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 2024
ARTICLES
Black, Lynsey. 2024. “Gendering Postcolonial Penality: The Religious Detention of Women in Ireland.” Theoretical Criminology. OnlineFirst. [Access it here, open access]
The role of religion was pivotal in shaping how women were punished in postcolonial Ireland. The new state used the Catholic Church to establish a separate system of confinement, a shadow penal regime for women, which drew its inmates from within a newly recognized threat to the nation. Drawing on Mark Brown's work on the ways in which postcolonial states can replicate the repression of colonialism, the article suggests that under an increasingly morally authoritarian state, women perceived as sexually promiscuous found themselves in systems of religious control. This article explores the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of this, examining the intersection of state and religious control through the cases of women convicted in the courts and sent to religious detention. I argue for the necessity of a gendered lens in postcolonial penality, and for consideration of the conditions of postcolonial nation formation in shaping punishment.
Burkhardt, Brett C. 2024. “Legitimation Work in Privatized Criminal Justice: Softening, Shrinking, and Signaling.” Theoretical Criminology. OnlineFirst. [Access it here, open access]
How do private companies justify taking on criminal justice functions? Building on writing on legitimacy and privatization, this article describes three rhetorical practices intended to increase the legitimacy of private companies carrying out criminal justice functions: softening (obscuring the use of force); shrinking (demonstrating deference to the state); and signaling (proclaiming alignment with pro-social values). The article demonstrates the analytic utility of these categories by considering public-facing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reports produced by one prominent company in the private corrections industry (CoreCivic). The conceptual typology of legitimation work brings together several dynamics that are common in privatized criminal justice and provides an analytic toolkit for future study. A discussion considers how researchers can use this typology to examine legitimation work by other private firms and industries that engage the criminal justice system.
Deckard, Faith M. 2024. “Surveilling Sureties: How Privately Mediated Monetary Sanctions Enroll and Responsibilize Families.” Social Problems. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]
In the neoliberal age, ordinary people are increasingly responsible for taking up crime control and surveillance, what we might consider traditional state functions. This article situates commercial bail as a case of responsibilization and identifies monetary sanctions as a mechanism through which private companies offload pretrial risk management onto families. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, I present this process via four stages. First, agents use cosigned bail bonds to selectively enroll people they perceive as suitable sureties and surveillants. Second, this monetary sanction is deployed with carceral and financial threats to encourage cosigners to embody the roles. Third, as surveillants, family members engage in invisible emotional labor to cope with or rationalize their deployment as an arm of the state. Last, through their involvement as instruments of surveillance, family members inadvertently become subjects of surveillance and carceral control. From enrollment to subjugation, this process of responsibilization is an uneven one as women, particularly women of color, are disproportionately burdened with risk management and any resulting repercussions.
Foley, Gillian, Marcella Siqueira Cassiano, Rosemary Ricciardelli and James Gacek. 2024. “Correctional Transgender Policy in Canada’s Federal Prison System.” Criminal Justice Policy Review 0(0), 1-25.
Since December 2017, Canada’s federal correctional system provides prisoners the opportunity to be assigned to living units according to their self-identified gender. Still organized around sex, conceptually and spatially, prison policies and procedures surrounding transgender prisoners require navigation to adhere to the rights of all prisoners. Based on interviews conducted between October 2019 and October 2021 with 74 correctional officers (COs) from the Canadian federal prison system, we discuss how correctional officers view and operationalize Canada’s transgender policy to understand its unintended consequences for both prisoners and prison staff. Unintended consequences revolve around the potential risk for prisoner victimization, prisoner pregnancy, lack of adequate housing, strip search complications, officers’ fear of being labeled transphobic, and uncertainty and discretion; all having effects on staff wellness. The policy, although well-intended, may potentially compromise prisoner safety, making correctional work even more stressful.
Gacek, James and Amin Asfari. 2024. “The Challenges for Muslim Women in Prison and Post-Release.” Prison Service Journal 273: 3-8.
Research in the fields of criminology, sociology, and psychology on prison and gender that focuses particularly on women has certainly grown, yet very limited attention has specifically focused upon Muslim women, and very few have mentioned their experiences. This research lacunae provides us a unique opportunity to examine existing literature to understand the relationship between Muslim women and the prison experience more broadly. Indeed, given the intersections of marginalisation, greater attention must be paid towards this specific population and their gendered experiences.
Gacek, James, Richard Jochelson, Amin Asfari, Lauren Corcoran and Marisa Raineri. 2024. “Youth and Young Terror: Canadian Case Law and the Socio-Carceral Dynamics of Youth and Young Offenders Convicted of Terrorism Offences.” Crime & Delinquency 0(0): 1-29. [Access it here, open access]
Focusing on developments within Canadian jurisprudence, the authors explore significant case law and its impact on our understanding of the challenges faced by youth and young offenders convicted of terrorism offences while navigating the legal and correctional systems. We demonstrate how Canadian law has often failed to address the needs and lived experiences of youth and young offenders convicted of terrorism offences while dealing with legal supports and corrections’ resources. To that end, we scrutinize important Canadian case law. Preliminary findings highlight the inadequate interventions measures, both at the state and non-state levels, available to inmates who have committed terrorism-related offences, as well as question whether such interventions have any reintegrative value for youth and young offenders’ personal growth and desistence upon release. Moreover, institutional deficits, such as the absence of correctional programing leave open the opportunity for re-offending and radicalization upon release. If there is a role for law to play in rehabilitation, a thorough exploration of case law as it relates to youth offenders convicted of terrorism offences is required. In addition to examining Canadian jurisprudence and its impact on understanding the challenges faced by youth and young offenders convicted of terrorism offences, it is crucial to underscore the importance of strong and conventional community ties after release. These ties can significantly mitigate further alienation and extremist tendencies. Socio-legal and carceral recommendations are discussed.
Gacek, James, Richard Jochelson, Brandon Trask, Lauren Corcoran and Marisa Ranieri. 2024. “Morbid Matters: Medical Assistance in Dying in Federal Corrections.” Manitoba Law Journal, 47(4): 1-40.
The perennial problem of federal prisons in Canada continues to be deaths in custody. While the issues of prison suicides (i.e., dying by unnatural causes) and aging in prison (i.e., dying by natural causes) remain significant concerns, the legalization and introduction of medical assistance in dying (MAiD) raises policy and operational challenges for federally sentenced and terminally ill prisoners. Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) policy now allows for an external provider to end the life of a prisoner, contingent upon exceptional circumstances. Beyond the optics of an agency of the state enabling or facilitating inmate deaths, there are greater moral, ethical and practical considerations that must be discussed. This article explores the state and challenges of carrying out MAiD in relation to penitentiary settings. As the findings suggest, the arrival of MAiD has prompted an expansion of ideas of what constitutes fostering life or marking for death, and the relationship between the pair.
Gacek, James, Jocelyne Lemoine, Breeann Phillips and Rosemary Ricciardelli. 2024. “The Agricultural Prison Industry: A Scoping Review.” Contemporary Justice Review: Issues in Criminal, Social, and Restorative Justice 0(0), 1-22. [Access it here]
Prison farms are common programs within correctional services; however, knowledge is limited regarding the agricultural prison industry. As a starting point for further study and policy development, we conducted a scoping review to map knowledge on the industry. We searched JSTOR, Sociological Abstracts, Criminal Justices Abstracts, Agricultural and Environmental Science Collection, EconLit, PyscINFO, Web of Science, and ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, The Prison Journal, and Google. In total, we found 5,820 records, of which we included 44 publications in the review. The results show many publications focused on the agricultural prison industry were outdated, United States-based, and/or non-original research. Findings reveal agricultural positions tend to be filled by prisoners with pre-existing work skills and relatively low support needs and agricultural positions are not necessarily driven by market demands. Findings also show prisoners experience a lack of workplace protections, such as workers’ compensation, the ability to unionize, and adequate workplace safety and hazardous materials training. Yet, a purported benefit of agricultural programs was improved food security for prisoners. Other finds show there is a predominant focus on self-sufficiency and cost-savings for prisons in the face of inadequate or worsening budgets but limited available data quantifies relationship, prison farms shift from being rehabilitative-focused to profit-driven over a certain amount of acres. We conclude by identifying gaps in the literature on the agricultural prison industry and listing areas of future inquiry.
Hanan, M. Eve. 2023. “Terror and Tenderness in Criminal Law.” Cardozo Law Review 45(2): 581-648. [Access it here, open access]
The criminal legal system is at a crossroads. Calls for abolition are met with calls for modest adjustments or maintenance of the status quo. What frequently emerges from these polarities is a promise that police, prosecutors, judges, and other government actors will use their vast discretion to reduce the harmful excesses of criminal legal practices. Initiatives like “compassionate release,” “second look sentencing,” and the progressive prosecutor’s pledge to “charge with restraint” are examples of this promise to exercise discretion with care. In word choice and design, these discretionary reforms suggest tempering harsh criminal legal practices with leniency and individualized consideration—a promise of tenderness.
This Article argues that the current wave of reforms deploys discretionary relief in a manner that provokes unwarranted optimism while masking the state’s power to invoke terror through policing, prosecution, and punishment. An emotional sleight of hand, discretionary relief--sometimes cast as leniency--entrenches the excessiveness of criminal legal systems in at least three ways. First, discretionary leniency is merely a continuation of a pattern of strategic mercy documented in English law as early as the thirteenth century when pardons were issued to those sentenced to death in order to assuage public outcry over excessive punitiveness. Second, reforms that rely on discretionary leniency reinforce well-worn beliefs about merit—who merits punishment and who merits mercy. This liberal conceptualization of meritocracy shifts responsibility for the harshness of criminal legal practices onto the shoulders of defendants, a phenomenon that masks racial and other disparities in criminal systems. Third, discretionary-based reforms do not change substantive law or procedure. Instead, they rely on the leadership qualities of the discretionary decision-maker. This further entrenches the neoliberal tenet that reforming unjust or inequitable institutions can be accomplished by simply finding the right person for the job. This reliance on good people making good decisions truncates discussion of more sweeping changes that would place structural and legal limits on the state’s power to police, prosecute, and punish.
Lavorgna, Anita and Alessandro Corda. 2024. “Online Prosumers and Penal Policy Formation in an Age of Digital Polarization and Populism: An Exploratory Study.” International Criminology. OnlineFirst. [Access it here, open access]
This article explores the influence of right-wing social media users on penal policy formation processes. Through a passive digital ethnography approach, the study examines online debates preceding and following recent legislative interventions adopted in Italy by the new right-wing government in power since late 2022, namely the criminalization of unauthorized rave parties and the punitive approach to migration management. The article discusses the role of social media users as prosumers, who both consume and produce content, and shows how social media platforms amplify political polarization by promoting selective exposure to like-minded viewpoints and facilitating the spread of divisive content. It also showcases how prosumers contribute to the propagation of punitive narratives and engage in direct interactions with populist leaders through social media platforms. Conversely, political leaders—specifically Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in this case study—use these platforms to disseminate their narratives and create support for their penal policies, employing fear-mongering tactics and simplistic messaging. Our findings suggest that, while social media platforms have transformed political discourse, in the Italian scenario their direct influence on penal policy making from the ground-up remains limited. Instead, traditional top-down channels continue to dominate the process of penal policy formation.
Mamet, Elliot and Austin Bussing. 2024. “Race, Democracy, and Empire: Delegates to Congress from DC and the Territories.” Polity 56(3): 384-407. [Access it here, open access]
Both democracy and empire are central to American political development. Yet, the role of Congress—that organ of democratic politics—in the expansion of US empire is not well understood. This article explains how and why Congress institutionalized representation from Washington, DC and the US territories in the mid-twentieth century. We uncover the history of a puzzling position: the Congressional delegate, who is permitted to debate, but not vote. Drawing on extensive original archival research and quantitative analysis of legislative voting behavior, this article explicates how racial attitudes structured conflict over the delegate position. We highlight the centrality of racial ideas to the institutionalization of American empire in the mid-twentieth century.
Meng, Yuchen and Jize Jiang. 2024. “Visible Body and Invisible Mind: Bureaucratic Performance, Self-Rehabilitation, and the Machinery of Chinese Community Corrections.” Criminology & Criminal Justice. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]
Based on a recent ethnographic study of community corrections in two large Chinese cities, this study examines how the rehabilitation work, as the cornerstone of Chinese community corrections, is deployed as a people-processing apparatus that counts offenders’ bodies but almost excludes their agency. In practice, offenders are instrumentalized and disciplined to make up the Chinese community corrections machinery, whose subjectivity is either completely muted or selectively mediated. Given justice actors’ adherence to bureaucratic hierarchy and preoccupation with administrative requirements, offenders are mostly marked as counts and treated more as penal objects utilized to fulfill intricate metrics-related requirements. Justice agents’ formalistic pursuit of, rather than substantive investment in, the well-being of offenders renders their participation in Chinese community corrections symbolic and strenuous. It further breeds offenders’ commitment to self-rehabilitation, a process of relying on self-discipline and personally discovered resources for compliance and reintegration. We contend that the current operation of the Chinese community corrections apparatus, under the rehabilitative guise, exacerbates offenders’ structural disadvantages and reinforces their stigmatized identities. Policy and research implications of this study are discussed.
Owens, Michael Leo. 2024. “Police in the Urban World: A Primer.” Journal of Urban Affairs 46(8): 1489-1506. [Access it here, open access]
Pfeffer, Elizabeth Gordon. 2024. “Conceptualizing and Measuring ‘Punitiveness’ in Contemporary Advanced Democracies.” Regulation & Governance 18(2): 573-589. [Access it here, open access]
This article addresses a key political question regarding the relationship between states and their citizens: how harsh are judicial systems in their punishment of those who deviate from the law? Punitiveness is a fraught concept in the existing literature and robust measurement methods maximizing conceptual complexity are lacking. Here I develop a functional approach to punitiveness through a revised conceptualization and operationalization of this key variable while cautioning against the solitary use of incarceration rates to measure state intention. Punitiveness is conceptually disaggregated into three main components: (1) a commitment to punishment over rehabilitation, (2) the degree of harshness of response to crime (i.e., a longer sentence in prison), and (3) the lack of a logical progression of punishment based on the severity of crime committed or intent of the offender. These axes are further disaggregated into measurable indicators to build a novel index of punitiveness (P-Index) from the legal codes of 26 countries. Ultimately, this rules-as-data measure offers researchers purchase on the puzzling variation in punitiveness across contexts, which persists regardless of current and historical crime levels, offering particular utility for supply-side political-economic explanations.
Phelps, Michelle S. and Eric Seligman. 2024. “Probation and the Shadow Carceral State: Legal Envisioning from Minnesota.” Theoretical Criminology. OnlineFirst. [Access it here, open access]
The transformation of US punishment in the late 20th century was defined not just by mass imprisonment, but the growth of a shadow carceral state of administrative and civil sanctions, including technical violations of probation and parole that smooth the pathway to prison. We consider the role of technical violations in the shadow carceral state through the lens of lived experience, analyzing interviews with adults on probation in Hennepin County, Minnesota, conducted in 2019. Building on the concept of legal envisioning, we ask how people subject to probation experience the threat of violations and what they imagine would be helpful to avoid them. Ultimately, these perspectives illuminate the need for transformative changes to dismantle the shadow carceral state and raise challenging questions about the role of care in punishment.
Quinn, Kaitlyn. 2024. “Bridging Divides or Reinforcing Distance? The Interplay of Individual and Organizational Factors in Shaping Volunteers’ Relationships with Criminalized Women.” Social Problems. OnlineFirst. [Access it here]
As governments cut funding for social welfare programs and shift toward neoliberal, marketized alternatives, non-profits have taken on a large and growing role in the provision of services to marginalized people. This paper examines how volunteers approach their relationships with service users in non-profits, as well as the consequences of and explanations for variation in their approaches. This research explores these questions ethnographically within Canadian non-profits offering social services to criminalized women. This paper offers three interrelated contributions. The first is a typology of different volunteer approaches within the penal voluntary sector—constructing volunteers as bystanders, tourists, visitors, or apprentices in their relationships with criminalized women. The second highlights how some of these approaches entrench social distance and inequality, whereas others encourage greater proximity and equity between volunteers and criminalized women. The third demonstrates how variation in volunteers’ approaches is the product of a dynamic interplay of individual and organizational factors. Together, these findings provide new insights about the conditions under which volunteers can do “good” or “bad” within non-profits. These insights could enhance the quality of volunteer work, reduce the reproduction of inequalities, and support the operation of organizations delivering vital services to marginalized people.
Quinn, Kaitlyn, Gillian Buck and Philippa Tomczak. 2024. “Mobilizing Metaphors in Criminological Analysis: A Case Study of Emotions in the Penal Voluntary Sector.” British Journal of Criminology. OnlineFirst. [Access it here, open access]
Metaphors pervade media and political constructions of crime and justice, provoking responses and shaping actions. Scholarship in adjacent disciplines illustrates that emotion-metaphors offer unique insight into emotional and interpretive processes, valuably illuminating sense-making, problem solving and action. Yet, metaphors are rarely analysed within criminology, leaving an important opportunity for theorizing emotions and their implications largely unrealized. We explore the analytical and theoretical potential of emotion-metaphors for criminology, using empirical research conducted in the penal voluntary sectors of England and Scotland. Drawing on focus groups with volunteers and paid staff, we analyse the metaphors that non-profit practitioners mobilized to convey how their work felt: (1) absurd and unstable, (2) vulnerable and constrained, (3) devalued and discarded and (4) risky and all-consuming.
Tuesta, Diego and Maritza Paredes. 2024. “Penal Extractivism: A Qualitative Study on Punishment and Extractive Industries in Peru.” Punishment & Society. OnlineFirst [Access it here, open access]
This article introduces the concept of penal extractivism in the punishment and society literature. We define penal extractivism as the punitive strategies that a state implements to safeguard extractive industries from citizens’ contention. This concept addresses the limitations of categories like criminalization, protest policing, social control, and labour discipline while bridging the gap between punishment studies and research on extractive industries. Additionally, we draw upon evidence of the Espinar mining conflict in Peru to explain five punitive strategies the state uses to handle protests: (1) off-duty policing and critical assets legislation, (2) state of emergency declarations, (3) police or prosecutorial notes against environmental defenders, (4) criminal indictments, and (5) the transferring of criminal cases to distant jurisdictions. Based on our findings, we argue that penal extractivism is a dynamic and ambivalent project that targets marginalized rural populations. The state partially deters mobilizations but fails to address the underlying social unrest, reinforcing the conditions that perpetuate mining conflicts. This in-depth within-case analysis examines the relationship between punishment and extractivism in the global context of contemporary social mobilizations.
Turnbull, Sarah and Dawn Moore. 2024. “Understanding Prisoner Mobilities in and through Lived Experiences of Incarceration.” Punishment & Society. OnlineFirst. [Access it here, open access]
Recent scholarship on carceral mobilities critiques conceptualizations of carceral spaces as fixed and stable, and movements within or around sites of confinement as linear and horizontal. According to this critique, criminological studies of imprisonment have typically embraced what Turner and Peters (2017) [‘Rethinking mobility in criminology’, Punishment & Society 19(1), 96–114] term a ‘sedentarist ontology’ by failing to consider the complexities of prisoner mobilities in the lived experiences of the carceral. We draw on qualitative interview data from the Prison Transparency Project, a multiyear study initially across four research sites in Canada focused on former prisoners’ narratives of their carceral experiences, to identify and analyze the multifaceted mobilities that characterize prison life. We focus on three aspects of carceral mobilities: the use of psychotropic medications to produce docility, the coercive (im)mobilities of physical restraints and the ‘prison on wheels’ (i.e., prisoner transport vehicles). Using the concept of ‘kinetic immobility’, in which prisoners’ bodies are immobilized so they can be coercively moved (or not) through space and time, we consider the degree to which the theoretical work on carceral mobilities aligns with lived experiences of incarceration, as narrated by research participants.
BOOKS/BOOK CHAPTERS/EDITED COLLECTIONS
Clarno, Andy, Janaé Bonsu-Love, Enrique Alvear Moreno, Lydia Dana, Michael De Anda Muñiz, Ilā Ravichandran and Haley Volpintesta. 2024. Imperial Policing: Weaponized Data in Carceral Chicago. University of Minnesota Press. [More information here]
Chicago is a city with extreme concentrations of racialized poverty and inequality, one that relies on an extensive network of repressive agencies to police the poor and suppress struggles for social justice. Imperial Policing examines the role of local law enforcement, federal immigration authorities, national security agencies, and partners of the US empire – including Israel – in upholding highly unequal social orders in the city and around the world. Collaboratively authored by the Policing in Chicago Research Group, Imperial Policing was developed in dialogue with movements on the front lines of struggles against racist policing in Black, Latinx, and Arab/Muslim communities. It analyzes the connections between three police “wars”—on crime, terror, and immigrants—focusing on the weaponization of data and the coordination between local and national agencies to suppress communities of color and undermine social movements. Topics include high-tech, data-based tools of policing; the racialized archetypes that ground each police war; the manufacturing of criminals and terrorists; the subversion of sanctuary city protections; and abolitionist responses to policing, such as the Erase the Database campaign. Through a methodology designed to provide support for transformative justice organizations, the Policing in Chicago Research Group offers a critical perspective on the abolition of imperial policing, both in Chicago and around the globe.
Fleury-Steiner, Benjamin and Austin Sarat. 2024. The Elgar Companion to Capital Punishment and Society. Edward Elgar Press. [More information here]
The Elgar Companion to Capital Punishment and Society presents a multidisciplinary overview of capital punishment’s influences, processes and outcomes across society. A global range of philosophers, social scientists, legal experts, political theorists and historians critically analyse the trajectory of the death penalty in both retentionist and abolitionist countries, underscoring how state killing remains a crucial issue worldwide.
The volume lays out the philosophical justifications for and against capital punishment, before examining the practicalities of the death penalty, including the roles of numerous legal actors before, during, and after a capital trial. Chapters assess the outcomes of the death penalty, documenting racial biases and erroneous sentences, as well as exploring exonerations and Life Without Parole. Finally, expert scholars compare the current status of capital punishment in 12 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, Central America and the Middle East, presenting nuanced perspectives on the topic from different cultural and political viewpoints.
Grasso, Anthony. 2024. Dual Justice: America’s Divergent Approaches to Street and Corporate Crime. University of Chicago Press. [More information here]
While America incarcerates its most marginalized citizens at an unparalleled rate, the nation has never developed the capacity to consistently prosecute corporate wrongdoing. Dual Justice unearths the intertwined histories of these two phenomena and reveals that they constitute more than just modern hypocrisy.
By examining the carceral and regulatory states’ evolutions from 1870 through today, Anthony Grasso shows that America’s divergent approaches to street and corporate crime share common, self-reinforcing origins. During the Progressive Era, scholars and lawmakers championed naturalized theories of human difference to justify instituting punitive measures for poor offenders and regulatory controls for corporate lawbreakers. These ideas laid the foundation for dual justice systems: criminal justice institutions harshly governing street crime and regulatory institutions governing corporate misconduct.
Since then, criminal justice and regulatory institutions have developed in tandem to reinforce politically constructed understandings about who counts as a criminal. Grasso analyzes the intellectual history, policy debates, and state and federal institutional reforms that consolidated these ideas, along with their racial and class biases, into America’s legal system.
Turnbull, Sarah and Joao Velloso. 2024. “Accessing Information on Immigration Detention in Canada: Towards Carceral Transparency to Reduce Social Harm.” Pp. 219-236 in Immigration Detention and Social Harm, edited by Michelle Peterie. Routledge. [More information here]
This chapter examines how the lack of detailed, publicly available information about immigration detention – together with the opacity of the institutions and agencies responsible for detention in Canada – function as sources of social harm. The discussion is situated within the context of what we call a “crisis of transparency” in Canada in relation to accessing carceral sites of detention and information about them. We critically explore the possible role that greater transparency in information about detention and the institutions and agencies responsible for detention can play in reducing social harm and, ultimately, working towards its abolition. The chapter proceeds from the idea that without detailed, publicly available qualitative and quantitative data about immigration detention, it is more challenging to advocate for detained (and detainable) people and their families and communities, push for “evidence-based” policymaking, and argue towards the end of immigration detention. We consider the utility of access to information requests as a method of collecting data about immigration detention in Canada that also contributes to greater transparency and less institutional opacity as a means of reducing social harm. While acknowledging that increased transparency and institutional openness is not a panacea, we argue that it is an important part of humanising the lives lived in detention and making them grievable.
PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP
Seligman, Eric and Brian Nam-Sonenstein. 2024. “10 Ways That Mass Incarceration is an Engine of Economic Injustice.” Prison Policy Initiative. August 27. [Access it here, open access]
In this briefing, we synthesize a broad sociological literature to show that mass incarceration blocks progress toward economic justice by (1) trapping low-income communities in poverty, (2) weakening all workers, and (3) undermining political movements for economic justice. We argue that mass incarceration should be conceptualized as regressive economic policy and present this briefing as a tool for cultivating solidarities among anti-prison and economic justice advocates.
Velazquez, Marisela. 2024. “Episode 66: Reflexivity in Intersectional Qualitative Research Practices, Between the Data.” NVivo Podcast Series. June 17. [Access it here, open access]
Join us for an enlightening conversation with Dr. Marisela Velazquez, a distinguished Sociology lecturer from California State University, Dominguez Hills. Dr. Velazquez takes us through her academic journey across continents and how these experiences have honed her critical and intersectional approach to research. We delve into her exploration of race, class, gender, structural bias, and systemic racism, emphasizing the qualitative methods she employs to capture the richness of human experiences. From interviews and observations to the subtle power of nonverbal communication, Dr. Velazquez provides a comprehensive look at the tools that shape her groundbreaking work.
