About the CRN

Organizers:

Advisory Board:

Past Organizers:

What is the CRN? 

Our Law & Society Association affiliated Collaborative Research Network (CRN) Punishment and Society (formerly Prisoners and Prisons, and later Punishment and Social Control) began in earnest in 2007.

The chief objective of our CRN is to bring together seasoned and younger scholars from multiple disciplinary fields and perspectives who are engaged in studying the regressive impacts of formal and informal punitive and social control regimes on community life, within carceral institutions, and implications for governance. We also invite those involved in studying the progressive impacts of rehabilitation and restorative programs across these various spheres of inquiry. Finally, we invite scholars interested in the ways formally and informally organized groups engage in acts of contestation and resistance from a multitude of perspectives. We also hope the CRN will serve as a vehicle for organizing cross-disciplinary and cross-national research, discussion, and debate on this ever important and growing agenda of research and to create opportunities for alliances with social justice and human rights organizations.

This interdisciplinary group of scholars seeks to understand the social, political, economic, and cultural underpinnings of punishment. We examine punishment in all its guises, not limited to prisons and executions, or community corrections, but also in immigrant detention facilities, mental institutions, welfare offices, schools, neighborhoods, and downtown. We examine punishments across time and space, examining historical change, international differences, and local variation within individual countries. We examine penal policies as established at the organizational, state, and national levels and punishment in practice, as meted out behind closed doors or on city streets. We examine not only punishment’s origins, but also its consequences for society. Ultimately, we examine punishment, broadly construed, as it is experienced, constructed, and contested around the world, throughout history.

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Get Involved:

  • Join the Google Groups list-serve here. <-- Super important for receiving updates! 
  • Follow us on Twitter (@Punishment_CRN)
  • Join the CRN on Facebook!
  • Send us your recent publications for the digests of recently published work compiled by Katie Quinn by submitting your info here. (Past compilations are included here.)
  • Sign up to give a live talk over YouTube as part of our Digital Speaker Series. (List of past talks and more info included here.) Email Ashley Rubin, Rose Ricciardelli, and Sarah Lageson to inquire about giving a talk.
  • Submit a paper or panel for the annual meeting of LSA and include CRN 27 in your submission.
  • Attend our social gathering at the annual meeting of LSA.
  • Add your profile to our website's member profile page by submitting your info here.
  • Let us know what else we can do for you!