Members' Publications: December 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

December 2022

ARTICLES

Annison, Harry and Rachel Condry. 2022. “The Pains of Hope: Families of indeterminate sentenced prisoners and political campaigning by lay citizens.” British Journal of Criminology 62(5): 1252-1269. [Access it here]

This paper examines the politics of crime and insecurity as experienced ‘from below’. We draw on in-depth interviews with families of indeterminate-sentenced prisoners, and policy participants, in order to understand families’ experiences of their relative’s imprisonment under the discredited English Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence and their public campaigning against it. We situate these experiences within broader structural trends, which we conceptualise as penal-familial assemblages. We argue that the experiences cause ‘pains of hope’ for families through a double liminality: first, due to the uncertainties caused by the indeterminate sentence, which brings neither closure nor release. Second, meaningful state action on campaigners’ demands remained elusive, with moments when change appeared close but ultimately remained just out of reach. In conclusion, we draw out the lessons from our study for analysing penal politics. We argue, in particular, for a humanistic recognition of the centrality, and the pains, of lay citizens’ efforts to seek to achieve progressive penal policy change.

Annison, Harry and Thomas Guiney. 2022. “Populism, Conservatism and the Politics of Parole in England and Wales.” Political Quarterly 93(3) 416-423. [Access it here]

Reform of the parole system has emerged as the cause célèbre of a resurgent law and order politics. Successive governments have seized upon the symbolic power of parole to demonstrate ‘toughness’ with respect to violent and sexual offending, to express solidarity with the victims of crime and reaffirm a populist credo that purportedly stands in opposition to an unaccountable and out of touch penal elite. Published in March 2022, the Ministry of Justice Root and Branch Review of the Parole System represents a continuation of this well-rehearsed political strategy, but arguably goes further than ever before in its willingness to dispense with established norms, rules and practices. This article surveys the contemporary politics of parole in England and Wales and reflects upon what these developments reveal about the shifting contours of a creeping authoritarian conservatism premised upon nostalgia, nationalism and the projection of a strong, centralised state.

Dal Santo, Luiz. 2022. “Brazilian prisons in times of mass incarceration: Ambivalent transformations.” The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

Most of the scholarship on the ‘punitive turn’ has claimed that there have been two main trends in punishment since the 1970s: the rise of incarceration rates (quantitative dimension) and the worsening of prison conditions (qualitative dimension). Scholars argue that, in parallel with the rise of mass incarceration, there has been a fall of the rehabilitative ideal. In this view, prisons in core countries have basically operated as a warehouse, working towards neutralisation and incapacitation. Both trends are also viewed as reflecting a global convergence of penal policies. The analysis of the Brazilian case challenges this supposed universality. Drawing on official prison data, reports from non-governmental organisations, and secondary data, I argue that mass incarceration has not been accompanied by the same qualitative changes to prisons in ‘Western countries’ and Brazil. First, features of the so-called warehouse prison, such as low levels of prison activities, have always been present in Brazilian prisons, and are not an effect of mass incarceration. Furthermore, the consequences of mass incarceration in Brazilian prisons have, in fact, been ambivalent and, in some cases, may have alleviated inmates’ suffering, rather than intensifying experiences of confinement. Finally, instead of neutralising and controlling criminals, Brazilian prisons under mass incarceration have contributed to the emergence, empowerment, recruitment and organisation of gangs, whose powers now transcend the physical barriers of prison walls.

DeCaro, Joanne B., Kelci Straka, Nadia Malek, and Alyson K. Zalta. 2022. “Sentenced to Shame: Moral Injury Exposure in Former Lifers.” Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

Objective: A significant increase in the release of individuals who served life sentences (i.e., lifers) in California has created the opportunity to study aspects of their psychological wellness for the first time. Moral injury may be a particularly relevant factor to consider in this population, but has not been previously studied. This study is the first to explore the concept of moral injury within a currently or formerly incarcerated population. 

Method: Former lifers currently in reentry in California (N = 41) completed a survey that measured their moral injury exposure (MIE), MIE-related guilt, MIE-related shame, MIE-related rumination, religiosity, attempts at making amends, and flourishing. 

Results: As expected, a high rate of lifetime MIEs was endorsed (97.6%). Events linked to life sentence crimes (75.6%) and time in prison (56.1%) were very common. Lower levels of MIE-related shame (r = -.58, p < 0.01) and higher levels of religiosity (r = .35, p < 0.05) were significantly associated with greater flourishing. By contrast, degree of MIE exposure, MIE-related guilt, and MIE-related rumination, and making amends were all weakly associated with flourishing. 

Conclusion: Our results highlight that MIE is pervasive in this population and extends beyond life sentence crimes. Moreover, our findings suggest that it is lifers’ self-concept following MIEs that appears to affect well-being upon release, rather than the extent and nature of moral injury exposure. Further research exploring moral injury in incarcerated and formerly incarcerated populations is needed to improve their well-being and chances of successful re-entry.

Garland, David. 2022. “The Current Crisis of American Criminal Justice: A structural analysis.” Annual Review of Criminology. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

This review situates the recent, radical challenges to American criminal justice—calls to end mass incarceration, defund the police, and dismantle systemic racism—within the broader social and economic arrangements that make the US system so distinctive and so problematic. It describes the social structures, institutions, and processes that give rise to America's extraordinary penal state—as well as to its extraordinarily high rates of homicide and social disorder—and considers what these portend for the prospect of radical change. It does so by locating American crime and punishment in the structural context of America's (always-already racialized) political economy—a distinctive set of social structures and institutional legacies that render the United States more violent, more disorderly, and more reliant on penal control than any other developed nation. Drawing on a broad range of social science research findings, it argues that this peculiar political economy—a form of capitalism and democratic governance forged on the anvils of slavery and racial segregation and rendered increasingly insecure and exclusionary in the decades following deindustrialization—generates high levels of social disorganization and criminal violence and predisposes state authorities to adopt penal control as the preferred policy response.

Golembeski, Cynthia, Matthew Bakko, Shayla Wilson, and Twyla Carter. 2022. “U.S. Bail, Pretrial Justice, and Charitable Bail Organizations: Strengthening Social Equity and Advancing Politics and Public Ethics of Care.” Public Integrity. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

The U.S. criminal legal system contributes to the oppression and harm of marginalized groups, calling into question ethical governance. The front end of this system, specifically bail and pretrial justice, exploits opportunities for resource generation and social control as a major driver of incarceration, yet receives limited attention in public administration or ethics. Disproportionate punishment and collateral penalties associated with bail and pretrial justice are causes and consequences of structural racism and administrative dysfunction. Excessive bail as a poverty penalty incurs risks to health, safety, financial security, and constitutional presumptions and protections. In light of civil and constitutional rights concerns, bail and pretrial-associated philanthropic solutions have proliferated. This article provides background on bail and pretrial justice policies and politics; outlines evidence of related consequences; describes select reform efforts and philanthropic tools, including the charitable bail organization The Bail Project; and contextualizes bail and pretrial justice within a public values framework, which centers social equity and incorporates critical race theory alongside politics and public ethics of care. Upholding the Constitution and the law, strengthening social equity, and ensuring procedural due process are core tenets of good governance, yet anathema to the current bail and pretrial justice system, which is a critical public ethics concern.

Gurusami, Susila, Rocío R. García, and Diya Bose. 2022. “Abolishing Carceral Distractions: Refusing the Discursive Punishment of Latinxs.” Journal of Criminal Justice Education. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

LatCrim scholars and LatCrim scholarship are concerned with working towards racial justice, particularly with and for Latinxs ensnared by the criminal-legal system. To support existing and future work in this area, we conduct a discursive analysis of existing research, public policy, and responses to policies at the nexus of crimmigration scholarship and Latinx sexualities to examine how the figure of “the criminal” drives scholarship on racial justice. We develop the concept of carceral distractions as a type of white distraction that orient us toward accepting carceral fate and consequences as an inevitable marker of state care, protection, and remedy for harm. Carceral distractions make it difficult to recognize the possibilities beyond and outside carceral formations and ideologies. We develop this article as an abolition feminist tool to help identify and understand carceral distractions. To do so, we pose three central questions when asking whether proposed interventions, approaches, or solutions are carceral distractions: (1) What are we oriented towards?; (2) What are we distracted from?; and (3) Who do we leave behind? Ultimately, we demonstrate how carceral distractions strengthen white supremacy by legitimizing carceral logics.

Iverson, Justin. 2022. “Surveilling Potential Uses and Abuses of Artificial Intelligence in Correctional Spaces.” Lincoln Memorial University Law Review 9(3): 1-36. [Access it here]

While individuals likely have different understandings of what constitutes artificial intelligence (AI), the truth is we have been using it for decades to greater or lesser degrees. Recent polling indicates Americans are somewhat aware of this fact, though fear about the potential harms posed by widescale AI adoption remains high. One area in which Americans favor using AI technology—and a focus of this paper—is in the apprehension, monitoring, and management of criminals.

The American public associates AI—as we do in so many areas of our lives—with popular culture depictions, including Data, R2-D2, Cylons, VIKI, and Brainiac, to name a few. The characters and plotlines our artists create are both reflective of current scientific theory and influential on scientists developing future technology. Looking toward full AI integration in these stories helps us envision how AI can improve our quality of life and informs us of the potential risks associated with careless development and monitoring measures.

In section II, this paper will begin with an analysis of the development of AI, noting famous examples and establishing a baseline definition as a lens for the rest of this discussion. This paper will assess aspects of AI and machine learning to the extent it furthers our understanding of AI’s ability to collect data and make decisions. Some popular culture references will be brought into focus here to recognize storytelling’s ability to inspire and influence real-world scientific pursuits. Of preliminary importance, the AI we have both dreamed of and feared are certainly kept in mind as technology advances through sentience milestones.

Section III will discuss emerging technologies in the correctional space, including automated inmate communications monitoring services and related privacy and safety implications. Such technologies are designed to be objective and non-biased, though human involvement will necessarily entail subjectivity at each stage of development and implementation. The problem of encroaching AI is thus balanced between its own sophistication and that of its human collaborators.
In section IV, this paper will discuss the now-widescale adoption of correctional tablets in jails and prisons across the country. Persons experiencing incarceration have expectations about traditional monitoring areas, such as phone calls, mail, and video surveillance. However, allocating so many correctional services to a single device necessitates a new analysis of how governments, and the private contractors providing and maintaining their tablets, impact data collection and algorithm development practices.

Finally, in section V, the pieces come together as this paper argues for responsible data analysis and algorithm development. The drumbeat march of AI into detention spaces shows no sign of halting but there is time yet to steer its development to productive and humane purpose. In the end, this paper aims to increase awareness of the potential benefits and pitfalls of AI integration in the correctional space and provide a framework to understand tradeoffs in this sector.

As a tool, AI can supplement or entirely replace human involvement in nearly every arena but humans will determine the amount of deference given to this tool. And that amount will change in quantity and type without end. But those in jails and prisons, as a vulnerable population, do not have the luxury of providing substantive input in the way those decisions are made, and thus, we as interested observers must monitor the monitors on their behalf.

Jones, Nikki, Kenly Brown, Eduardo Bautista Duran, Kaily Heitz, Jasmine Kelekay, Gil Rothschild Elyassi, and Geoffrey Raymond. 2022. “‘Other than the Projects, You Stay Professional’: ‘Colorblind’ Cops and the Enactment of Spatial Racism in Routine Policing.” City & Community. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

In this article, we show how routine policing is conscripted into the project of maintaining and reproducing spatial racism in urban settings through an intersecting set of macro-level processes and micro-interactional practices. Our analysis of ethnographic interviews conducted with over 40 police officers during 20 ride-alongs in the Western United States identifies person- and place-specific heuristic classifications that police officers rely on to manage routine encounters. We find that officers use membership categorization devices to sort people and places in the city into distinct categories (e.g., nice places, normal people, the projects, and people in the projects), which, in turn, prefigure different orientations to action at the start of and throughout their encounters with the public. Our findings provide an empirical basis for thinking of professional police knowledge as encoding systemic racism in routine policing, rather than being a break from it.

Kupchik, Aaron. 2022. “Rethinking School Suspensions.” Contexts 21(1): 14-19. [Access it here]

When used too frequently, exclusionary school punishment like out-of-school suspensions are ineffective and harmful. The harms to students are clear, though excessive use of school suspensions also impacts entire schools, students’ families, and communities. Because youth of color are at greater risk of school punishments, these harms disproportionately limit their life opportunities and exacerbate racial inequality. To better understand how and why we punish students the way we do, sociologists need to understand school punishment as rooted in a historical legacy of racial oppression and denial of educational opportunities to Black children.

Kupchik, Aaron and Felicia Henry. 2022. “Generations of Criminalization: Resistance to Desegregation and School Punishment.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

Objectives: In this paper we refocus discussions of criminalization of students on structural racial inequality. We help explain racially disproportionate school punishments, while demonstrating the necessity for criminologists to examine how a historic legacy of racial oppression shapes contemporary punishments. More specifically, we explore the extent to which contemporary school punishment reflects a legacy of racial oppression and educational exclusion of Black students. 

Methods: Using nationwide data from multiple sources, we analyze how resistance to school desegregation, measured by the number of court cases contesting school segregation from 1952 − 2002, relates to suspensions from school and days missed due to suspension. 

Results: Our analyses show that schools in districts marked by resistance to school desegregation have significantly and substantially higher rates of suspensions for Black students and days missed by Black students due to suspension. 

Conclusions: Contemporary school suspension is shaped by a legacy of racial oppression and educational exclusion. Our results confirm the importance of using a racialized social systems approach to understand and begin to remedy the criminalization of Black students.

Manikis, Marie. 2022. “Recognising State Blame in Sentencing: A Communicative and Relational Framework.” Cambridge Law Journal 81(2): 294-322. [Access it here]

Censure, blame and harms are central concepts in sentencing that have evolved over the years to take into account social context and experiential knowledge. Flexibility, however, remains limited as the current analysis in sentencing focuses on the offender while failing to engage with the state's contribution in creating wrongs and harms. This risks giving rise to defective practices of responsibility since the state can also contribute to their production. The following article presents a complementary and additional framework within sentencing to account for state censure, blame and harms. The framework is rooted in communicative theories of punishment that integrate a responsive understanding of censure and a relational account of responsibility.

Manikis, Marie. 2022. “The Principle of Proportionality in Sentencing: A Dynamic Evolution and Multiplication of Conceptions.” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 59(3): 587-628. [Access it here]

This article examines the theoretical foundations and developments of the concept of proportionality in common law sentencing. It traces its evolution within its two main underlying frameworks: desert-based and consequentialist theories of punishment. It specifically examines the Canadian context and demonstrates that this concept was primarily rooted in a desert-based framework but has increasingly been infused with consequentialist rationales. It is argued that this multiplication of underpinnings has led to a conceptual muddling of proportionality, risking voiding the concept of its meaning and usefulness to decision-makers at sentencing. The article therefore proposes a nuanced framework, similar to the one in England and Wales, rooted in a dynamic understanding of just deserts that allows for the incorporation of relevant consequentialist aims in a principled fashion.

Melossi, Dario. 2022. “Servitude for a time: From the permanent slavery of the unfree to the slavery pro tempore of the free.” Punishment & Society. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

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.

Piehowski, Victoria and Michelle Phelps. 2022. “Strong-arm Sobriety: Addressing Precarity through Probation.” Law & Social Inquiry. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

Over the past half-century, the US welfare and penal systems have become increasingly fused modes of poverty governance. At the center of the welfare-penal continuum sits probation, a form of community supervision that operates as a central hub, directing people to both services and incarceration. Drawing on interviews with 166 adults on probation in Hennepin County, Minnesota, in 2019, we argue that the coercive care of probation is structured by the broader project of controlling alcohol and drug use among the poor. Developing the concept of strong-arm sobriety, we show how the “criminal addict” trope undergirds the central processes of probation: treatment, testing, and revocation. We argue that strong-arm sobriety misreads structural precarity as the result, rather than the cause, of individuals’ choices. In doing so, strong-arm sobriety fails to address the circumstances that engender substance use and produces future subjects for coercive care.

Quinn, Kaitlyn and Philip Goodman. 2022. “Shaping the road to reentry: Organizational variation and narrative labor in the penal voluntary sector.” Punishment & Society. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]

Financial austerity, welfare state retrenchment, and the movement towards evidence-based interventions have intensified the pressures on penal voluntary sector (PVS) organizations. The result is an increasingly competitive field of social service provision in which organizations must differentiate themselves in the struggle over funding, contracts, symbolic authority, and potential clients. We explore this struggle by examining the distinct roads to reentry constructed at four PVS organizations in Ontario, Canada. Our analysis initiates a dialogue between individual narratives and organizational discourses, contending that the road to reentry is coauthored among organizations and criminalized individuals—albeit on unequal terms. Our findings reveal that there are significant pressures for criminalized individuals to perform narrative labor to align themselves with organizational understandings of reentry. Such pressures include: the denial of services or social assistance payments, threats of being returned to prison for “inadequate” participation in rehabilitation, and risks of not being considered for coveted “professional ex” positions at PVS organizations. In light of these empirical findings, we also offer a conceptual reflection on the challenges criminalized individuals likely face accessing services from multiple organizations with differing roads to reentry, suggesting that navigating these diverse roads not only requires narrative labor, but also narrative dexterity.

Santos, Maria-Fátima. 2022. “Modernizing Leviathan: Carceral Reform and the Struggle for Legitimacy in Brazil’s Espírito Santo State.” American Sociological Review 87(5): 889-918. [Access it here]

Incarceration has become naturalized as a primary mode of punishment within the penal systems of modern states across the globe. This study examines how states develop the capacity to execute incarceration as a routine state function. I argue that rationalization and bureaucratization are key for transforming carceral enclosures into a naturalized feature of states’ routine exercise of coercion. I develop this argument through analysis of a dynamic case of carceral modernization in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo (2003 to 2014). I analyze the significance of coordinated violence and performative strategies for rulers to extend administrative capacity to incarceration and transform confinement into a legitimate and legitimizing instrument of state power. Findings demonstrate how coercive practices and other modes of violence that state authorities come to narrate as illegitimate are not antithetical to modernization. Rather, they become constitutive of the very process of consolidating and legitimizing rational-legal modes of administration that routinely exercise violence while more effectively being misrecognized as such. By extending inquiry to how states develop the administrative capacity to exercise penal power, this analysis makes several contributions to the political sociology of punishment and theories of state-building.

Singh, Shawn and James Gacek. 2022. “Erasure and Erosion: Exploring Federal Government Efforts to Complicate Socio-Legal and Environmental Obligations owed to Indigenous People.” Manitoba Law Journal 45(4): 1-38. [Access it here]

The Canadian federal government has fallen short of its reconciliatory objectives with Indigenous peoples and preventing anthropogenic climate change. In recognizing these issues, the Government of Canada implemented several policy initiatives to realign industrial production and consumption at the national level, as well as to grow Indigenous participation in capitalist production as a means of approaching a form of self-government. As part of this policy agenda, the state targets Indigenous communities as leaders who hold the potential to implement more sustainable methods of energy production to encourage them to become Canada’s environmental stewards. However, we contend that such policy initiatives also erode the socio-legal and environmental obligations owed to Indigenous peoples by the Canadian federal government. To articulate the impact of these policies on the interests of Indigenous communities, we explore certain efforts of the Canadian state, through the lens of neoliberal settler colonialism, to identify its striking consistency with past approaches of dislocating colonized populations and reclaiming power bases that are still within settler state control. We recommend the arrest of the Canadian settler state’s modern approach to eroding its obligations to Indigenous peoples, while also proposing further measures be taken to recognize and strengthen Indigenous and environmental rights.

 

BOOKS/BOOK CHAPTERS/EDITED COLLECTIONS

Crewe, Ben, Andrew Goldsmith, and Mark Halsey (Eds.). 2022. Power and Pain in the Modern Prison: The Society of Captives Revisited. Oxford University Press. [More information here]

Sykes’ The Society of Captives has stood as a classic of modern penology for nearly 60 years. However, the continued relevance of Sykes’ seminal publication often passes unremarked by many contemporary scholars working in the very field that such works helped to define. This book combines a series of timely reflections on authority, power and governance in modern prison institutions as well as a reflection on the enduring relevance of the work of Gresham Sykes. With chapters from many of the most influential scholars undertaking prison research today, the contributions discuss such matters as the pains of imprisonment, penal order, staff-prisoner relationships and the everyday world of the prison, drawing on and critiquing Sykes’s theories and insights, and placing them in their historic and contemporary context.

Gacek, James. 2022. Portable Prisons: Electronic Monitoring and the Creation of Carceral Territory. McGill-Queen’s University Press. [More information here]

The pervasiveness of surveillance, punishment, and control within and outside of spaces such as jails, prisons, and detention centres suggests that the carceral is becoming an increasingly prevalent presence in our lives, going beyond historical standards. The contemporary use of electronic monitoring extends carceral territory beyond prison walls, into people’s homes and everyday lives.

Empirically and empathetically driven, Portable Prisons is a telling exploration of the electronic monitoring of offenders based on an ethnographic case study from Scotland. Electronic monitoring must be understood - in both intent and effect - as a carceral practice, an expression of the carceral state and its overreaching punitive capabilities. James Gacek demonstrates that various people experience punishment by means of restrictions around mobility, space, and time in ways that strongly overlap with the reported experiences of interviewed prisoners. Drawing attention to how the neoliberal state outsources the labour of punishment to private corporations and the punished themselves, he also rejects the idea that “soft” punishment is in any way related to the movement for decarceration.

Offering an original contribution to our understanding of the geography of incarceration, Portable Prisons is a sophisticated account of electronic monitoring, underlining the growing significance of this field.

Gacek, James and Richard Jochelson (Eds.). 2022. Green Criminology and the Law. Palgrave Macmillan. [More information here]

This edited collection is grounded in a green criminological approach to understand whether the law, both in effect and implications, reflects, refracts, or sublimates the social, political and ecological conditions of our times. Since its initial proposal in the 1990s, green criminology has focused the criminological gaze on a wide array of harms and crimes affecting humans, animals other than humans, ecological systems, and the planet as a whole. As a continuously blossoming field of criminological inquiry, green criminology recognizes and examines behaviours that are both illegal and legal (yet detrimental), and in varying ways has made great efforts to provide insight into harms in a more fulsome manner. At the same time, there have been many significant legal instances, domestic, and international, including case law, legislation, regulation, treaties, agreements and executive directives which have troubled the law’s understanding of green harms, illegal and legal activity, pushing legal boundaries in the process. Recognizing that humanity and nature are inextricably integrated, Green Criminology and the Law reflects the range and depth of high-quality research and scholarship, combining contributions from established scholars willing to explore new topics and recent entrants who are breaking new scholarly ground.

Garland, David. 2022. “What is Penal Populism? Public Opinion, Expert Knowledge and Penal Policy Formation in Democratic Societies.” Pp. 249-272 in Crime, Justice and Social Order: Essays in Honour of A. E. Bottoms, edited by Alison Liebling, Joanna Shapland, Richard Sparks, and Justice Tankebe. Oxford University Press. [More information here]

Gibson-Light, Michael. 2022. Orange-Collar Labor: Work and Inequality in Prison. Oxford University Press. [More information here]

The United States is home to the most expansive prison system on Earth. In addition to holding nearly a quarter of the world's legal captives, this nation puts them to work. Close to two-thirds of those held in U.S. state prisons hold some sort of job while incarcerated. For these imprisoned people, the carceral institution is not only a place of punishment, but a workplace as well. Yet, very little is known about the world of work behind bars. In order to illuminate the "black box" that is modern prison labor, this book marshals 18 months of ethnographic observations within one of America's medium-security prisons as well as 82 interviews with currently-incarcerated men and the institutional staff members tasked with overseeing them. Pulling together these accounts, it paints a picture of daily labors on the inside, showing that not all prison jobs are the same, nor are all imprisoned workers treated equally. While some find value and purpose in higher-paying, more desirable jobs, others struggle against monotony and hardship in lower-paying, deskilled work assignments. The result is a stratified prison employment system in which race, ethnicity, nationality, and social class help determine one's position in the labor hierarchy and, as a result, their experiences of incarceration and ability to prepare for release. Through insightful first-hand perspectives and rich ethnographic detail, Orange-Collar Labor takes the reader inside the prison workplace, illustrating the formal prison economy as well as the informal black market on which many rely to survive. Highlighting moments of struggle and suffering, as well as hard work, cooperation, resistance, and dignity in harsh environments, it documents the lives of America's working prisoners so often obscured from view.

McNeill, Fergus, Phil Crockett Thomas, Lucy Cathcart Frödén, Jo Collinson Scott, Oliver Escobar, and Alison Urie. 2022. “Time After Time: Imprisonment, reentry and enduring temporariness.” Pp. 171-201 in Time and Punishment: New Contexts and Perspectives, edited by Nicola Carr and Gwen Robinson. Palgrave Macmillan. [More information here]

This chapter aims to address the scant attention that has been paid to time and temporalities in re-entry and re/integration research. Drawing on data from the ‘Distant Voices—Coming Home’ project, which used creative methods to explore re/integration after punishment—we illustrate and analyse three ‘travails’ of penal time. We use the term travails here to stress the significant, difficult and active work involved in addressing these temporal challenges. Respectively, these travails concern the struggles caused by ‘de-synchrony’ between time inside and outside of prison and the problems of ‘re-synchrony’ that it creates; the contestation of ‘readiness’ for progression and release; and the problem of living with the paradox of ‘enduring temporariness’. In our conclusion, we argue that tackling these three challenges requires people re-entering society to travel not just through spaces and to places but also through time, both backwards and forwards. These journeys are fraught with both difficulty and danger.

 

PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP

Lageson, Sarah. November 13, 2022. “Formerly Incarcerated Job Seekers Need More Than Training.” Wired. [Access it here]

Reentry programs help, but tech companies must also modify their hiring systems.