scholarship, however, has been empirical and theoretical engagement with the role of front-line prosecutors as facilitators and/or resistors to downsizing efforts. Using the case of the U.S. federal criminal legal system's modest efforts to decrease the system's racially disparate and punitive outcomes, this paper elucidates the fragile nature of such reforms by delineating the critical role that front-line prosecutors play in maintaining punitive approaches. Focusing specifically on federal prosecutorial policy and practices in the Trump era, I draw on a subset of data from an interdisciplinary, multi-methodological project set in distinct federal court jurisdictions in the U.S. to examine how front-line prosecutors were able to quickly reverse course on reform through the use of their uniquely powerful charging and plea-bargaining tools. My findings illustrate how federal prosecutors pursued more low-level defendants, and utilized statutory “hammers,” including mandatory minimums and mandatory enhancements to ensure harsh punishments in a swift return to a war-on-crime.

Lynch, Mona, Taylor Kidd, and Emily Shaw. 2022. “The Subtle Effects of Implicit Bias Instructions.” Law & Policy44(1): 98-124. [Access it here]

Judges are increasingly using “implicit bias” instructions in jury trials in an effort to reduce the influence of jurors' biases on judgment. In this article, we report on findings from a large-scale mock jury study that tests the impact of implicit bias instructions on judgment in a case where defendant race was varied (Black or white). Using an experimental design, we collected and analyzed quantitative and qualitative data at the individual and group levels obtained from 120 small groups who viewed a simulated federal drug conspiracy trial and then deliberated to determine a verdict. We find that while participants were sensitized to the importance of being unbiased, implicit bias instructions had no measurable impact on verdict outcomes relative to the standard instructions. Our analysis of the deliberations, however, reveals that those who heard the implicit bias instructions were more likely to discuss the issue of bias, potentially with both ameliorative and harmful effects on the defendant. Most significantly, we identified multiple instances where, in an effort to avoid bias, participants who heard the implicit bias instructions interfered with their own or other participants' appropriate assessments of witness credibility.

Lynch, Mona and Emily Shaw. 2023. “Downstream Effects of Frayed Relations: Juror Race, Judgment, and Perceptions of Police.” Race & Justice. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

Building on research demonstrating significant differences in how Black and White Americans view law enforcement, this study assesses how those differential views shape potential jurors’ decision-making in the context of a federal drug conspiracy case in which the primary evidence against the defendant is provided by an FBI agent and an informant cooperating with the agent. A sample of 649 Black and White jury-eligible U.S. citizens were exposed to the case, in which a Black defendant is being tried, and where the informant-witness race (Black or White) was varied. Participants determined verdict, evaluated evidence, and completed additional measures. Results indicated that Black participants were significantly less likely to convict than White participants, especially in the White informant condition; rated the law enforcement witness as less credible, and viewed police more negatively across three composite measures. Exploratory analysis of how juror race and gender interacted indicates Black women largely drove racial differences in verdicts. Perceptions of police legitimacy mediated the relationship between juror race and verdict choice. We conclude that it is critical that citizens are not prevented from being seated on juries due to skepticism about police, given the risk of disproportionate exclusion of Black potential jurors. The legal processes relevant to juror excusals need to be reconsidered to ensure that views of police, rooted in actual experience or knowledge about the problems with fair and just policing, are not used to disproportionately exclude persons of color, or to seat juries overrepresented by people who blindly trust police.

Shlafer, Rebecca J., Michelle S. Phelps, J’Mag Karbeah, and Alyssa Scott. 2023. “Parents on Probation: Custody, Co-Residence, and Care of Minor Children During Community Supervision.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

Family science and public health scholars have documented the consequences of incarceration for the well-being of individuals, children, families, and communities. Yet the largest form of supervision in the criminal legal system is not imprisonment, but probation, with little known about the experiences of parents on probation. We analyzed interviews with 153 adults on probation, 68 (44%) of whom reported being parents of minor children (under 18 years). Compared to participants without minor children, parents with minor children were younger and more likely to be employed. Among parents, 42% reported having custody of one or more minor children and 20% lived with their minor children at the time of the interview. Yet, most (82%) parents reported they provided some form of care or support. Qualitative analyses of four case studies show the challenges facing parents on probation and the complex intersection of custody, living arrangements, and care and support for minor children. We find that parenthood and probation are interconnected, with parent status influencing the experience of supervision and probation impacting parenting opportunities and constraints. Findings suggest service providers working with parents on probation need to attend to these complex family dynamics.

Valdovinos Olson, Maria. 2023. “The Promise and Practice of Care in Prisoner Reentry.” Sociological Forum 38(3): 752-769. [Access it here]

Although the provision of care is a core project of prisoner reentry, we know little about how care is conceived and practiced in this context. In particular, the period between pre-release, discharge into community corrections, and eventual release into the community is a critical juncture for ensuring important continuity of care linkages that can bolster the potential for reentry success. Nevertheless, what care means and entails in this context remains undefined. Drawing on a nationally representative sample of reentry planning, discharge/release, and community corrections policies and procedures in 45 U.S. State Departments of Correction, I examine how care is conceptualized, structured, and deployed during this transitional phase. Findings illuminate important considerations in the development of correctional policy focused on reentry and raise theoretical concerns regarding the provision of care for non-traditional and carceral care populations.

Wozniak, Kevin H., Justin T. Pickett, and Elizabeth K. Brown. 2022. “Judging Hardworking Robbers and Lazy Thieves: An Experimental Test of Act- vs. Person-Centered Punitiveness and Perceived Redeemability.” Justice Quarterly 39(7): 1565-1591. [Access it here]

This study explores whether Americans’ punitiveness and perceptions of redeemability are shaped more by the type of crime committed or by judgements about an offender’s moral character. Guided by theories of neoliberalism, we focus on laziness as an indicator of flawed character that is independent of criminality. A sentencing vignette experiment administered to a national sample of the U.S. population tested the effects of crime type and a defendant’s employment status, work ethic, and race on respondents’ preferred punishment and perceptions of the defendant’s redeemability. Both crime type and work ethic significantly affect perceived (ir)redeemability and sentencing preferences, but the effects are not identical. Work ethic exerts the largest effect on perceived (ir)redeemability, whereas crime type most strongly influences sentencing preferences. We discuss the implications of our findings for act- vs. person-centered theories of punishment, as well as the role of laziness stigma in social responses to lawbreakers.

BOOKS/BOOK CHAPTERS/EDITED COLLECTIONS

Alam, Mariful, Patrick Dwyer, and Katrin Roots. Eds. 2023. Violence, Imagination, and Resistance: Socio-legal Interrogations of Power. AU Press. [More information here]

Asfari, Amin, James Gacek, and Amny Shuraydi. 2024. “Islam, Islamophobia, and the Carceral Experience.” Pp. 364-379 in Danielle Rudes, Gaylene Armstrong, Kimberly Kras, and TaLisa Carter (Eds.) Handbook on Prisons and Jails. Routledge. [More information here]

People in the U.S. and Canada are increasingly reconsidering their religious and spiritual identities. Incarcerated individuals are no exception. Still, the corrections populations in these countries have become more diverse in terms of religion and ethnicity. While the religious landscape in the U.S. and Canadian prison settings is vast and varied, there remains relatively little attention toward Islam and Islamophobia within these settings. This conceptual chapter endeavors to summarize what is known about Islam and Islamophobia in prison settings, while simultaneously outlining emerging areas of theoretical work that shed light on aspects of the carceral experience.

Ben-Natan, Smadar. Forthcoming. “The Shadow of the Death Penalty in Israel: Constructing Enemies, Citizens, and Victims.” In Ben Fleury-Steiner and Austin Sarat (Eds.) Companion on Capital Punishment. [Access it here]

Israel abolished the death penalty for criminal murder but retained it for political offenses reflecting "enemy penology": treason, terrorism, and genocide. In practice, Israel executed only the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann, refraining from executions even for the bloodiest terrorist attacks. Military courts handed death sentences that have all been revoked, resulting in de-facto abolition. By historically analyzing the judicial discourse in military and civilian capital cases, this chapter makes three arguments. First, enemies are constructed as a scale of multiple categories such as Nazis, traitors, and terrorists. Second, de-facto abolition maintains a shadow of the death penalty over enemy populations. This shadow laid heavier on Palestinian citizens of Israel, constructed as "citizen-enemies," carrying the double brunt of terrorism and treason. The courts created an inverted hierarchy that enhanced punishments of citizens. Third, enemy penology functions on a symbolic level that contrasts evil enemies with an a-historic self-image of victimhood.

Brown, Mark. 2023. “Colonialism and Penality.” Pp. 380-390 in Chris Cunneen, Antje Deckert, Amanda Porter, Juan Tauri, and Robert Webb (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Decolonizing Justice. Routledge. [More information here]

This chapter focuses on the relationship between colonialism and penality. Drawing on the history of South Asia, I develop my argument by beginning first with a contrast. On the one hand, we find in mainstream accounts in supposedly ‘critical’ criminologies a startlingly simplistic presentation of colonialism as simple, pure, or unalloyed repression. Repression was undoubtedly a feature of colonial penal power, and I detail many examples of how it was the case on the Indian subcontinent. But such approaches hardly explain why colonial penal power was so durable, so effective, or why we still wrestle with it today. To understand that we need to recognize a second, larger formation: that which made colonial penal power productive. What we find, when looking critically, when we change lenses, is that penal power in India was also productive: it produced flexible spaces of plural legality and penality, highly nuanced grids of control across social spaces, and modes of plural and often tolerant penal governance. The enduring, residual, power of colonial penalities today thus arises not because colonial power was a big stick or a heavy hammer, though it often was both of those. The omnipresence and difficulty of escaping colonial penal power reflects the difficulty of escaping, of getting outside, these modalities of its productive renewal, established in colonial locations but now a universal inheritance.

Halushka, John M. 2023. Getting the Runaround: Formerly Incarcerated Men and the Bureaucratic Barriers to Reentry. University of California Press. [More information here]

Getting the Runaround takes readers into the bureaucratic spaces of prisoner reentry, examining how returning citizens navigate the “institutional circuit” of parole offices, public assistance programs, rehabilitation facilities, shelters, and family courts. Drawing on three years of ethnographic fieldwork and forty-five in-depth interviews with formerly incarcerated men returning to New York City, John M. Halushka argues that the very institutions charged with facilitating the transition from incarceration to community life perversely undermine reintegration by imposing a litany of bureaucratic obstacles. This “runaround” is not merely a series of inconveniences but rather an extension of state punishment that exacerbates material poverty and diminishes citizenship rights. By telling the stories of men caught in vicious cycles of poverty, bureaucratic processing, and social control, Halushka demonstrates the urgent need to shift reentry away from an austerity-driven, compliance-based framework and toward a vision of social justice and inclusion.

Headworth, Spencer. 2023. Rules of the Road: The Automobile and the Transformation of American Criminal Justice. Stanford University Press. [More information here]

Driving is an unavoidable part of life in the United States. Even those who don't drive much likely know someone who does. More than just a simple method of getting from point A to point B, however, driving has been a significant influence on the United States' culture, economy, politics – and its criminal justice system. Rules of the Road tracks the history of the car alongside the history of crime and criminal justice in the United States, demonstrating how the quick and numerous developments in criminal law corresponded to the steadily rising prominence, and now established supremacy, of the automobile.

A teaching guide including lists of key concepts/jumping-off points, ideas for in-class activities, and media resources for each chapter is available for free download under the “excerpts and more” tab on the book's SUP webpage.

Miller, Esmorie. 2023. “‘The Alchemy of Race and Rights’: The Logic of Historicizing the Contemporary Racialized Youth and Gang Phenomenon.” Pp. 297-321 in Paul Andell and John Pitts (Eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK. Palgrave Macmillan. [More information here]

This chapter explores statutory approaches to the contemporary, urban youth gang phenomenon as a relevant case for historicization. Indeed, within the UK, scholarship references a ‘race-gang nexus’ (Williams, 2015: 18; see also Nijjar, 2018), contending the phenomenon has been given a Black and or ethnic face (Hallsworth and Young, 2008: 185), despite knowledge that consumption of concomitant, contributory cultural artefacts like rap [and drill] music ‘include youths of all races, classes, and nationalities’ (Tatum, 1999: 341). Guided by corresponding concerns, the chapter draws from the critical race theory (CRT) tradition, particularly CRT scholar Patricia L. Williams’ influential ‘Alchemy of race and rights’ (1991: 6) logic, to historicize an account of the racialization of contemporary youth gang concerns. Williams’ thesis corresponds with the CRT (Crenshaw et al., 1995; Bell, 1992) position that racialized peoples were excluded from expanding universal rights, flowing from the enlightenment, and instituted coterminous with modernity. Williams’ thesis allows observation of statutory responses to the youth gang—particularly the gang’s racialization—as a process constituted by the contemporary reproduction of a historic race, rights paradox. According to this, expectations for a synthesis of race and rights represents an ‘Oxymoronic oddity’ (Williams, 1991: 6), signifying how young black men, in particular, suffer the suppression of rights never conferred in the first place, to racialized peoples. 

Miller, Esmorie. 2023. “The Road from History: Gender and Race in Early Twentieth Century English Youth Penal Reform” Chapter 2 in Jade Levell, Tara Young, and Rod Earle (Eds.) Exploring Urban Youth Culture Outside of the Gang Paradigm: Critical Questions of Youth, Gender and Race On-Road. Bristol University Press. [More information here]

The analysis in this chapter draws on documentary research from the Liverpool University Archives, including the Fletcher Report (1930) and the digitized catalogue of the Eugenics Review, a populist journal spanning 1909 to 1968. While documents like the Report introduced racialized youth to Britain, as a problematic cohort, the pseudo-science promulgated in the Review supported the racial politics positioning these youth outside the redemptive scope of early penal reform efforts. Fletcher (1930: 26) concluded that ‘These families have a low standard of life, morally and economically, and there appears to be little future for the children.’ This conclusion stands counter to narratives supporting rehabilitation for White, working class youth, especially during the interwar period (Miller, 2022). In this chapter, the concept of being on ‘the road’ offers a unique lens to give gendered relevance to this history. For example, during this time, young women’s search for opportunities met with resistance at both the societal and institutional levels. In this regard, Crenshaw’s intersectional logic attends to the important intersections of race, gender, youth giving critical currency to the wider implications of this exclusion. In historicising and gendering ‘on road’ in this way, the chapter emphasizes the importance of conceptual approaches expanding the explanatory scope about racialized youth’s contemporary contested positioning, beyond the customary malignant suturing to crime and punishment.

Valdovinos Olson, Maria. 2023. “Reentry and Public Policy Solutions: Addressing Barriers to Housing and Employment.” Pp. 64-72 in Kristen M. Budd, David C. Lane, Glenn W. Muschert, and Jason A. Smith (Eds.) Beyond Bars: A Path Forward From 50 Years of Mass Incarceration in the United States. Policy Press. [More information here]

Valdovinos Olson, Maria and Karen L. Amendola. 2023. “Adopting Community Policing Principles in Jails to Build Community and Improve Safety, Health, and Wellness Outcomes” Pp. 206-227 in Danielle Rudes, Gaylene Armstrong, Kimberly Kras, and TaLisa Carter (Eds.) Handbook on Prisons and Jails. Routledge. [More information here]

The community-oriented policing paradigm's emphasis on the proactive examination of community-identified problems and the development of collaborative responses to solving those problems offers an actionable framework for improving conditions of everyday living and working in confinement. In this chapter, we highlight two separate jail management strategies employed by the L.A. County Sheriff's Department (LASD) during the A.B. 109 re-alignment period under Sheriff Jim McDonnell's tenure. The first strategy entailed the implementation of a town sheriff and town hall approach to addressing the grievances of the gay male and transgender female population housed in the men's jail. The second strategy entailed the implementation of a gender-responsive advocate and liaison approach to addressing the needs of the pregnant resident population in the women's jail. We discuss the implications of these two strategies for solving problems that have implications for the safety, health, and wellness outcomes of individuals living and working within these penal settings.

Whittaker, A. and Esmorie Miller. 2022. “The Challenge of Youth Gangs: Problems and Responses in UK and Canadian Contexts.” Pp. 133-151 in Denis Lafortune et al. (Eds.) Young People in Difficulty: A Collective Challenge. University of Montréal Press. [More information here]

In the UK, there has been considerable controversy about whether street gangs exist. Just over ten years ago, Pitts (2007, 2008) published the first of what has become a wave of UK gang studies (Densley 2013; Deuchar 2009; Harding, 2014, McLean, 2019) that have marked a growth in interest in the nature of gangs (Andell, 2019). Early debates focused upon whether gangs were a social construction based upon media portrayals of young people, particularly young black people, in negative ways (Hallsworth, 2013; Hallsworth and Young, 2008) or whether there were a response to inner city poverty and structural disadvantage (Pitts, 2008, 2012, 2016). The analysis in this chapter utilizes Merton’s (1948) conception of the self-fulfilling prophecy, exhorting an expansion of the analytical scope regarding the understanding of the youth gang phenomenon as an evolving entity, particularly narratives framing the understanding of an evolution from expressive to instrumental gang action (Whittaker et al., 2019). It is argued that the evolution of the youth gang phenomenon in contemporary western representation and understanding exemplifies what scholars mean when they talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton, 1948)—denoting how what is fictive becomes reality.

Wozniak, Kevin H. 2023. The Politics of Crime Prevention: Race, Public Opinion, and the Meaning of Community Safety. New York University Press. [More information here]

“Defund the police.” This slogan became a rallying cry among Black Lives Matter protesters following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020. These three words evoke a fundamental question about America’s policy priorities: should the nation rely predominantly upon the branches of the criminal justice system to arrest, prosecute, and imprison offenders, or should the nation prioritize fixing structural causes of crime by investing more heavily in the infrastructure and institutions of disadvantaged communities? To put it simply, do Americans actually prefer punishment over crime prevention?

The Politics of Crime Prevention examines American public opinion about crime prevention in the twenty-first century with a particular focus on how average citizens would choose to prioritize resources between the criminal justice system and community-based institutions. Kevin H. Wozniak analyzes differences of opinion across lines of race, social class, and political partisanship, and investigates whether people’s willingness to invest in communities depends upon the kind of communities that would receive money. This book moves beyond criminologists’ typical focus on public opinion about punishment that follows acts of crime to instead examine public attitudes toward crime prevention. In this brilliant and compelling study, Wozniak reveals that politicians profoundly underestimate the American public’s desire to prioritize community investment and that it is long past time to help communities thrive instead of turning to the criminal justice system to respond to every social problem.

 

PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP

Gacek, James, Jocelyne Lemoine, Breeann Phillips, Julianne Langois, Rosemary Ricciardelli, and Dale C. Spencer. 2023. “Exploring Gender-Based Violence in Canadian Prisons: A Scoping Review.” Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: Knowledge Synthesis Grants Mobilization Forum, and the University of Regina Institutional Repository. [Access it here]