As compiled by Dr. Kaitlyn Quinn
LAW AND SOCIETY ASSOCIATION
Collaborative Research Network: Punishment and Society
Organizers:
Ashley Rubin, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, USA
Natalie Pifer, University of Rhode Island
RECENTLY PUBLISHED WORKS
October 2023
ARTICLES
Ben-Natan, Smadar. 2023. “The Boundaries of the Carceral State: Accounting for the Role of Military Incarceration.” Theoretical Criminology. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]
This article extends the study of carceral expansion—currently encompassing criminal, civil, and immigration enforcement—by examining the role of military (and, within that, extraterritorial) incarceration. Drawing on the case of military incarceration of civilians in Israel/Palestine, which since 1967 has accounted for between one-third and one-half of the entire prisoner population, it demonstrates the consolidation of a single carceral apparatus that normalizes military detention and incorporates non-citizens detained in extraterritorial locations. Involving both institutional and spatial dimensions, the article illuminates how the boundaries of the carceral state are relatively independent of formal sovereign borders, legal categories, and institutional arrangements, identifying the military as a carceral state agency. The study thus suggests a framework for an integrated study that accounts for the actual scope of the carceral state and its paradoxical modes of exclusionary inclusion.
Burkhardt, Brett C., Mark Edwards, Scott Akins, and Christopher T. Stout. 2023. “Understanding Public Preferences for Policing Homeless Individuals in the United States: Results from a National Survey.” Deviant Behavior44(10): 1462-1479. [Access it here]
The United States has a large and growing homeless population. In the name of public order, municipalities across the country have criminalized behaviors associated with homeless people in public spaces (e.g. panhandling) and tasked police with responding to violations. What should police do in these encounters? This study reports on a nationwide survey experiment that asked US residents whether police should arrest, help, or ignore a homeless individual in several hypothetical scenarios. We estimate (1) aggregate preferences for police response, (2) the association between respondent demographics and individual preferences, and (3) the effect of experimentally manipulated identity – gender and background – of a homeless person on preferences. Results reveal that a helping response from police is generally preferred to arresting or ignoring. An arrest response received greater support from people who perceived homelessness to be a problem locally, as well as men and Republicans. The identity of the homeless individual had little effect on preferred police responses. With respect to public and policy debates about homelessness, these results suggest that there is relatively little public appetite for a heavy-handed police response, though this may not hold in areas where many people perceive homelessness to be a source of problems.
Corda, Alessandro. 2023. “Collateral Consequences and Criminal Justice Reform: Successes and Challenges.” Crime and Justice 52. [Access it here]
Collateral consequences of criminal convictions such as occupational restrictions, ineligibility for welfare benefits, and disenfranchisement from voting have drastic and long-lasting effects. They hinder successful reintegration into society of people with criminal records and undermine efforts to reduce recidivism. In recent years, awareness that they are counterproductive and often undermine public safety has increased. There is growing recognition of their detrimental effects on individuals, families, communities, and the economy. Non- and bipartisan efforts are underway to change these laws and policies, mostly at the state level, but many changes so far have been limited in ambition and scope. More, bolder, and more comprehensive changes are needed. Reforms should not only reduce the sheer number of collateral restrictions and eliminate or mitigate their adverse effects but also incorporate awareness of their existence and knowledge of their effects into the day-to-day operations of the criminal justice system.
Corda, Alessandro. 2023. “Reshaping Goals and Values in Times of Penal Transition: The Dynamics of Penal Change in the Collateral Consequences Reform Space.” Law & Social Inquiry. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]
Over the past decade, reform efforts in the area of collateral consequences of conviction have succeeded in emancipating themselves from standard discourses and dynamics in the US criminal legal reform space. This article draws on concepts and insights from the literature on penal transformation to explore the unique interplay of goals and values that have led to recent collateral consequences reforms. It identifies three major drivers of change that have had a significant impact, particularly, on softening occupational licensing restrictions for individuals with a criminal history and passing criminal record clearance legislation. First, advocates of the economic libertarian agenda joined forces with civil libertarian groups to reduce occupational licensing hurdles for criminal record holders. Second, an attitude promoting redemption and second chances through criminal record clearance reform has been championed, in particular, by the Christian right. Third, economic concerns by employers seeking to hire individuals with a criminal record have become more pronounced in tight labor markets, both pre- and post-pandemic. The analysis concludes that, although much remains to be done, ongoing reforms represent a significant reshaping of the collateral consequences landscape. A logic of unworthiness toward individuals with criminal records, however, remains hard to eradicate and can easily resurface in the current unstable phase of penal transition.
Corda, Alessandro, Marti Rovira, and Andrew Henley. 2023. “Collateral Consequences of Criminal Records from the Other Side of the Pond: How Exceptional is American Penal Exceptionalism?” Criminology & Criminal Justice23(4): 528-548. [Access it here]
In this article, we highlight the existence and expansion of so-called ‘collateral consequences’ (CCs) of criminal records in Europe to challenge the prevalent view that these are features of the claimed ‘American exceptionalism’ within the penal field. First, we consider how CCs have been widely presented as a quintessential example of American penal exceptionalism within extant scholarship before problematising the adoption of such a framework from a European perspective. Second, we demystify the issue of CCs within Europe by highlighting the deleterious effects which CCs have on the lives of European people with a criminal record. Third, we consider precisely what can be regarded as ‘exceptional’ about CCs in the United States as compared to Europe by analysing key areas of possible differentiation. We conclude by cautioning against the view that European penality is necessarily – and always homogeneously and consistently – ‘progressive’ in relation to its treatment of criminal records and criminal record subjects. We also suggest that far greater attention and vigilance is required from criminologists and criminal justice scholars regarding the expansion and operation of CCs in Europe.
Corda, Alessandro, Marti Rovira, and Elina van 't Zand-Kurtovic. 2023. “Collateral Consequences of Criminal Records from a Cross-National Perspective: An Introduction.” Criminology & Criminal Justice 23(4): 519-527. [Access it here]
Hanan, M. Eve and Lydia Nussbaum. 2023. “Community Accountability.” Hastings Women’s Law Journal 34(2): 5-34. [Access it here]
“Community accountability” is a phrase commonly used by transformative and restorative justice practitioners. Yet the meaning of both “community” and “accountability” are far from stable and clear. This Essay offers some preliminary thoughts on the contextual nature of “community accountability” based on the authors’ ongoing research into the ways in which transformative and restorative justice advocates conceptualize and implement alternatives to legalism and punishment.
The ambiguity inherent to words like “community” and “accountability” offers a way to disengage from society’s existing, broken systems and opens the door to generating new norms. Indeed, we see these words as poised to be imbued with fresh meaning derived from the ethical, epistemic, and practical work of groups exploring or offering alternatives to criminal and juvenile legal systems. Yet, ambiguity and instability in language can be dangerous. One danger is that new terms like “accountability” may obscure the fact that nothing substantial has changed. New principles and practices could replicate objectionable practices in criminal and juvenile systems. Another danger is that when an ambiguous term like “community” becomes a heuristic device, its use enables value-based assumptions based on romantic or nostalgic notions that communitarianism is an inherent good and that “community” is a font of moral authority.
Jouet, Mugambi. Forthcoming. “A History of Post-Roe America and Canada: From Intertwined Abortion Battles to American Exceptionalism.” Michigan Journal of Gender & Law. [Access it here]
This Article explores why abortion is being recriminalized in the United States in sharp contrast to the historical evolution of reproductive rights. Its thesis is that abortion exemplifies American exceptionalism in the original sense of the phrase that America is an “exception,” especially within the Western world. Yet the Article demonstrates that American exceptionalism should not be misunderstood as historical determinism or cultural essentialism. By the early 1970s, America was converging with peer Western democracies in liberalizing abortion. This process of convergence was ultimately impeded by the growing polarization of modern America. The United States’ persistent battles over abortion became increasingly peculiar as the rest of the Western world came to widely accept or tolerate a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.
This evolution is brought to light through an in-depth comparative history of America and Canada, neighboring nations whose abortion histories have been intertwined in intriguing and overlooked ways. When the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973, it heartened Canadian reformers who repeatedly cited Roe as a model to follow. The Supreme Court of Canada would not decriminalize abortion before 1988 in its landmark Morgentaler decision—fifteen years after Roe. This history, documented with original English- and French-language sources, reveals as much about America as about Canada. If both countries had seemingly converged in liberalizing abortion, the outcome of their landmark court decisions would markedly differ. In Canada, the anti-abortion movement gradually collapsed in the decades following Morgentaler, as in much of the West. In America, by contrast, the pro-choice movement was on the retreat as anti-abortion forces gained ground.
When the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe in its 2022 Dobbs decision, it not only exacerbated polarization within American society, but also the divide between America and the Western world. If abortion is not usually thought of as an issue of criminal law in modern times, it is once again within the sphere of criminal liability in parts of America. A multidisciplinary perspective will reveal how the United States’ distinctive legal, sociopolitical, and religious landscape has shaped an enduring battle over abortion reflecting wider features of American exceptionalism.
Jouet, Mugambi. Forthcoming. “Humanity, Race, and Indigeneity in Criminal Sentencing: Social Change in America, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.” NYU Review of Law & Social Change. [Access it here]
The role of systemic racism in criminal justice is a growing matter of debate in modern Western democracies. The United States’ situation has garnered the most attention given the salience of its racial issues and the disproportionate attention that American society garners around the world. This has obscured major developments in Canadian society with great relevance to increasingly diverse Western democracies where minorities are highly over-incarcerated. In recent years, the landmark Anderson and Morris decisions recognized that the systemic racism that Black people face in Canada should be considered as mitigation at sentencing. These historic cases partly stem from the recognition of social-context evidence as mitigation for Indigenous defendants under a groundbreaking 1996 legislative reform that remains little known outside Canada’s borders. While Australia and New Zealand have also recognized certain mitigation principles for Indigenous defendants, Canada is arguably the country that is now making the most concerted effort to tackle systemic racism in criminal punishment.
Conversely, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected this approach in McCleskey v. Kemp, an influential 1987 precedent holding that statistical proof of systemic racism in sentencing is essentially irrelevant. The situation might someday change in America, as suggested by the Washington State Supreme Court’s 2018 abolition of the death penalty in State v. Gregory, which deviated from McCleskey in accepting evidence of systemic racism. However, Gregory was only decided under state law and it is too early to tell whether more American states will inch toward the developments occurring in Canada.
These ongoing shifts should be situated in a wider historical context, as they do not merely reflect modern debates about systemic racism or Canada-specific matters. This Article captures how they are the next step in the long-term, incremental evolution of criminal punishment in the Western world since the Enlightenment. For generations, the principles of individualization and proportionality have enabled judges to assess mitigation by considering a defendant’s social circumstances. Considering evidence of systemic racism or social inequality as mitigation at sentencing is a logical extension of these principles. The age-old aspiration toward humanity in criminal justice may prove a stepping stone toward tackling the over-incarceration of minorities in modern Western democracies.
Jouet, Mugambi. 2023. “Death Penalty Abolitionism from the Enlightenment to Modernity.” American Journal of Comparative Law 71: 46-97. [Access it here]
The modern movement to abolish the death penalty in the United States stresses that this punishment cannot be applied fairly and effectively. The movement does not emphasize that killing prisoners is inhumane per se. Its focus is almost exclusively on administrative, procedural, and utilitarian issues, such as recurrent exonerations of innocents, incorrigible racial discrimination, endemic arbitrariness, lack of deterrent value, and spiraling financial costs. By comparison, modern European law recognizes any execution as an inherent violation of human rights rooted in dignity. This humanistic approach is often assumed to be “European” in nature and foreign to America, where distinct sensibilities lead people to concentrate on practical problems surrounding executions.
This Article demonstrates that, in reality, the significant transatlantic divergence on abolitionism is a relatively recent development. By the late eighteenth century, abolitionists in Europe and America recurrently denounced the inhumanity of executions in language foreshadowing modern human rights norms. Drawing on sources overlooked by scholars, including the views of past American and French abolitionists, the Article shows that reformers previously converged in employing a polyvalent rhetoric blending humanistic and practical objections to executions. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s that a major divergence materialized. As America faced an increasingly punitive social climate leading to the death penalty’s resurgence and the rise of mass incarceration, abolitionists largely abandoned humanistic claims in favor of practical ones. Meanwhile, the opposite generally occurred as abolitionism triumphed in Europe. These findings call into question the notion that framing the death penalty as a human rights abuse marks recent shifts in Western Europe or international law. While human rights have indeed become the official basis for abolition in modern Europe, past generations of European and U.S. abolitionists defended similar moral and political convictions. These humanistic norms reflect a long-term evolution traceable to the Renaissance and Enlightenment. But for diverse social transformations, America may have kept converging with Europe in gradually adopting humanistic norms of punishment.
Jouet, Mugambi. 2023. “Guns, Mass Incarceration, and Bipartisan Reform: Beyond Vicious Circle and Social Polarization.” Arizona State Law Journal 55: 239-89. [Access it here]
Gun violence in modern America persists in the face of irreconcilable views on gun control and the right to bear arms. Yet one area of agreement between Democrats and Republicans has received insufficient attention: punitiveness as a means of gun control. The United States has gravitated toward a peculiar social model combining extremely loose regulations on guns and extremely harsh penalties on gun crime. If someone possesses a gun illegally or carries one when committing another crime, such as burglary or drug dealing, draconian mandatory minimums can apply. These circumstances exemplify root causes of mass incarceration: overreliance on prisons in reaction to social problems and unforgiving punishments for those labeled as “violent” criminals. Contrary to widespread misconceptions, mass incarceration does not primarily stem from locking up petty, nonviolent offenders caught in the “War on Drugs.” Most prisoners are serving time for violent offenses. Steep sentence enhancements for crimes involving guns illustrate how American justice revolves around counterproductive, costly practices that disproportionately impact minorities.
This multidisciplinary Article envisions future reforms with the capacity to transcend America’s bitter polarization. A precondition to change is not for conservatives and liberals to wholeheartedly agree on issues like systemic racism or the right to bear arms. Rather, possibilities for penal reform are likelier when each side can come to the negotiating table for its own reasons. A paradigm shift in conservative America may prove especially indispensable, as Republicans tend to be more supportive of harsh punishments and Democrats are unlikely to achieve reform nationwide on party-line votes. This shift has already occurred to an extent given the rise of penal reform in red states. But both conservatives and liberals have failed to significantly reduce mass incarceration by recurrently excluding “violent” offenders from reform initiatives.
The Article explores how conservatives and liberals could gradually converge toward sentencing reform on gun crime. This could ultimately have a ripple effect on American sentencing norms, leading them closer to those of Western democracies with more effective and humane penal systems. Such bipartisanship is less elusive than it might seem. A rehabilitative approach toward gun crime fits with the evolution of American conservatism, which believes that guns should not be vilified since they are part of the nation’s identity. Similarly, the rehabilitation of people convicted of gun crime is consistent with cornerstones of modern American liberalism, namely stricter gun control and opposition to mass incarceration as an unjust, racist system. As opposite sides will probably retain much of their worldview even if their perspectives evolve to a degree, new ways of thinking could help bring reformers together. These social transformations cannot be predicted but should be theorized.
Jouet, Mugambi. 2023. “The Abolition and Retention of Life Without Parole in Europe: A Comparative and Historical Perspective.” European Convention on Human Rights Law Review. [Access it here]
Life without parole is increasingly recognised as another death penalty in dooming prisoners to die behind bars. On the tenth anniversary of the ECtHR’s landmark Vinter decision, abolitionism and retentionism characterise its state in Europe. In abolishing irreducible life sentences, Vinter crystallised a long-term evolution in prisoners’ rights since the Enlightenment. Meanwhile, enduring animosity towards prisoners has led to their rights repeatedly becoming the stage for wider debates concerning the legitimacy of European institutions. The United Kingdom’s threats to leave the ECtHR notably enabled it to exempt itself from Vinter. Still, the European project retains numerous supporters, which helps explain why the abolition of life without parole is making progress in continental Europe, as compared to the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Ultimately, the article demonstrates that prisoners’ rights are both a microcosm of broader questions regarding European integration and a benchmark of human dignity’s historical evolution.
Kerrison, Erin M. T. and Jordan M. Hyatt. 2023. “COVID-19 Vaccine Refusal and Medical Distrust Held by Correctional Officers.” Vaccines 11(7):1237-1254. [Access it here]
This study explores COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among prison security staff and the extent to which they trust varied sources of information about the vaccines. Cross-sectional survey data were obtained from a state-wide sample of corrections officers (COs, hereafter; n = 1208) in February 2021. Group differences, disaggregated by demographic characteristics, were examined using F-tests and t-tests. Despite the comparatively limited risk of contracting the virus, non-security staff reported they would accept a COVID-19 vaccine at no cost (74%), compared to their more vulnerable CO counterparts (49%). We observed vaccine refusal correlations between COs’ reported gender, age, and length of time working as a CO, but none with their self-reported race. Vaccine refusal was more prevalent among womxn officers, younger officers, and those who had spent less time working as prison security staff. Our findings also suggest that the only trusted source of information about vaccines were family members and only for officers who would refuse the vaccine; the quality of trust placed in those sources, however, was not substantially positive and did not vary greatly across CO racial groups. By highlighting characteristics of the observed gaps in COVID-19 vaccine acceptance between COs and their non-security staff coworkers, as well as between corrections officers of varied demographic backgrounds, these findings can inform the development of responsive and accepted occupational health policies for communities both inside and intrinsically linked to prisons.
Koehler, Johann and Tony Cheng. 2023. “Settling Institutional Uncertainty: Policing Chicago and New York, 1877–1923.” Criminology 61(3): 518-545. [Access it here]
We show how both the Chicago Police Department and the New York Police Department sought to settle uncertainty about their propriety and purpose during a period when abrupt transformations destabilized urban order and called the police mandate into question. By comparing annual reports that the Chicago Police Department and the New York Police Department published from 1877 to 1923, we observe two techniques in how the police enacted that settlement: identification of the problems that the police believed themselves uniquely well equipped to manage and authorization of the powers necessary to do so. Comparison of identification and authorization yields insights into the role that these police departments played in convergent and divergent constructions of disorder and, in turn, into Progressivism's varying effects in early urban policing.
LaChance, Daniel. 2023. “The Death Penalty in Black and White: Execution Coverage in Two Southern Newspapers, 1877-1936.” Law & Social Inquiry 48(3): 999-1022. [Access it here]
In the immediate aftermath of Reconstruction, coverage of executions in the Atlanta Constitution and the New Orleans (Times-)Picayune occasionally portrayed African Americans executed by the state as legally, politically, and spiritually similar to their white counterparts. But as radical white supremacy took hold across the South, the coverage changed. Through an analysis of 667 newspaper articles covering the executions of Black and white men in Georgia and Louisiana from 1877 to 1936, I found that as lynching became the principal form of lethal punishment in the South, accounts of Black men’s legal executions shrank in length and journalists increasingly portrayed them as ciphers, nonentities that the state was dispatching with little fanfare. In contrast, accounts of white men’s executions continued to showcase their individuality and their membership in social, political, and religious communities. A significant gap between the material reality and the cultural representation of capital punishment emerged. Legal executions in Georgia and Louisiana overwhelmingly targeted Black men. But on the pages of each state’s most prominent newspaper, the executions of white men received the most attention. As a result, capital punishment was increasingly represented as a high-status punishment that respected the “whiteness” of those who suffered it.
Lynch, Mona. 2023. “Prosecutors as Punishers: A Case Study of Trump-Era Practices.” Punishment & Society. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]
Recent punishment and society scholarship has addressed the limits of policy reforms aimed at reducing mass incarceration in the U.S. This work has focused in particular on the political dimensions of penal legal reform and policy-making, and the compromises and shortcomings in those processes. Nearly absent in this scholarship, however, has been empirical and theoretical engagement with the role of front-line prosecutors as facilitators and/or resistors to downsizing efforts. Using the case of the U.S. federal criminal legal system's modest efforts to decrease the system's racially disparate and punitive outcomes, this paper elucidates the fragile nature of such reforms by delineating the critical role that front-line prosecutors play in maintaining punitive approaches. Focusing specifically on federal prosecutorial policy and practices in the Trump era, I draw on a subset of data from an interdisciplinary, multi-methodological project set in distinct federal court jurisdictions in the U.S. to examine how front-line prosecutors were able to quickly reverse course on reform through the use of their uniquely powerful charging and plea-bargaining tools. My findings illustrate how federal prosecutors pursued more low-level defendants, and utilized statutory “hammers,” including mandatory minimums and mandatory enhancements to ensure harsh punishments in a swift return to a war-on-crime.
Lynch, Mona, Taylor Kidd, and Emily Shaw. 2022. “The Subtle Effects of Implicit Bias Instructions.” Law & Policy44(1): 98-124. [Access it here]
Judges are increasingly using “implicit bias” instructions in jury trials in an effort to reduce the influence of jurors' biases on judgment. In this article, we report on findings from a large-scale mock jury study that tests the impact of implicit bias instructions on judgment in a case where defendant race was varied (Black or white). Using an experimental design, we collected and analyzed quantitative and qualitative data at the individual and group levels obtained from 120 small groups who viewed a simulated federal drug conspiracy trial and then deliberated to determine a verdict. We find that while participants were sensitized to the importance of being unbiased, implicit bias instructions had no measurable impact on verdict outcomes relative to the standard instructions. Our analysis of the deliberations, however, reveals that those who heard the implicit bias instructions were more likely to discuss the issue of bias, potentially with both ameliorative and harmful effects on the defendant. Most significantly, we identified multiple instances where, in an effort to avoid bias, participants who heard the implicit bias instructions interfered with their own or other participants' appropriate assessments of witness credibility.
Lynch, Mona and Emily Shaw. 2023. “Downstream Effects of Frayed Relations: Juror Race, Judgment, and Perceptions of Police.” Race & Justice. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]
Building on research demonstrating significant differences in how Black and White Americans view law enforcement, this study assesses how those differential views shape potential jurors’ decision-making in the context of a federal drug conspiracy case in which the primary evidence against the defendant is provided by an FBI agent and an informant cooperating with the agent. A sample of 649 Black and White jury-eligible U.S. citizens were exposed to the case, in which a Black defendant is being tried, and where the informant-witness race (Black or White) was varied. Participants determined verdict, evaluated evidence, and completed additional measures. Results indicated that Black participants were significantly less likely to convict than White participants, especially in the White informant condition; rated the law enforcement witness as less credible, and viewed police more negatively across three composite measures. Exploratory analysis of how juror race and gender interacted indicates Black women largely drove racial differences in verdicts. Perceptions of police legitimacy mediated the relationship between juror race and verdict choice. We conclude that it is critical that citizens are not prevented from being seated on juries due to skepticism about police, given the risk of disproportionate exclusion of Black potential jurors. The legal processes relevant to juror excusals need to be reconsidered to ensure that views of police, rooted in actual experience or knowledge about the problems with fair and just policing, are not used to disproportionately exclude persons of color, or to seat juries overrepresented by people who blindly trust police.
Shlafer, Rebecca J., Michelle S. Phelps, J’Mag Karbeah, and Alyssa Scott. 2023. “Parents on Probation: Custody, Co-Residence, and Care of Minor Children During Community Supervision.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]
Family science and public health scholars have documented the consequences of incarceration for the well-being of individuals, children, families, and communities. Yet the largest form of supervision in the criminal legal system is not imprisonment, but probation, with little known about the experiences of parents on probation. We analyzed interviews with 153 adults on probation, 68 (44%) of whom reported being parents of minor children (under 18 years). Compared to participants without minor children, parents with minor children were younger and more likely to be employed. Among parents, 42% reported having custody of one or more minor children and 20% lived with their minor children at the time of the interview. Yet, most (82%) parents reported they provided some form of care or support. Qualitative analyses of four case studies show the challenges facing parents on probation and the complex intersection of custody, living arrangements, and care and support for minor children. We find that parenthood and probation are interconnected, with parent status influencing the experience of supervision and probation impacting parenting opportunities and constraints. Findings suggest service providers working with parents on probation need to attend to these complex family dynamics.
Valdovinos Olson, Maria. 2023. “The Promise and Practice of Care in Prisoner Reentry.” Sociological Forum 38(3): 752-769. [Access it here]
Although the provision of care is a core project of prisoner reentry, we know little about how care is conceived and practiced in this context. In particular, the period between pre-release, discharge into community corrections, and eventual release into the community is a critical juncture for ensuring important continuity of care linkages that can bolster the potential for reentry success. Nevertheless, what care means and entails in this context remains undefined. Drawing on a nationally representative sample of reentry planning, discharge/release, and community corrections policies and procedures in 45 U.S. State Departments of Correction, I examine how care is conceptualized, structured, and deployed during this transitional phase. Findings illuminate important considerations in the development of correctional policy focused on reentry and raise theoretical concerns regarding the provision of care for non-traditional and carceral care populations.
Wozniak, Kevin H., Justin T. Pickett, and Elizabeth K. Brown. 2022. “Judging Hardworking Robbers and Lazy Thieves: An Experimental Test of Act- vs. Person-Centered Punitiveness and Perceived Redeemability.” Justice Quarterly 39(7): 1565-1591. [Access it here]
This study explores whether Americans’ punitiveness and perceptions of redeemability are shaped more by the type of crime committed or by judgements about an offender’s moral character. Guided by theories of neoliberalism, we focus on laziness as an indicator of flawed character that is independent of criminality. A sentencing vignette experiment administered to a national sample of the U.S. population tested the effects of crime type and a defendant’s employment status, work ethic, and race on respondents’ preferred punishment and perceptions of the defendant’s redeemability. Both crime type and work ethic significantly affect perceived (ir)redeemability and sentencing preferences, but the effects are not identical. Work ethic exerts the largest effect on perceived (ir)redeemability, whereas crime type most strongly influences sentencing preferences. We discuss the implications of our findings for act- vs. person-centered theories of punishment, as well as the role of laziness stigma in social responses to lawbreakers.
BOOKS/BOOK CHAPTERS/EDITED COLLECTIONS
Alam, Mariful, Patrick Dwyer, and Katrin Roots. Eds. 2023. Violence, Imagination, and Resistance: Socio-legal Interrogations of Power. AU Press. [More information here]
Asfari, Amin, James Gacek, and Amny Shuraydi. 2024. “Islam, Islamophobia, and the Carceral Experience.” Pp. 364-379 in Danielle Rudes, Gaylene Armstrong, Kimberly Kras, and TaLisa Carter (Eds.) Handbook on Prisons and Jails. Routledge. [More information here]
People in the U.S. and Canada are increasingly reconsidering their religious and spiritual identities. Incarcerated individuals are no exception. Still, the corrections populations in these countries have become more diverse in terms of religion and ethnicity. While the religious landscape in the U.S. and Canadian prison settings is vast and varied, there remains relatively little attention toward Islam and Islamophobia within these settings. This conceptual chapter endeavors to summarize what is known about Islam and Islamophobia in prison settings, while simultaneously outlining emerging areas of theoretical work that shed light on aspects of the carceral experience.
Ben-Natan, Smadar. Forthcoming. “The Shadow of the Death Penalty in Israel: Constructing Enemies, Citizens, and Victims.” In Ben Fleury-Steiner and Austin Sarat (Eds.) Companion on Capital Punishment. [Access it here]
Israel abolished the death penalty for criminal murder but retained it for political offenses reflecting "enemy penology": treason, terrorism, and genocide. In practice, Israel executed only the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann, refraining from executions even for the bloodiest terrorist attacks. Military courts handed death sentences that have all been revoked, resulting in de-facto abolition. By historically analyzing the judicial discourse in military and civilian capital cases, this chapter makes three arguments. First, enemies are constructed as a scale of multiple categories such as Nazis, traitors, and terrorists. Second, de-facto abolition maintains a shadow of the death penalty over enemy populations. This shadow laid heavier on Palestinian citizens of Israel, constructed as "citizen-enemies," carrying the double brunt of terrorism and treason. The courts created an inverted hierarchy that enhanced punishments of citizens. Third, enemy penology functions on a symbolic level that contrasts evil enemies with an a-historic self-image of victimhood.
Brown, Mark. 2023. “Colonialism and Penality.” Pp. 380-390 in Chris Cunneen, Antje Deckert, Amanda Porter, Juan Tauri, and Robert Webb (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Decolonizing Justice. Routledge. [More information here]
This chapter focuses on the relationship between colonialism and penality. Drawing on the history of South Asia, I develop my argument by beginning first with a contrast. On the one hand, we find in mainstream accounts in supposedly ‘critical’ criminologies a startlingly simplistic presentation of colonialism as simple, pure, or unalloyed repression. Repression was undoubtedly a feature of colonial penal power, and I detail many examples of how it was the case on the Indian subcontinent. But such approaches hardly explain why colonial penal power was so durable, so effective, or why we still wrestle with it today. To understand that we need to recognize a second, larger formation: that which made colonial penal power productive. What we find, when looking critically, when we change lenses, is that penal power in India was also productive: it produced flexible spaces of plural legality and penality, highly nuanced grids of control across social spaces, and modes of plural and often tolerant penal governance. The enduring, residual, power of colonial penalities today thus arises not because colonial power was a big stick or a heavy hammer, though it often was both of those. The omnipresence and difficulty of escaping colonial penal power reflects the difficulty of escaping, of getting outside, these modalities of its productive renewal, established in colonial locations but now a universal inheritance.
Halushka, John M. 2023. Getting the Runaround: Formerly Incarcerated Men and the Bureaucratic Barriers to Reentry. University of California Press. [More information here]
Getting the Runaround takes readers into the bureaucratic spaces of prisoner reentry, examining how returning citizens navigate the “institutional circuit” of parole offices, public assistance programs, rehabilitation facilities, shelters, and family courts. Drawing on three years of ethnographic fieldwork and forty-five in-depth interviews with formerly incarcerated men returning to New York City, John M. Halushka argues that the very institutions charged with facilitating the transition from incarceration to community life perversely undermine reintegration by imposing a litany of bureaucratic obstacles. This “runaround” is not merely a series of inconveniences but rather an extension of state punishment that exacerbates material poverty and diminishes citizenship rights. By telling the stories of men caught in vicious cycles of poverty, bureaucratic processing, and social control, Halushka demonstrates the urgent need to shift reentry away from an austerity-driven, compliance-based framework and toward a vision of social justice and inclusion.
Headworth, Spencer. 2023. Rules of the Road: The Automobile and the Transformation of American Criminal Justice. Stanford University Press. [More information here]
Driving is an unavoidable part of life in the United States. Even those who don't drive much likely know someone who does. More than just a simple method of getting from point A to point B, however, driving has been a significant influence on the United States' culture, economy, politics – and its criminal justice system. Rules of the Road tracks the history of the car alongside the history of crime and criminal justice in the United States, demonstrating how the quick and numerous developments in criminal law corresponded to the steadily rising prominence, and now established supremacy, of the automobile.
A teaching guide including lists of key concepts/jumping-off points, ideas for in-class activities, and media resources for each chapter is available for free download under the “excerpts and more” tab on the book's SUP webpage.
Miller, Esmorie. 2023. “‘The Alchemy of Race and Rights’: The Logic of Historicizing the Contemporary Racialized Youth and Gang Phenomenon.” Pp. 297-321 in Paul Andell and John Pitts (Eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK. Palgrave Macmillan. [More information here]
This chapter explores statutory approaches to the contemporary, urban youth gang phenomenon as a relevant case for historicization. Indeed, within the UK, scholarship references a ‘race-gang nexus’ (Williams, 2015: 18; see also Nijjar, 2018), contending the phenomenon has been given a Black and or ethnic face (Hallsworth and Young, 2008: 185), despite knowledge that consumption of concomitant, contributory cultural artefacts like rap [and drill] music ‘include youths of all races, classes, and nationalities’ (Tatum, 1999: 341). Guided by corresponding concerns, the chapter draws from the critical race theory (CRT) tradition, particularly CRT scholar Patricia L. Williams’ influential ‘Alchemy of race and rights’ (1991: 6) logic, to historicize an account of the racialization of contemporary youth gang concerns. Williams’ thesis corresponds with the CRT (Crenshaw et al., 1995; Bell, 1992) position that racialized peoples were excluded from expanding universal rights, flowing from the enlightenment, and instituted coterminous with modernity. Williams’ thesis allows observation of statutory responses to the youth gang—particularly the gang’s racialization—as a process constituted by the contemporary reproduction of a historic race, rights paradox. According to this, expectations for a synthesis of race and rights represents an ‘Oxymoronic oddity’ (Williams, 1991: 6), signifying how young black men, in particular, suffer the suppression of rights never conferred in the first place, to racialized peoples.
Miller, Esmorie. 2023. “The Road from History: Gender and Race in Early Twentieth Century English Youth Penal Reform” Chapter 2 in Jade Levell, Tara Young, and Rod Earle (Eds.) Exploring Urban Youth Culture Outside of the Gang Paradigm: Critical Questions of Youth, Gender and Race On-Road. Bristol University Press. [More information here]
The analysis in this chapter draws on documentary research from the Liverpool University Archives, including the Fletcher Report (1930) and the digitized catalogue of the Eugenics Review, a populist journal spanning 1909 to 1968. While documents like the Report introduced racialized youth to Britain, as a problematic cohort, the pseudo-science promulgated in the Review supported the racial politics positioning these youth outside the redemptive scope of early penal reform efforts. Fletcher (1930: 26) concluded that ‘These families have a low standard of life, morally and economically, and there appears to be little future for the children.’ This conclusion stands counter to narratives supporting rehabilitation for White, working class youth, especially during the interwar period (Miller, 2022). In this chapter, the concept of being on ‘the road’ offers a unique lens to give gendered relevance to this history. For example, during this time, young women’s search for opportunities met with resistance at both the societal and institutional levels. In this regard, Crenshaw’s intersectional logic attends to the important intersections of race, gender, youth giving critical currency to the wider implications of this exclusion. In historicising and gendering ‘on road’ in this way, the chapter emphasizes the importance of conceptual approaches expanding the explanatory scope about racialized youth’s contemporary contested positioning, beyond the customary malignant suturing to crime and punishment.
Valdovinos Olson, Maria. 2023. “Reentry and Public Policy Solutions: Addressing Barriers to Housing and Employment.” Pp. 64-72 in Kristen M. Budd, David C. Lane, Glenn W. Muschert, and Jason A. Smith (Eds.) Beyond Bars: A Path Forward From 50 Years of Mass Incarceration in the United States. Policy Press. [More information here]
Valdovinos Olson, Maria and Karen L. Amendola. 2023. “Adopting Community Policing Principles in Jails to Build Community and Improve Safety, Health, and Wellness Outcomes” Pp. 206-227 in Danielle Rudes, Gaylene Armstrong, Kimberly Kras, and TaLisa Carter (Eds.) Handbook on Prisons and Jails. Routledge. [More information here]
The community-oriented policing paradigm's emphasis on the proactive examination of community-identified problems and the development of collaborative responses to solving those problems offers an actionable framework for improving conditions of everyday living and working in confinement. In this chapter, we highlight two separate jail management strategies employed by the L.A. County Sheriff's Department (LASD) during the A.B. 109 re-alignment period under Sheriff Jim McDonnell's tenure. The first strategy entailed the implementation of a town sheriff and town hall approach to addressing the grievances of the gay male and transgender female population housed in the men's jail. The second strategy entailed the implementation of a gender-responsive advocate and liaison approach to addressing the needs of the pregnant resident population in the women's jail. We discuss the implications of these two strategies for solving problems that have implications for the safety, health, and wellness outcomes of individuals living and working within these penal settings.
Whittaker, A. and Esmorie Miller. 2022. “The Challenge of Youth Gangs: Problems and Responses in UK and Canadian Contexts.” Pp. 133-151 in Denis Lafortune et al. (Eds.) Young People in Difficulty: A Collective Challenge. University of Montréal Press. [More information here]
In the UK, there has been considerable controversy about whether street gangs exist. Just over ten years ago, Pitts (2007, 2008) published the first of what has become a wave of UK gang studies (Densley 2013; Deuchar 2009; Harding, 2014, McLean, 2019) that have marked a growth in interest in the nature of gangs (Andell, 2019). Early debates focused upon whether gangs were a social construction based upon media portrayals of young people, particularly young black people, in negative ways (Hallsworth, 2013; Hallsworth and Young, 2008) or whether there were a response to inner city poverty and structural disadvantage (Pitts, 2008, 2012, 2016). The analysis in this chapter utilizes Merton’s (1948) conception of the self-fulfilling prophecy, exhorting an expansion of the analytical scope regarding the understanding of the youth gang phenomenon as an evolving entity, particularly narratives framing the understanding of an evolution from expressive to instrumental gang action (Whittaker et al., 2019). It is argued that the evolution of the youth gang phenomenon in contemporary western representation and understanding exemplifies what scholars mean when they talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton, 1948)—denoting how what is fictive becomes reality.
Wozniak, Kevin H. 2023. The Politics of Crime Prevention: Race, Public Opinion, and the Meaning of Community Safety. New York University Press. [More information here]
“Defund the police.” This slogan became a rallying cry among Black Lives Matter protesters following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020. These three words evoke a fundamental question about America’s policy priorities: should the nation rely predominantly upon the branches of the criminal justice system to arrest, prosecute, and imprison offenders, or should the nation prioritize fixing structural causes of crime by investing more heavily in the infrastructure and institutions of disadvantaged communities? To put it simply, do Americans actually prefer punishment over crime prevention?
The Politics of Crime Prevention examines American public opinion about crime prevention in the twenty-first century with a particular focus on how average citizens would choose to prioritize resources between the criminal justice system and community-based institutions. Kevin H. Wozniak analyzes differences of opinion across lines of race, social class, and political partisanship, and investigates whether people’s willingness to invest in communities depends upon the kind of communities that would receive money. This book moves beyond criminologists’ typical focus on public opinion about punishment that follows acts of crime to instead examine public attitudes toward crime prevention. In this brilliant and compelling study, Wozniak reveals that politicians profoundly underestimate the American public’s desire to prioritize community investment and that it is long past time to help communities thrive instead of turning to the criminal justice system to respond to every social problem.
PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP
Gacek, James, Jocelyne Lemoine, Breeann Phillips, Julianne Langois, Rosemary Ricciardelli, and Dale C. Spencer. 2023. “Exploring Gender-Based Violence in Canadian Prisons: A Scoping Review.” Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: Knowledge Synthesis Grants Mobilization Forum, and the University of Regina Institutional Repository. [Access it here]
