As compiled by Kaitlyn Quinn
LAW AND SOCIETY ASSOCIATION
Collaborative Research Network: Punishment and Society
Organizers:
Hadar Aviram, UC Hastings College of Law, USA
Ashley Rubin, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, USA
RECENTLY PUBLISHED WORKS
October 2020
ARTICLES
Brangan, L. (2019). Civilizing Imprisonment: The Limits of Scottish Penal Exceptionalism. British Journal of Criminology 59(4): 780-799. [Access it here]
This paper was awarded the British Society of Criminology’s Brian Williams Prize for 2020. This accolade is awarded to the author of a criminological article who is a ‘new’ scholar, published in a refereed academic journal.
Focusing on imprisonment in Scotland during the 1980s–1990s, and drawing on extensive archival research, documentary analysis and interviews with seven retired civil servants and prison governors, this article is the first to provide an historical and analytical account of Scottish penal exceptionalism. It is argued that although not being punitive in its penal transformation, Scotland cannot rightly be defined as a historically moderate and humane exception when it comes to its prison system. Instead it is shown how the Scottish power to imprison was modernized and made more civilized, allowing prisons inevitable pains to be denied and submerged.
Crewe, B. (2020). The depth of imprisonment. Punishment & Society. Online first. [Access it here]
Based on a large, comparative study of prisoner experiences in England & Wales and Norway, this article explores the concept of the ‘depth of imprisonment’ – put most simply, the degree of control, isolation and difference from the outside world – in two stages. First, it sets out the various factors that contribute to ‘depth’ i.e. its core components. Second, it outlines the most frequent metaphors used to communicate depth, highlighting the ways in which these metaphors bring into focus a range of ways in which the basic fact of imprisonment – the deprivation of liberty, and the removal of the individual from the community – is experienced. In doing so, the article also makes a case for the adoption of conceptual metaphors as a means of describing prison systems and regimes, and thereby attending to the ways in which prisoners experience some of the most fundamental elements of incarceration.
Hamilton-Smith, G. (2021). Banishing ‘Sex Offenders’: How Our Meaningless Language Makes Bad Law. Southwestern Law Review. Online first. [Access it here]
An essay on how the term "sex offender" is functionally meaningless, and invites policy responses that are out of step with the reality of sexual harm. These policy responses, in turn, hobble our efforts to reckon with sexual harm, foreclose accountability and redemption, and elide more effective approaches.
Kerrison, E. M., and Sewell, A. A. (2020). Negative illness feedbacks: High-frisk policing reduces civilian reliance on ED services. Health Services Research, 55(Supplement 2): 787-796. [Access it here]
Objective: This paper demonstrates that localized and chronic stop‐question‐and‐frisk (SQF) practices are associated with community members’ utilization of emergency department (ED) resources. To explain this relationship, we explore the empirical applicability of a legal epidemiological framework, or the study of legal institutional influences on the distribution of disease and injury.
Data and Study Design: Analyses are derived from merging data from the Philadelphia Vehicle and Pedestrians Investigation, the National Historical Geographic Information System, and the Southeastern Philadelphia Community Health database to zip code identifiers common to all datasets. Weighted multilevel negative binomial regressions measure the influence that local SQF practices have on ED use for this population. Analytic methods incorporate patient demographic covariates including household size, health insurance status, and having a doctor as a usual source of care.
Principal Findings: Findings reveal that both tract‐level frisking and poor health are linked to more frequent use of hospital EDs, per respondent report. Despite their health care needs, however, reporting poor/fair health status is associated with a substantial decrease in the rate of emergency department visits as neighborhood frisk concentration increases (IRR = 0.923; 95% CI: 0.891, 0.957). Moreover, more sickly people in high‐frisk neighborhoods live in tracts that have greater racial disparities in frisking—a pattern that accounts for the moderating role of neighborhood frisking in sick people's usage of the emergency room.
Conclusions: Findings indicating the robust association reported above interrogate the chronic incompatibility of local health and human service system aims. The study also provides an interdisciplinary theoretical lens through which stakeholders can make sense of these challenges and their implications.
Maier, K. (2020). Intermediary Workers: Narratives of supervision and support work within the halfway house setting. Probation Journal. Online first. [Access it here]
Drawing on interviews with halfway house staff, this article provides insight into how these workers conceive of their work and occupational identities within the specific context of the halfway house. Specifically, I examine how halfway house workers seek to differentiate their work and approach to governing former prisoners from that of parole officers. I demonstrate how halfway house workers in this study capitalized on their intermediary position as quasi-state agents, using meso-level complications and struggle to carve out a space in which they felt empowered to carry out multiple, and sometimes conflicting, agendas in their everyday work with halfway house residents.
Peirce, J. 2020. Overuse of Pretrial Detention in tension with Judicial and Prison Reforms in the Dominican Republic. Latin American Law Review 5(20): 45-69. [Access it here]
In 2003, the Dominican Republic began to shift towards an adversarial judicial model and has implemented one of the region’s most ambitious reforms to its prison system, based on rehabilitative and human rights principles. Although these reforms have improved prison conditions and trial processes, the number of people incarcerated has nearly doubled, from 14,000 to over 26,000. This increase is due mostly to rising rates of pretrial detention, despite the availability of alternative pretrial measures. Drawing on data from prisoner surveys, interviews, and administrative data, this paper analyzes individual- and institutional-level factors that might explain variation in the decision as to whether impose pretrial detention or not. Several legal and extra-legal factors that are salient in other research on pretrial detention, such as charge and education level, are not significantly associated with pretrial detention decisions at individual level in the Dominican Republic. Qualitative findings suggest that broader system-level factors – specifically institutional capacity gaps, inaccessible cash bail, risk-averse decisions by attorneys and judges, and general penal populism – are more important. This suggests that in order for policymakers to reduce the overuse of pretrial detention, they should focus more attention on institutional and political dynamics rather than individual-level disparities.
Rengifo, A., Rouzbahani, D., and Peirce, J. 2020. Court interpreters and the political economy of punishment in three first-appearance courts. Law & Policy 42(3): 236-260. [Access it here]
Criminal courts in the United States engage defendants with Limited English Proficiency on a regular basis. However, we know little about how court‐appointed interpreters shape case‐level routines and dispositions, nor how these interpreters navigate their immediate courtroom environment. We draw on observations of bail hearings (N = 647) conducted in 2015–16 in three arraignment courts in New York and New Jersey to map the practice and consequences of language interpretation. More specifically, we examine whether the use of an interpreter relates to indicators of judicial treatment and case disposition by bail type/amount, and explore more broadly how the presence of interpreters shapes the casework of other courtroom actors. Results from multivariate regression models indicate that cases with interpreters are associated with a more limited judicial review, a lower likelihood of unconditional release, and higher cash bonds. We discuss these findings in terms of evolving mechanisms of social control and the criminalization of disadvantaged populations.
Sheely, A. (2020). State supervision, punishment and poverty: The case of drug bans on welfare receipt. Punishment & Society. Online first. [Access it here]
This article explores the relationship between supervisory approaches to governance, punishment, and poverty among people with drug convictions. Tying government assistance to supervision could improve employment and economic outcomes. However, if experienced as punishment, recipients may forgo financial assistance and be more likely to experience poverty. Using information on policies that restrict access to welfare for people with drug felony convictions in the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) and the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP), this paper makes two contributions. First, it documents state variation in the balance between supervision and punishment in these bans. Second, using data from NLSY97, it estimates how individuals’ likelihood of being in poverty is related to state SNAP drug ban policies. States have shifted away from overtly punitive policies denying access to welfare toward policies that increase supervisory requirements, especially for SNAP. This shows that punitiveness extends beyond work activation programs like TANF. Additionally, poverty among people with drug convictions is almost half in no ban states compared to those in full ban states. While poverty is lower in states that include supervisory requirements than in those for which a drug conviction fully blocks access to welfare, this difference was not statistically significant.
van der Valk, S., and Rogan, M. (2020). Experiencing human rights protections in prisons: The case of prison monitoring in Ireland. European Journal of Criminology. Online first. [Access it here]
The protection of human rights in prison gives rise to unique challenges. The power differentials and dynamics involved, the need to balance considerations of security with those of dignity, and the lack of openness to the outside world mean that the implementation of human rights principles takes on a particular importance in these environments. International human rights law has increasingly emphasized the importance of external oversight of prisons as a way to prevent torture and ill-treatment and to uphold fundamental rights more generally. Although the monitoring of prisons is now quite well established as a principle of European and international human rights provisions, we know surprisingly little about how people in prison experience and understand monitoring bodies. This gap in our understanding is part of a wider lack of literature on how prisoners experience their rights and protections of their rights. This article addresses that gap a, reporting on qualitative findings from a study with people in prison in Ireland on their views and perceptions of a monitoring body: the Inspector of Prisons. The article finds evidence of a lack of awareness of, and a deficit of trust in, monitoring. However, this picture is complex, with people in prison also viewing the concept of monitoring as a good way to protect rights, believing that the visibility of monitors, clarity in their role and powers, and ensuring that a variety of voices are heard by monitoring bodies are important elements of a good system of prison oversight.
Young, K. M. (2020). Legal Ruralism and California Parole Hearings: Space, Place, and the Carceral Landscape. Rural Sociology. Online first. [Access it here]
This article discusses the important relationship between rurality and criminal justice processes, drawing on field observations and in‐depth interviews with parole commissioners to argue that California's physical carceral landscape profoundly shapes lifer parole hearings. First, commissioners report that prisons' location in rural areas affects the rehabilitative resources available, which are seen as an important aspect of their readiness for release. Location and perceived rurality of prisons shape commissioners' perception of the inmates at various institutions, creating implicitly different standards for inmates housed at different prisons. Second, spatiality and rurality influence parole commissioners' work lives, exacting a toll that includes onerous travel, early burnout, and challenges to assembling a diverse board. Together, these findings underscore the importance of legal ruralism to the relationship between spatial and carceral landscapes.
BOOKS/BOOK CHAPTERS/EDITED COLLECTIONS
Carlson, J. (2020). Policing the Second Amendment: Guns, Law Enforcement, and the Politics of Race. Princeton University Press. [More information here]
The United States is steeped in guns, gun violence—and gun debates. As arguments rage on, one issue has largely been overlooked—Americans who support gun control turn to the police as enforcers of their preferred policies, but the police themselves disproportionately support gun rights over gun control. Yet who do the police believe should get gun access? When do they pursue aggressive enforcement of gun laws? And what part does race play in all of this? Policing the Second Amendment unravels the complex relationship between the police, gun violence, and race. Rethinking the terms of the gun debate, Jennifer Carlson shows how the politics of guns cannot be understood—or changed—without considering how the racial politics of crime affect police attitudes about guns.
Drawing on local and national newspapers, interviews with close to eighty police chiefs, and a rare look at gun licensing processes, Carlson explores the ways police talk about guns, and how firearms are regulated in different parts of the country. Examining how organizations such as the National Rifle Association have influenced police perspectives, she describes a troubling paradox of guns today—while color-blind laws grant civilians unprecedented rights to own, carry, and use guns, people of color face an all-too-visible system of gun criminalization. This racialized framework—undergirding who is “a good guy with a gun” versus “a bad guy with a gun”—informs and justifies how police understand and pursue public safety.
Policing the Second Amendment demonstrates that the terrain of gun politics must be reevaluated if there is to be any hope of mitigating further tragedies.
Iftene, A. 2020. Aging Prisoners in the Canadian Federal Correctional System. In C. Cesaroni (ed.), Canadian Prisons. Understanding the Canadian Correctional System. Oxford University Press, pp. 213-228. [More information here]
LAW AND SOCIETY ASSOCIATION
Collaborative Research Network: Punishment and Society
Organizers:
Hadar Aviram, UC Hastings College of Law, USA
Ashley Rubin, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, USA
RECENTLY PUBLISHED WORKS
July 2020
ARTICLES
Crewe, B and Ievins, A. 2020. “‘Tightness’, recognition and penal power.” Punishment & Society. Online first. [Access it here]
Prison scholarship has tended to focus on the pains and frustrations that result from the use and over-use of penal power. Yet the absence of such power and the subjective benefits of its grip are also worthy of attention. This article begins by drawing on recent literature and research findings to develop the concept of ‘tightness’ beyond its initial formulation. Drawing primarily on data from a study of men convicted of sex offences, it goes on to explain that, in some circumstances, the reach and hold of penal power are not experienced as oppressive and undesirable, and, indeed, may be welcomed. Conversely, institutional inattention and an absence of grip may be experienced as painful. Prisons, then, can be ‘loose’ or ‘lax’ as well as ‘tight’. The article then discusses the different ways in which prisons exercise grip, and, in doing so, recognise or misrecognise the subjectivity of the individual prisoner. It concludes by identifying the connections between this ‘ground-up’ analysis of the relative legitimacy of different forms of penal intervention and recent discussions in penal theory about the proper role of the state in communicating censure and promoting personal repentance and change.
Gibson-Light, Michael. 2020. “Sandpiles of Dignity: Labor Status and Boundary-Making in the Contemporary American Prison.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 6(1):198-216. [Access it here]
This study investigates discursive strategies through which prisoners seek dignity. In particular, it turns toward the role of penal labor in such pursuits. Drawing on eighty-two in-depth interviews and eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted within one U.S. men’s prison, it details the role of job status in prisoner dignity claims. In the scramble to the top of a shifting sandpile of dignity, prisoner appeals to legitimacy rely on downward-facing symbolic boundaries erected to distinguish from lower-status others. Participants in the highest-status work sites made moral claims against others by self-identifying as professionals rather than inmates. At the bottom reaches of the labor hierarchy, workers emphasized lateral distances from other low-status prisoners. These competitive processes serve to reify penal labor structures, inequity, and control.
Gibson-Light, Michael and Seim, Josh. 2020. “Punishing Fieldwork: Penal Domination and Prison Ethnography.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. Online first. [Access it here]
Ethnographic studies inside prisons are especially difficult to execute. In addition to facing amplified challenges in gaining site access, earning subjects’ trust, and tolerating the exhaustion of fieldwork, researchers who collect participant observation and in-depth interview data behind bars must confront an explicit asymmetrical power relation. Prison ethnographers penetrate, to varying levels of depth, a social universe where staff dominate prisoners and where prisoners, largely in response to the pains of their imprisonment, carve paths to dignity. This paper considers how and where non-staff and non-incarcerated ethnographers can awkwardly fit into (or fail out of) this space. Drawing on insights from two ethnographic studies in the United States, the authors detail their particular and common experiences across three phases: access, collection, and exit. These experiences motivate a description of prison ethnography as “punishing fieldwork.” Such research is not only exacting, it is also significantly contained and directed by penal power.
Goodman, Philip. 2020. “‘Work Your Story’: Selective, Voluntary, Disclosure, Stigma Management, and Narratives of Seeking Employment After Prison.” Law & Social Inquiry. Online first. [Access it here]
Using interviews with forty formerly incarcerated people in the Greater Toronto Area, I explore how criminal record holders describe seeking work. People articulate being driven by a desire to be selective to whom, when, and how they disclose their past criminal record; they simultaneously want to talk about their past, at least to some people, some of the time. Many say they are quite selective in what types of jobs and employers they seek out, and their efforts to secure employment are driven by broader projects of stigma management. In light of these findings, I coin “selective, voluntary disclosure” (SVD) as a new set of policy configurations that aim to facilitate not only employment but also dignity, privacy, and empowerment. SVD is well attuned with what former prisoners describe doing on an everyday basis, and it accords with their goals, aspirations, and rehabilitative self-projects.
Iftene, Adelina. 2020. “The Bad, the Ugly, and the Horrible: What I Learned about Humanity by Doing Prison Research.” Dalhousie Law Journal 43(1) [Access it here]
Every Canadian academic conducting research with humans must submit an ethics application with their university’s Research Ethics Board. One of the key questions in that application inquired into the level of vulnerability of the interviewees. Filling in that question, I had to check nearly every box: the interviewees were incarcerated, old, under-educated, poor, Indigenous or other racial minorities, and likely had mental and physical disabilities. However, it was not until I met John that I understood what all those boxes actually meant. They were signalling that I was entering a universe of extreme marginalization—the universe of the forgotten. I learned then what we, as a society, look like at our worst, when no one watches, when there is no money to be made and no votes to be gained. Entering this universe has allowed me to identify some broader socio-legal issues, applicable across prison demographics, from gaps in prison health care and punitive carceral responses to health needs, to substantive and procedural access to justice for violations of rights in prisons and the role of health care and access to justice in achieving the rehabilitative and reintegration goals of sentencing.
Iftene, Adelina and Downie, Jocelyn. 2020. “End-of-Life Care for Federally Incarcerated Individuals in Canada.” McGill Journal of Law and Health 14(1): 1-50. [Access it here]
In this article, we review the current legislation, policies, and practices related to end-of-life care for federally incarcerated individuals as set out in statutes, guidelines, and government reports and documents that were either publicly available or obtained through Access to Information requests from the Parole Board of Canada and Correctional Service of Canada (CSC). Based on this review, we describe the status quo, identify gaps, and offer reflections and raise concerns regarding end-of-life care for federally incarcerated individuals. We conclude that there are significant information gaps about the number of people seeking end-of-life care and about how CSC is managing the provision of such care. The sparse information available is nonetheless sufficient to support the conclusion that there are good reasons to be concerned about how end-of-life care is regulated, monitored, recorded, and provided. Significant reforms are needed.
Kleinstuber, Ross and Coldsmith, Jeremiah. 2020. “Is Life Without Parole an Effective Way to Reduce Violent Crime? An Empirical Assessment.” Criminology & Public Policy 19(2): 617-651. [Access it here]
Research Summary: By taking advantage of data published by the Sentencing Project to analyze whether states that use life without parole (LWOP) more often experience lower violent crime rates or greater reductions in violent crime, this study is the first to empirically assess the crime reducing potential of LWOP sentences. The results suggest that LWOP might produce a small absolute reduction in violent crime but that it is no more effective than life with parole.
Policy Implications: Despite reductions in the use of the death penalty, LWOP has expanded dramatically—and at a much faster rate—over the last quarter century. This expansion has come at great financial and human costs and has not been distributed equally throughout the population. As such, the public policy debate over the use of LWOP is likely to intensify. Yet, to date, there have been no empirical assessments of LWOP’s efficacy to inform this debate. This study begins to fill this gap in our knowledge, and the results, if replicated, suggest that the use of LWOP should be either scaled back or eliminated.
Kleinstuber, Ross, Zaykowski, Heather and McDonough, Caitlin. 2020. “‘Ideal Victims’ in Capital Penalty Hearings: An Assessment of Victim Impact Evidence and Sentencing Outcomes.” Journal of Crime and Justice 43(1): 93-109. [Access it here]
Critics have argued that victim impact evidence (VIE) may enhance sentencing biases by encouraging judges and juries to treat some types of victims as worthier than others. Yet, research to date has not utilized trial transcripts to assess differences in the quantity and quality of evidence presented. The current study addresses this gap by utilizing transcripts from Delaware capital sentencing hearings (2001–2011). The results indicated that more VIE witnesses were called and a greater amount of VIE was presented when victims aligned more closely with the cultural stereotype of the ‘ideal victim.’ ‘Ideal victims’ were also more likely to be described as having contributed to the community and to be associated with the judge issuing a death sentence. However, VIE itself, what witnesses said about victims and their characters, was not correlated with sentencing outcomes. These findings suggest that victim attributes rather than VIE may be driving sentencing bias.
Kupchik, Aaron F, Curran, Chris, Fisher, Benjamin W and Viano, Samantha L. 2020. “Police Ambassadors: Student-Police Interactions in School and Legal Socialization.” Law & Society Review 54: 391-422. [Access it here]
The recent influx of police officers into US public schools has reshaped the context and frequency of children’s interactions with police. Yet we know little about how the presence of these officers in schools impacts the legal socialization of students, and whether youth of color might be affected or socialized in different ways than white youth. In this study, we analyze data from interviews with school police officers as well as focus group data from school staff, parents, and students that shed light on how school police interact with youth. In particular, school police officers discussed their desire to build relationships with students that instill trust in police among students. Officers discussed their efforts to teach students that police should be trusted and relied on, and that negative views of policing and involvement with the justice system are the result of a negative news media and individual citizens’ criminality, respectively. Importantly, officers discussed how they devote particular attention to imparting these lessons on youth of color and others who may see police in a negative light. We consider how these outreach efforts, what we call acting as police ambassadors, might have different impacts on youth of color compared to white youth, given existing racial disparities in interactions with police.
Lynch, Mona. 2020. “Double duty: The amplified role of special circumstances in California’s capital punishment system.” Columbia Human Rights Law Review 51(3): 1010-1042. [Access it here]
Legal scholars have argued that relying solely upon the eligibility decision in capital case processing to reduce arbitrary outcomes contravenes the underlying goal articulated in Gregg v. Georgia. This Article adds to this line of scholarship by illustrating how eligibility and selection are not easily distinguished as discrete decisions when capital juries are tasked with doing both in the course of their duties. To the extent that most sentencing schemes rely upon capital juries to do both jobs — determine eligibility and make the selection decision — the consideration of aggravating evidence for the purpose of eligibility, and its use as something to be weighed in determining sentencing, is messier in practice. Specifically, the Article focuses on California’s death penalty scheme to illustrate how its over-broad eligibility criteria “bite twice,” first by failing to narrow the pool of defendants who may face the death penalty (the “eligibility decision”), and then by swamping the selection decision by exerting extraordinary influence on the jury’s sentencing decision, relative to mitigating evidence. The Article first details California’s death penalty process including its narrowing mechanism. Then the Article presents evidence from empirical research that offers insight into how death-eligible Californians understand and consider statutory aggravation (“special circumstances” in California’s statutory scheme), especially in relation to mitigating evidence. The Article concludes by outlining next steps for further research on how eligibility and selection determinations work together to produce the twin failures of California’s current death penalty machinery: a failure to narrow eligibility and a failure to ensure coherence in sentence outcomes.
Lynch, Mona. 2020. “Regressive prosecutors: Law & order politics and practices in Trump’s DOJ.” Hastings Journal of Crime & Punishment 1(2): 195-220. [Access it here]
This essay examines how the “Trump/Sessions/Barr”6 regime has approached criminal justice policy in an era of progressive reform. It first details the contours of the Trump-era DOJ criminal justice policies and practices to illustrate its countertrend status, then it delineates the DOJ policy statements and actual efforts to impose on state and local criminal justice operations through various initiatives. Specifically, it examines how federal law enforcement itself is being mobilized to reinvigorate a “law and order” approach to street crime, including direct targeting of jurisdictions that have adopted more progressive policies and practices. It argues that a dangerous turn has happened in the Barr DOJ that extends and multiplies the threats posed by the Sessions regime, with significant negative consequences for individual defendants and, potentially, the larger criminal justice reform movement that is exemplified by the progressive prosecutor movement. It concludes by considering the limits of the federal countermovement to progressive criminal system reform efforts.
Paynter, Martha, Jefferies, Keisha, McKibbon, Shelley, Martin-Misener, Ruth, Iftene, Adelina and Tombin-Murphy, Gail. 2020. “Mother-Child Programs for Incarcerated Mothers and Children and Associated Health Outcomes: A Scoping Review.” Canadian Journal of Nursing Leadership 33(1): 81-99. [Access it here]
Background: Increasing incarceration of women disrupts fertility, family formation, parenting and mother–child relationships. It is common in many jurisdictions, including Canada, to mitigate the harm of separation from the primary parent through programs allowing children to co-reside with their mothers in prison. In this scoping review, we asked the following questions: (1) What are the characteristics of residential mother–child programs in carceral facilities? (2) Who is eligible to participate? (3) How do these programs make a difference to maternal and child health outcomes?
Method: We use the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for systematic scoping reviews. This approach includes a three-step search strategy developed with a clinical research librarian. Databases searched include MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Gender Studies Abstracts, Google Scholar and ProQuest Dissertations. The search yielded 1,499 titles and abstracts, of which 27 met the criteria for inclusion.
Results: Conducted from 1989 to 2019, across 12 countries, the studies included qualitative and quantitative methods. None was based in Canada. The most common outcomes among the studies included attachment, development, infection, neonatal outcomes, mental health, pregnancy and general experiences.
Discussion: Although supporting attachment, mother–child program participation is complex and challenging. High morbidity in the incarcerated population and lack of data collection before and after program participation prevent conclusions, and wide variations in contexts prevent comparisons.
Benefits from Reading: This scoping review illustrates the complexity of maternal and child health outcomes associated with mother–child programs. Initiation or continuation of or changes to such programs must be made with careful consideration.
Super, Gail. 2020. “Punitive welfare on the margins of the state: Narratives of punishment and (in)justice in Masiphumelele.” Social & Legal Studies. Online first. [Access it here]
While there is an established literature on the relationship between political economy and state punishment, there is less work on how punishment is constituted from below in contexts of inequality. This article analyses the discourse around incidents of lethal collective violence that occurred in 2015 in a former black township in South Africa. I use this as a lens for examining how punitive forms of popular justice interact with state punishment. Whether via the slow violence of structural inequality or the viscerally corporeal high rates of interpersonal violence, my interviewees were intimately acquainted with violence. Although they supported long-term imprisonment, none of them came across as stereotypical right-wing populists. Instead, they adopted complex positions, calling for a type of punitive welfarism, which combined harsh solutions to crime with explicit recognition of the importance of dealing with ‘root causes’. I argue that when the state is perceived to be failing to both impose punishment and provide welfare, violence becomes a technology of exchange, which simultaneously seeks both more punishment and more welfare. The result is an assemblage of exclusionary penal forms.
Werth, Robert. 2020. Book review: Pervasive punishment: Making sense of mass supervision, by Fergus McNeill. Critical Criminology. 28(1): 163-176. [Access it here]
BOOKS/BOOK CHAPTERS/EDITED COLLECTIONS
Burkhardt, Brett C and Edison, Story. 2020. “Correctional Privatization in the United States.” In Philip Bean (ed) Criminal Justice and Privatisation: Key Issues and Debates. Routledge, pp. 245-258. [More information here]
Correctional privatization is big business in the United States. Today, the dominant suppliers of private correctional services—CoreCivic, GEO Group, and MTC—generate billions of dollars in revenue, contract with governments at all levels (federal, state, and local), and provide services in a variety of correctional domains. The modern industry has operated since the 1980s, and historical precursors date to at least the 1800s. With its extensive history, much has been written about private corrections in the US. However, several gaps remain in our knowledge. The goal of this chapter is to survey what we know about the extent, performance, and politics of correctional privatization in the US, while also pointing future researchers and policymakers to promising avenues of inquiry or experimentation.
Iftene, Adelina. 2020. “COVID-19 in Canadian Prisons: Policies, Practices and Concerns.” In Colleen M Flood, Vanessa MacDonnell, Jane Philpott, Sophie Thériault and Sridhar Venkatapuram (eds) Vulnerable: The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19. University of Ottawa Press, pp. 367-380. [More information here]
Correctional Service of Canada and the provincial prison systems have a duty to provide incarcerated individuals with health services that are comparable to the community, but they have failed to do so during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are inherent practical difficulties to implementing health care in prisons. In addition, prison demographics include a higher proportion of populations that are vulnerable to disease. These factors together mean that the prison response to COVID-19 must involve depopulation and the implementation of guidelines provided by public health agencies in all institutions. So far, the measures taken have been insufficient, as is evidenced by the rapid rates of spread of COVID-19 within prisons compared to the community. An overreliance on segregation of incarcerated individuals as a preventive measure raises concerns under section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international human rights. There are also equality concerns under section 15 of the Charter given the high proportion of Indigenous people in prison. Ultimately, some prison systems’ failure to respond adequately to the pandemic impedes the successful flattening of the curve and will likely prolong the life of COVID-19 in the community. It highlights the urgency of the much-needed prison reforms which have been overlooked for decades.
Kaufman, Sarah Beth. 2020. American Roulette: The Social Logic of Death Penalty Sentencing Trials. University of California Press. [More information here]
As the death penalty clings to life in many states and dies off in others, this first-of-its-kind ethnography takes readers inside capital trials across the United States. Sarah Beth Kaufman draws on years of ethnographic and documentary research, including hundreds of hours of courtroom observation in seven states, interviews with participants, and analyses of newspaper coverage to reveal how the American justice system decides who deserves the most extreme punishment. The “super due process” accorded capital sentencing by the United States Supreme Court is the system’s best attempt at individuated sentencing. Resources not seen in most other parts of the criminal justice system, such as jurors and psychological experts, are required in capital trials, yet even these cannot create the conditions of morality or justice. Kaufman demonstrates that capital trials ultimately depend on performance and politics, resulting in the enactment of deep biases and utter capriciousness. American Roulette contends that the liberal, democratic ideals of criminal punishment cannot be enacted in the current criminal justice system, even under the most controlled circumstances.
Lageson, Sarah. 2020. Digital Punishment: Privacy, Stigma, and the Harms of Data-Driven Criminal Justice. Oxford University Press. [More information here]
An analysis of the transformation of criminal records into millions of data points, the commodification of this data into a valuable digital resource, and the impact of this shift on people, society, and public policy.
Pascoe, Daniel and Novak, Andrew (eds). 2020. Executive Clemency: Comparative and Empirical Perspectives. Routledge (Routledge Research in Human Rights Law). [More information here]
Nearly every country in the world has a mechanism for executive clemency, which, though residual in most legal systems, serves as a vital due process safeguard and as an outlet for leniency in punishment. While the origins of clemency lie in the historical prerogative powers of once-absolute rulers, modern clemency laws and practices have evolved to be enormously varied. This volume brings comparative and empirical analysis to bear on executive clemency, building a sociological and political context around systematically-collected data on clemency laws, grants, and decision-making. Some jurisdictions have elaborate constitutional and legal structures for pardoning or commuting a sentence while virtually never doing so, while others have little formal process and yet grant clemency frequently. Using examples from Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the USA, this comparative analysis of the law and the practice of clemency sheds light on a frequently misunderstood executive power.
This book builds on existing academic scholarship and expands the limited geographical scope of prior research, which has tended to focus on North America, the UK, and Australia. It relays the latest state of knowledge on the topic and employs case studies, doctrinal legal analysis, historical research, and statements by clemency decision-making authorities, in explaining why clemency varies so considerably across global legal and political systems. In addition, it includes contributions encompassing international law, transitional justice, and innocence and wrongful convictions, as well as on jurisdictions that are historically under-researched.
The book will be of value to practitioners, academics, and students interested in the fields of human rights, criminal law, comparative criminal justice, and international relations.
PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP
Lageson, Sarah. June 10, 2020. “The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative funds Clean Slate policy. So why won't Facebook take down mugshots?” The Appeal. [Access it here]
Page, Josh, Schoenfeld, Heather and Campbell, Michael. July 4, 2020. “To Defund the Police, We Have to Dethrone the Law Enforcement Lobby.” Jacobin. [Access it here]
LAW AND SOCIETY ASSOCIATION
Collaborative Research Network: Punishment and Society
Organizers:
Hadar Aviram, UC Hastings College of Law, USA
Ashley Rubin, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, USA
RECENTLY PUBLISHED WORKS
May 2020
ARTICLES
Brangan, Louise. 2020. “Exceptional states: The political geography of comparative penology.” Punishment & Society. Online first. [Access it here]
It is now common in the sociology of punishment to lament that comparative penology has not matured as an area of research. While there have been seminal works in the comparative canon, their conceptual tools tend to be drawn from grand narratives and macro-structural perspectives. Comparative researchers therefore lack concepts that can help capture the complexity of penality within a single nation, limiting the cross-national perspective. Why is this relative lack of comparative refinement still the case? This article investigates this question by looking specifically at penal exceptionalism, a concept central to comparative penology. While punitiveness as a comparative and descriptive category has been critiqued, its converse, penal exceptionalism remains prevalent but undertheorised. Examining exceptionalism reveals that it is not merely the macro-structural approach to comparison that has limited the development of cross-national sociology of punishment, but the Anglocentric assumptions, which are the bedrock of comparative penology. In this essay, I argue that penal exceptionalism versus punitiveness is an Anglocentric formulation. These taken-for-granted assumptions have become so central to the comparative enterprise that they act as a barrier to developing new innovative comparative frameworks and concepts. The article concludes by suggesting some methodological strategies that are intended as a way of helping comparative penology to expand its toolkit and support the ongoing development of more equitable criminological knowledge.
Cobbina, Jennifer E., Kerrison, Erin and Bender, Kimberly. 2020. “The Baltimore moment: Race, place, and public disorder.” Journal of Crime and Justice 43(2): 161-173. [Access it here]
The death of Freddie Gray in April 2015 sparked numerous protests and looting in Baltimore, Maryland. But why did massive uprising take place in Baltimore? What was so special about Baltimore that erupted into weeks of explosive incidents of race-based unrest, which garnered national attention? Using the Flashpoints Model of Public Disorder, this study examines the nature, causes, and dynamics of uprisings in the city of Baltimore, which lays the groundwork for understanding the conditions that can lead to future uprisings in other places. Systematic application of the Flashpoints Model shows that unrest in Baltimore was the result of a complex set of causal factors that ignited years of pent-up tension and highlights the significance of race as an organizing feature.
Davis, Andrew and Gibson-Light, Michael. 2020. “Difference and punishment: Ethno-political exclusion, colonial institutional legacies, and incarceration.” Punishment & Society 22(1): 3-27. [Access it here]
One dominant theoretical explanation for higher incarceration rates across the world focuses on how a nation’s level of diversity or minority presence broadly writ unleashes racial resentment that can lead to incarceration. This article contends that population heterogeneity alone offers an incomplete picture of how ethnic-based tension can affect incarceration rates. Rather, we argue that majority ethnic groups around the world use prison systems in order to govern and manage minority populations, especially those systematically excluded from power. In addition, we argue that these political structures have their roots in a nation’s colonial legacy, a legacy that shapes a nation’s contemporary incarceration rates. Results from our quantitative analysis reveal that controlling for competing explanations, there are positive associations between ethnic political exclusion and the length and form of a nation’s colonial experience and rates of incarceration.
Gibson-Light, Michael. 2020. “Sandpiles of Dignity: Labor Status and Boundary-Making in the Contemporary American Prison.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 6(1): 198-216. [Access it here]
This study investigates discursive strategies through which prisoners seek dignity. In particular, it turns toward the role of penal labor in such pursuits. Drawing on eighty-two in-depth interviews and eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted within one U.S. men’s prison, it details the role of job status in prisoner dignity claims. In the scramble to the top of a shifting sandpile of dignity, prisoner appeals to legitimacy rely on downward-facing symbolic boundaries erected to distinguish from lower-status others. Participants in the highest-status work sites made moral claims against others by self-identifying as professionals rather than inmates. At the bottom reaches of the labor hierarchy, workers emphasized lateral distances from other low-status prisoners. These competitive processes serve to reify penal labor structures, inequity, and control.
Hanan, Eve. 2020. “Incapacitating Errors: Sentencing and the Science of Change.” Denver Law Review 97(1): 151-203. [Access it here]
Despite widespread support for shifting sentencing policy from “tough on crime” to “smart on crime,” we continue to engage in practices that permanently incapacitate people deemed to be hardened or habitual criminals, while carving out only limited niches of sentencing reform for special groups like first-time, nonviolent offenders and adolescents.
This Article posits that the cultural belief that adults do not change poses a major impediment to “smart on crime” policies. Standing in contrast to our folk belief that adults do not change is a growing body of neuroscientific and psychological literature that this Article refers to as, “the science of adult change,” which demonstrates that adult brains change in response to environmental prompts and experience.
The science of adult change has powerful implications for punishment theory and practice. In its broadest sense, the science of adult change supports an empirically grounded, normative claim that sentencing should not attempt to identify the true criminal to permanently exclude him. Rather, sentencing policy should engage in only modest predictions about future behavior. The presumption of reintegration as a full member of society should be the norm. Moreover, because adult change occurs in response to environmental stimuli, the science of adult change supports both public accountability for the conditions of confinement and, ultimately, a challenge to incarceration as our primary means of responding to social harm.
Jiang, Jize. 2020. “The Politics of Punishment and Protection: A Comparative Historical Analysis of American Immigration Control, 1990–2017.” Law & Policy. Online first. [Access it here]
This article examines the construction of immigration control in two US states with contrasting approaches to immigration: the rise of crimmigration and governing through crime in Arizona, and the development of immigrant protection and governing through support in Illinois. Analysis of state‐level immigration control practices reveals that three interrelated processes play a critical role in formulating these divergent approaches to managing immigrants: the state’s cultural orientation, structural relation, and institutional dynamics. These factors interact with each other in complex, multidirectional ways that condition and shape the respective states’ political choices and administrative decisions. I highlight the significance of coalitions of local organizations who work in collaboration with state actors and mobilize state institutions in order to shape state legal regimes of immigration control. In illuminating the variegated trajectories of building immigration control fields, and their use (or non‐use) of penal power as a response, this article provides a more nuanced understanding of the hybrid, dynamic, and contingent nature of immigration control in contemporary America.
Jiang, Jize. 2020. Review “Punishment in Contemporary China: Its Evolution, Development and Change” by Enshen Li, 2019, Routledge. Asian Journal of Criminology. Online first. [Access it here]
Kaufman, Nicole. (forthcoming) “Governing through Partnerships: Neoconservative Governance and State Reliance on Religious NGOs in Drug Policy.” Critical Criminology. [Access it here]
This article examines states’ pursuit of partnerships with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as a strategy of governance in drug policy. State actors have used partnerships with religious NGOs to provide treatment services and disseminate messages about prevention. I investigate the emergence of such partnerships, drawing attention to neoconservatism as a political rationality associated with the rise of the New Right. I analyze officials’ justifications and strategies for including religious NGOs in such partnerships, using archival data on drug policies in Ohio and beginning with the formation of the statewide addiction services agency in 1989. The results demonstrate how officials have increasingly recognized the characteristics of the religious community by emphasizing their social service delivery and by framing religious leaders as health educators. Given the results, I consider the impacts of partnerships for the autonomy of organizations, the oversight of care, and the generation of images of an engaged community.
Koehler, Johann. 2020. “Don’t talk to me about Marx any more!” Punishment & Society. Online first. [Access it here]
Lageson, Sarah Esther. 2020. “Privacy Loss as a Collateral Consequence.” The Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research 9: 16-31. [Access it here]
The digital age has raised important new questions about privacy rights, particularly in the collection and dissemination of personally identifiable data. In a justice context, these privacy questions are compounded by the stigmatizing nature of criminal records. While discrimination based on a criminal conviction has been long documented in social science research, and privacy conversations have been invoked in criminal record policy, less direct attention has been paid to the psychological and social privacy harms of internet-based criminal record disclosure, especially for non-conviction, sealed, and expunged records. This note situates digital and reputational harms amidst broader collateral consequences of criminal records by discussing the complexity of competing privacy norms and law and the racialized dynamics of digital records and surveillance. By focusing on reputation and privacy, this note suggests that public policy better incorporate protections for the accused against digital punishment.
Lynch, Mona. 2019. “Focally Concerned About Focal Concerns: A Conceptual and Methodological Critique of Sentencing Disparities Research.” Justice Quarterly 36(7): 1148-1175. [Access it here]
“Focal concerns” is the predominant theoretical framework in criminology for explaining disparities in sentencing outcomes. While the framework has generated a large body of empirical scholarship, its postulates remain inadequately tested in the criminological literature. In this paper, I offer a conceptual and methodological critique of focal concerns as it is being deployed in a large body of sentencing research. I first trace the genealogy of the “focal concerns” concept and detail its current articulation. I then describe the body of work that has reduced “focal concerns” to a commonsense psychological construct, and illustrate the fallacies of logic and paucity of direct theory development and testing that weaken the explanatory value of the framework. I conclude by building on Ulmer’s recent call to treat criminal courts as “inhabited institutions” to assess approaches that are more social scientifically robust and empirically testable for understanding how sentencing disparity is produced.
Lynch, Mona. 2019. “Place, Race, and Variations in Federal Criminal Justice Practices.” Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 17: 167-184. [Access it here]
This article is a revised version of the 30th annual Walter C. Reckless-Simon Dinitz Memorial Lecture, delivered by Mona Lynch at The Ohio State University on April 18, 2019. The lecture addresses the motivating questions that have framed Lynch's ongoing research on the federal criminal system which are: 1) How is the power of criminal law mobilized—and resisted—in varied, creative ways by legal actors? 2) How do those variations manifest as local norms and practices that transcend individual actors and moments in time? 3) Finally, and most critically, how does this “live” version of the law produce and maintain inequalities that formal law & policy explicitly aim to eliminate?
Rubin, Ashley. 2020. “True believers, rational actors, and bad actors: Placing The Prison and the Factory in penal-historiographic context.” Punishment & Society. Online first. [Access it here]
This review contextualizes The Prison and the Factory in the broad sweep of prison historiography (at least, prison historiography from a US perspective). To this end, I describe three approaches to how scholars have explained the birth of the prison and associated early penal reforms. I then use this framework to describe The Prison and the Factory somewhat paradoxically: at the time, The Prison and the Factory was particularly radical but, by comparison to the current literature’s level of explicit critique, it seems almost mild today. Finally, using this framework, I make a global critique of The Prison and the Factory, but it is also a critique that applies to each of these approaches to prison history.
Smith, Tobias. 2020. “Body Count Politics: Quantification, Secrecy, and Capital Punishment in China.” Law & Social Inquiry. Online first. [Access it here]
As quantification has become socially ubiquitous, the disclosure of numerical data emerges as a key feature of legal reform and global governance. Scholars document how seemingly value-neutral statistical indicators shape, and are shaped by, institutional interests. Although less attention has been paid to cases where states resist numerical disclosure, prohibitions on the disclosure of such indicators also produce social effects. This article extends scholarship on the governance effects of quantification to include secrecy by exploring the case of capital punishment data in China, which is reportedly the world’s leading executioner state. Amid a major death penalty reform effort, China steadfastly refuses international calls to publicly disclose relevant statistics. I analyze capital cases and draw on seventy-three interviews with legal insiders in China’s death penalty system to identify the impact of state efforts to conceal capital punishment indicators while undertaking reforms in three areas: transparency; legal representation; and criminal procedure. I show how tension between the disclosure and nondisclosure of death penalty numbers does not simply suppress data; it also shapes and becomes data, influencing both policy and action in the legal sphere in ways that are seemingly far removed from quantification.
Vaughn, Paige E. 2020. “The effects of devaluation and solvability on crime clearance.” Journal of Criminal Justice. Online first. [Access it here]
Purpose: Scholars suggest that clearance rates reflect (a) the solvability of cases (Gottfredson & Hindelang, 1979; Roberts, 2007), and/or (b) the populations that the police choose to prioritize (Black, 1976). But few studies consider the totality of contextual and situational characteristics that may explain clearance rates and contribute to important disparities among them. The current study presents a framework that considers the effect of various types of devaluation and solvability on clearance.
Methods: Linear probability modeling is used to test the framework's utility and whether complaint, neighborhood, and police district characteristics affect the clearance of violent crimes in St. Louis, MO.
Results: The findings suggest that while minority victims and neighborhoods may be devalued, specific crime features physically hinder crime-solving. Important interactions emerge between devaluation and solvability indicators, and crime types are found to have distinctive clearance predictors. The results suggest that witness and victim-offender relationship information might be particularly important in clearing crimes involving Black
victims.
Conclusions: Overall, the results highlight the importance of comprehensively studying crime-solving. Future research should continue to work toward developing a comprehensive conceptualization to explain police case clearance.
Ward, Geoff, Petersen, Nick, Kupchik, Aaron and Pratt, James. 2019. “School Discipline and the Legacy of Racialized Violence: Historic Lynching and Racially Disparate Corporal Punishment in Southern Schools.” Social Problems. Online first. [Access it here]
This study examines how corporal punishment in contemporary public schools, a disciplinary practice concentrated in southeastern U.S. states, relates to histories of lynching in the region. Using school-level data from the U.S. Department of Education, we examine these relationships in a series of multi-level regression models. After controlling for numerous school- and county-level factors, we find an increased likelihood of corporal punishment for all students in counties where greater numbers of lynchings occurred, and that lynching is particularly predictive of corporal punishment for black students. Consistent with prior research associating historic lynching with contemporary violence, these results suggest general and race-specific legacies for violent school discipline. We consider potential mechanisms linking histories of lynching with school corporal punishment, and implications for research and policy.
Welsh, Megan, Chanin, Joshua and Henry, Stuart. 2020. “Complex Colorblindness in Police Processes and Practices.” Social Problems. Online first. [Access it here]
Racial disparities in police-community encounters are well documented, with people of color experiencing higher levels of police scrutiny. Far less is known about how police officers perceive the racial dynamics at play in their work. As part of a 2016 study of traffic stops in San Diego, we conducted in-depth interviews with 52 city police officers. Despite evidence of racial disparities in SDPD practices related to post-stop outcomes, officers denied, minimized, or even condemned racial profiling during traffic stops; officers described operating under a neutral policy of “colorblindness.” Our analysis identifies cognitive and discursive mechanisms which explain this complex and contradictory picture. We find that officers’ accounts excuse, justify, or otherwise negate the role of race in routine police work, yet officers’ thoughts and actions are based on racialized and, at times, dehumanizing narratives about people and communities of color. These morally neutral accounts form a pattern of micro-racialized discourse, constituting a layering of racialized processes and practices that cumulatively produce racially disparate outcomes. We argue that rejection of explicit racism alone is insufficient to address the progressive micro-racial aggression that emerges at key points during police-community encounters. We discuss the implications for law enforcement policy and practice.
Welsh, Megan and Leyva, Kristina. 2020. “Collisions of the personal and the public: How front-line welfare workers manage carceral citizens.” Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work. Online first. [Access it here]
For criminalized people, particularly those who have been recently incarcerated, applying for and maintaining public assistance—cash aid and/or food assistance—is an immediate and crucial element of survival. Yet relative to a substantial body of research that documents pathways into and out of carceral citizenship, this aspect of postincarceration work has received little scholarly attention. Likewise, frontline welfare workers are often simplistically portrayed as gatekeepers who restrict poor people’s access to public assistance. In this article, we make visible the intersection of welfare and criminal-legal involvement by examining how criminalized clients are understood by welfare workers in one large, densely populated California county. Our data come from a larger ethnographic study of women’s postincarceration experiences of public institutions and include in-depth interviews with 19 frontline welfare workers and participant observation of welfare offices. We find that (a) criminal-legal awareness varies among welfare workers; (b) workers engage in substantial invisible labor, in large part to counteract the carceral logics of the welfare system; and (c) in absence of professional training, workers draw heavily on their own situated knowledge to manage the challenges of their work. Contextualizing these findings within a broader trend toward the deprofessionalization of welfare workers, we argue that the training and education of this workforce, particularly around criminal-legal issues, is an important avenue for social work advocacy.
BOOKS/BOOK CHAPTERS/EDITED COLLECTIONS
Annison, Harry. 2020. “Re-examining Risk and Blame in Penal Controversies: Parole in England and Wales, 2013–2018.” In John Pratt and Jordan Anderson (eds) Criminal Justice, Risk and the Revolt Against Uncertainty. Palgrave, pp. 139-163. [More information here]
This chapter considers the lessons that high profile controversies in parole in England and Wales might provide for our understanding of dominant conceptions of risk and populism in the sociology of punishment. Sparks’ (2000b) earlier examination of risk and blame in a series of scandals facing English prisons in the mid-1990s is utilized as a point of comparison and a methodological sensitizing device: the former in that this provides us with a means by which to consider what might have changed in the two decades separating these high profile episodes; the latter in that I seek, as Sparks did, to consider what insights these ‘sorry stories’ might provide for penal theory. I thus discuss broader cultural trends regarding the recognition and involvement of ‘publics’ – including victims, families, prisoners and others – in penal policy. I suggest that these developments have implications for our understanding of risk and populism, and the dominant theoretical narratives that have tended to accompany conceptions of these terms.
Crewe, Ben, Hulley, Susie and Wright, Serena. 2020. Life Imprisonment from Young Adulthood: Adaptation, Identity and Time. London: Palgrave Macmillan. [More information here]
This book analyses the experiences of prisoners in England & Wales sentenced when relatively young to very long life sentences (with minimum terms of fifteen years or more). Based on a major study, including almost 150 interviews with men and women at various sentence stages and over 300 surveys, it explores the ways in which long-term prisoners respond to their convictions, adapt to the various challenges that they encounter and re-construct their lives within and beyond the prison. Focussing on such matters as personal identity, relationships with family and friends, and the management of time, the book argues that long-term imprisonment entails a profound confrontation with the self. It provides detailed insight into how such prisoners deal with the everyday burdens of their situation, feelings of injustice, anger and shame, and the need to find some sense of hope, control and meaning in their lives. In doing so, it exposes the nature and consequences of the life-changing terms of imprisonment that have become increasingly common in recent years.
Hatton, Erin. 2020. Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment. University of California Press. [More information here]
What do prisoner laborers, graduate students, welfare workers, and college athletes have in common? According to sociologist Erin Hatton, they are all part of a growing workforce of coerced laborers.
Coerced explores this world of coerced labor through an unexpected and compelling comparison of these four groups of workers, for whom a different definition of "employment" reigns supreme—one where workplace protections do not apply and employers wield expansive punitive power, far beyond the ability to hire and fire. Because such arrangements are common across the economy, Hatton argues that coercion—as well as precarity—is a defining feature of work in America today.
Theoretically forceful yet vivid and gripping to read, Coerced compels the reader to reevaluate contemporary dynamics of work, pushing beyond concepts like "career" and "gig work." Through this bold analysis, Hatton offers a trenchant window into this world of work from the perspective of those who toil within it—and who are developing the tools needed to push back against it.
Jiang, Jize. 2020. “From Cinderella to Consumer: How Crime Victims Can Go to the Ball.” In Jacki Tapley and Pamela Davies (eds) Victimology: Research, Policy and Activism. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. (with Edna Erez, Kathy Laster) [More information here]
Pratt, John and Anderson, Jordan (eds). 2020. Criminal Justice, Risk and the Revolt Against Uncertainty. Palgrave Macmillan. [More information here]
This book examines the impact and implications of the relationship between risk and criminal justice in advanced liberal democracies, in the context of the ‘revolt against uncertainty’ which has underpinned the rise of populist politics across these societies in recent years. It asks what impact the demands for more certainty and security, and the insistence that national identity be reasserted, will have on criminal law and penal policy. Drawing upon contributions made at a symposium held at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand in November 2018, this edited collection also discusses the way in which risk has come to inform sentencing practices, broader criminal justice processes and the critical issues associated with this. It also examines the growth and making of new ‘risky populations’ and the harnessing of risk-prevention logics, techniques and mechanisms which have inflated the influence of risk on criminal justice.
Savelsberg, Joachim J. 2020. “The Representational Power of International Criminal Courts.” In M. Bergsmo, M. Klamberg, K. Lohne and C. Mahony (eds) Power in International Criminal Justice: Towards a Sociology of International Justice. Nuremberg Academies, Oslo: TOAEP, pp. 493-510. [More information here]
Considering discussions about the effectiveness of international criminal courts, this chapter suggests that we should pay attention to their representational power: the chance to impress on a global public, even against resistance, an understanding of mass violence as a form of criminal violence. The chapter asks if such power generates memorial normativity, and if it has the potential of turning into symbolic power à la Bourdieu: a tacit mode of cultural domination unfolding within everyday social habits and belief systems. The contribution draws on sociological theory and on materials from extensive empirical research on responses to the Darfur conflict.
Savelsberg, Joachim J. and Powell, Amber. 2020. “Politics, Institutions and the Penal State.” In Thomas Janoski, Isaac Martin, Joya Misra, and Cedric De Leon (eds) The New Handbook of Political Sociology. Cambridge University Press, pp. 513-537. [More information here]
Carceral states rely on incarceration of an exceptionally large number of their citizens, typically accompanied by a diversity of supplemental methods of criminal justice control. The United States of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century is such a carceral state. In the words of political scientist Marie Gottschalk (2015: 1): “a tenacious carceral state has sprouted in the shadows of mass imprisonment and has been extending its reach far beyond the prison gate. It includes not only the country’s vast archipelago of jails and prisons, but also the far-reaching and growing range of penal punishments and controls that lies in the never-never land between the prison gates and full citizenship.” And indeed, jails and prisons in America today are supplemented by expanding probation and parole systems, community sanctions, drug courts, immigrant detention and deportation, public stigmatization of released sex offenders, and the disenfranchisement of ex-felons.
PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP
Interview with Blakinger, Keri, Lageson, Sarah and Quinn, Chris. February 26, 2020. “Local News Rethinks Its Use of Mugshots”. The Takeaway. [Access it here]
DEDICA-20. April 21, 2020. “COVID-19 and the Inconvenient Truth About Prisons.” Arena Online. [Access it here]
Kerrison, Erin M. April 28, 2020. “Alameda County: How COVID is Impacting the Black Community the Hardest and Why.” Upfront KPFA. [Access it here]
Commentary on (1) spatial data illustrating saturation of COVID cases in California's Alameda County (predominantly POC neighborhoods, East Oakland and Hayward) and (2) prospective policy proposals that could address this crisis.
Rubin, Ashley. April 9, 2020. “Prisons and jails are coronavirus epicenters—but they once designed to prevent disease outbreaks.” The Conversation. [Access it here]
Werth, Robert. April 1, 2020. “Reconsidering risk algorithms in the penal realm: Performativity, homogenization, and the certainty of threat.” Social & Legal Studies Blog. [Access it here]
Yamey, Gavin. March 30, 2020. “We Must Act Now to Protect America’s Most Vulnerable from Coronavirus.” TIME. [Access it here]
