Compiled by Katie Quinn
RECENTLY PUBLISHED WORKS
September 2026
ARTICLES
Aaronson, Ely. 2026. “Negotiating Decriminalization: Carceral Power and Legal Change.” Annual Review of Criminology 9: 369–388. [Access it here]
In recent decades, decriminalization has gained renewed salience on the criminal justice reform agenda. This article considers the promises and pitfalls of the strategic reliance on decriminalization as a vehicle for scaling back the carceral state. Building on empirical and theoretical insights drawn from various policy domains and national contexts, this analysis sheds light on the double-edged consequences of different variants of de jure and de facto decriminalization, including legislative, judicial, and prosecutorial mechanisms of removing the criminal label from certain forms of behavior. Decriminalization reforms provide opportunities to experiment with alternatives to incarceration and demonstrate their benefits to previously skeptical audiences. However, in many cases, they widen the social control net, shore up the legitimacy of the carceral state, and perpetuate the very institutional problems they aim to address.
Aaronson, Ely and Gil Rothschild Elyassi. 2026. “The Relational Carceral State and the Segregated Origins of Drug Policy: A Du Boisian Perspective.” The British Journal of Criminology 66(3): 650–666. [Access it here]
Drawing on key insights from relational sociology, criminologists have often analysed the carceral state by examining its relations with welfarist mechanisms of governing social marginality. This way of setting the relational scope for analysing the carceral state, however, has left important research avenues underexplored. Building from Du Boisian sociology and racial capitalism literature, we develop a relational approach that examines the co-productive institutionalisation of liberal and illiberal forms of governance, which we theorize through the original concept of the governance line. This framework sheds new light on how the carceral state has taken shape through processes of boundary work with regulatory forms of governance operating beyond contexts of social marginality. We apply this approach to explore the role of racially stratified notions of freedom in drawing the boundaries between carceral and regulatory regimes of governing drug markets in the United States during the Progressive Era.
Burkhardt, Brett C. and Aimee Dinnín Huff. 2026. “What We Talk about When We Talk about Guns: Four Decades of Firearms Coverage in the New York Times.” Social Forces soag060. [Access it here]
Guns are potent cultural objects in the United States, a fact that has spurred much recent social science research. Much of that work examines the beliefs, discourses, and actions of gun enthusiasts. Less understood are the cultural dimensions of guns in the wider population, where gun owners are in the minority. This paper considers the cultural life of guns by studying the language used to depict them in a prominent US mass media outlet over four decades. We use structural topic modeling to describe the New York Times’ coverage of guns from 1980 to 2019. The analysis reveals that the coverage centers danger and societal responses to it, albeit in different ways over time. Whereas local street violence and criminal punishment dominated coverage during much of the time period, high-profile mass
shootings and efforts at federal legislation have become more salient in recent years. In examining depictions of guns in mass media, the paper contributes to a growing body of literature on the cultural life of guns in US society.
Carey, Naoka. 2026. “Challenging Multigenerational Punishment.” Cornell Law Review 111(3): 479–538. [Access it here]
This Article presents novel empirical research showing that one in seven U.S. children have had a household member prosecuted by the state in the last five years. Using unique data derived from millions of administrative and Census survey records from multiple states and decades, I show that for an estimated eleven million U.S. children each year, a parent, sibling, or other household member is dealing with an active criminal case or sentence. For children living in high poverty neighborhoods, and Black and American Indian/Alaskan Native children at all economic levels, rates are double or triple that of other groups. In addition to the profound social and economic implications that such extensive criminal system exposure has for children, there are important legal consequences. Numerous civil laws impose legal disabilities on households containing people with criminal cases, disabilities that can directly subject children to eviction, homelessness, food insecurity, and other kinds of severe, life altering hardships. These laws provide a mechanism to make “punitive containment” of large numbers of families socially permissible and are a key mechanism through which mass incarceration operates to create a new “caste” system.
This Article argues that the burdens these laws impose on millions of children are not just inhumane and unjust but unconstitutional. Drawing on the Supreme Court’s illegitimacy jurisprudence, the Article argues that multigenerational punishment—the imposition of legal disabilities on children for the purpose of punishing their parents—is prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Moreover, laws that distinguish between groups of children based on their household members’ conduct must have an important government purpose that is substantially related to their application to children. Specifically, the government must show that legal disabilities or burdens imposed on children have been “carefully attuned to alternative considerations,” a standard that requires a searching inquiry into the short and long term harms to children’s well being imposed by the classification. The Article reviews three types of laws that impose legal disabilities on children based on household member criminal matters—federal “one strike” laws, local “crime free” ordinances, and TANF and SNAP bans related to felony convictions. I argue that, given the severe deprivation these laws impose on children, their punitive goals, the lack of any justification for their imposition on children, and the lack of any indication that they were narrowed or curtailed to reduce their harm or caste creating qualities, these laws cannot survive the heightened scrutiny that the Constitution requires.
Corda, Alessandro. 2026. “Beyond Shields, Swords and Fatigue: Liberal Penality and the Right-Wing Recasting of Human Rights.” Social & Legal Studies OnlineFirst: 1–27. [Access it here]
This article examines how right-wing populist actors reshape human rights claims to evade accountability and legitimize increasingly punitive policies. Departing from conventional debates on liberal penality and human rights – which often cast rights as limits on punishment, drivers of criminalization or ‘fatigued’ norms – it analyzes how rights-based language is strategically redeployed within contemporary penal politics. Drawing on theoretical insights and two case studies, the article illustrates how appeals to freedom of expression are mobilized to shield ‘othering’ speech, and how LGBTQ+ rights are co-opted through homonationalist logics to target racialized and migrant communities. These tactics recast human rights as a vehicle for punitive governance under the guise of liberal values. By interrogating these dynamics, the article extends debates on the intersections between right-wing populism, punishment, human rights, and liberal legal orders, demonstrating the vulnerability of human rights to instrumentalization within exclusionary and coercive political projects.
Corda, Alessandro. 2026. “Echoes Across Borders: Comparative Criminal Law and Justice in the U.S. Landscape.” Fordham International Law Journal 49(2): 337–396. [Access it here]
Despite its substantial promise to deepen understanding of domestic criminal laws and their operation, offer alternative approaches to policy challenges, and foster cross-cultural dialogue, comparative criminal law and justice remains only modestly visible in the United States—both in academic discourse and policymaking circles. After tracing the trajectory of comparative criminal law and justice in the United States and examining the primary factors contributing to its marginal status in legal scholarship and reform debates, this Article investigates the reasons for its limited prominence through an analysis of findings from a web-based survey of faculty specializing in criminal law, criminal procedure, and criminal justice at ABA-accredited law schools. The survey assessed how US-based scholars engage with comparative perspectives and how they evaluate their relevance to current debates and reform efforts across US
jurisdictions. In contextualizing and discussing the findings, the Article offers original insights into the notion of “American penal exceptionalism,” highlighting how knowledge of foreign criminal law, procedure, and penal policy is perceived and applied within US legal education, research, and policymaking.
While responses reflect a generally favorable view of comparative criminal law, this support often remains aspirational rather than operational. The analysis identifies several structural and cultural barriers to the effective incorporation of comparative approaches, including a dominant focus on the decentralized structure of US criminal law, the complexity of domestic criminal justice institutions, judicial skepticism toward non-US legal sources, and a belief in the uniqueness of the American criminal legal system. Ultimately, the Article argues that although comparative criminal law continues to struggle for traction, it remains an imaginative and valuable enterprise. The effort it demands is considerable, and its reception may be uneven, yet its potential to inform meaningful reform across US jurisdictions is significant. At a time of growing demands for systemic change, engaging seriously with comparative criminal law is not merely worthwhile—it may, in fact, be indispensable.
Corda, Alessandro. 2026. “The Punitive Mesh: Digital Presence, Mutual Surveillance, and Participatory Punishment in Networked Societies.” Punishment & Society OnlineFirst: 1–23. [Access it here]
This article explores the emergence of a pervasive system of social control in contemporary networked societies, termed the “punitive mesh.” Building on the dispersal of penal power and surveillance dynamics theorized by Foucault, Deleuze, Cohen, and Zuboff, the punitive mesh captures how punishment and reputational judgment extend beyond formal institutions, circulating laterally and diffusely through digital infrastructures. It encompasses persistent digital traces, public criminal records, informal review platforms, and viral social media content, where ordinary users both administer and experience sanctions. Within this landscape, the boundaries between the punisher and the punished, public and private, and formal and informal authority are blurred, and social participation itself becomes a mechanism of enforcement. The article examines how these dynamics enable participatory punishment, through which reputational harm is produced, amplified, and perpetuated via collective engagement rather than official sanctions. By analyzing the interplay of exposure, circulation, and persistence across online networks, the punitive mesh reveals how social control is continuous, decentralized, and mutually enforced. This framework highlights the challenges posed by networked sanctioning for justice, privacy, and social life, showing that punishment is no longer episodic or institutionally contained but embedded within the infrastructure of everyday digital interaction.
Durand, Corentin. 2026. “The Discipline of Emptiness: Waiting, Power, and Resistance in French Prisons.” Incarceration 7. [Access it here]
Prison life is structured by countless situations where prisoners must await authorization from authorities to carry out everyday tasks. This study analyzes waiting not as idle time but as a productive process shaping power relations between prisoners and staff. Initially focusing on the enforcement, uses, and resistance to scripturalized communications, it examines how waiting becomes a central issue in asymmetrical negotiations within prisons. While some have interpreted the emptiness of prison time as a sign of the failure of the disciplinary project analyzed by Foucault, this study argues that impatience is reframed as a moral deviance, monitored by the administration and targeted through institutional sanctions and emotional labor. Waiting thus becomes a vehicle for a diminished yet persistent disciplinary project—a discipline of emptiness. The effects of this paradoxical renewal of discipline on prisoners are examined in the final part of the paper.
Durham, Xavier. 2026. “Carceral Networking and Penal Liminality: A Case Study of a Security NGO.” Punishment & Society OnlineFirst: 1–24. [Access it here]
More than 600,000 people leave U.S. jails and prisons annually, a chronic policy concern for the penal state and welfare providers with many interventions recommending workforce development. However, job outlets are sparse, unstable, and often exploitative. But even as scholars document these conditions, their analyses are largely constrained to “classical” workfare programs rather than emergent job sectors. Indeed, security NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are hiring formerly incarcerated people, pushing the boundaries of how we conceptualize and measure the (re)production of socio-economic inequality. Drawing from 35 interviews with employees of the California-based security NGO Urban Alchemy, this paper offers two findings. First, reentry workers’ employment experience in the security sector indicates a blurring of stigma and social capital where people are finding work because of their record and without a third-party service provider. This “carceral networking” challenges how we study reentry success vis-à-
vis the labor market. Second, reentry workers come to occupy a position of “penal liminality” that puts them at greater risk of surveillance from both their employers and penal agents while simultaneously leveraging police interventions to accomplish organizational goals. This tense dichotomy highlights how security work blurs the roles of those who police and those that are policed.
Gottlieb, Sarah. 2026. “The Indelible Flaws of Conviction Integrity Units.” University of Colorado Law Review 97(1): 133–215. [Access it here]
Conviction Integrity Units within prosecutors’ offices have doubled in number over the last 10 years. Leaders of the innocence movement initially praised these units, believing they were necessary for the future of innocence work given their unique access to discovery, and scholars hoped Conviction Integrity Units would lead prosecutors away from fighting against claims of innocence to sincere and open review of wrongful convictions. But, as Conviction Integrity Units proliferated, the question of whether prosecutors can fulfill the mandate of these offices and conduct thorough review of their colleagues’ work has received insufficient inquiry, particularly given that official misconduct continues to be a leading cause of wrongful convictions.
This Article is the first to conduct in‑depth analysis of multiple Conviction Integrity Units and evaluate their efficacy. By analyzing three separate units in jurisdictions with the highest rates of wrongful convictions, this Article reveals that legitimate claims of innocence are often rejected and response to scandal is insufficient and slow when time is of the essence. In so doing, it lays out an inherent framework of flaws articulating why Conviction Integrity Units are not functioning as the reform many had hoped. They suffer from a lack of transparency and inconsistency in leadership that can frustrate even the best intentions. They inappropriately rely on self‑policing prone to bias to fix ethical violations of the past while those in charge of the units are still engaging in prosecutorial misconduct in the present.
This Article shows that Conviction Integrity Units operate under the guise of a legal reform while truly functioning as a cloak of legitimacy for prosecutors and the criminal legal system. Exonerations provide a veneer of successful operation, regardless of whether the state played a meaningful role. They encourage the misperception that deeply rooted systemic problems are a deviation from the status quo, caused by single bad actors and fixable by singular exonerations. They fail to provide adequate remedies for past harm, thereby failing to change current practices and prevent the same acts from occurring in the future. Conviction Integrity Units therefore perpetuate the criminal legal system’s inherent flaws. Misplaced reliance on them causes harm to individuals seeking review of their innocence claims and condones the causes of wrongful convictions they aim to undo.
Hu, Cathy. 2026. “Shifting the Landscape of Power: Interstitial Strategies in Criminal Court Activism.” Law & Social Inquiry OnlineFirst. [Access it here]
Criminal justice activism in the United States has traditionally focused on policing at the front end of the penal system or prisons at the back end. More recently, activists have expanded their efforts to the criminal court, which they see as mediating the path from arrest to incarceration. Bridging punishment and society with law and social movements, I study how activists diagnose and counter the problems of the court. Through an ethnographic and interview study in Oakland, California, I found that activists engage in interstitial power shifting or creating new avenues for collective action in the cracks of the court process and using them to shift power from legal officials to marginalized communities. This power shifting is ideological and material. First, activists challenge the idea that the court is a just institution and problematize how it obscures its activities from the public, dehumanizes defendants, and evades accountability to system-impacted people. Second, activists try to address these problems and reduce the court’s power through strategic interventions: court watch, participatory defense, and district attorney accountability. More broadly, this article offers a framework for analyzing collective action that does not operate fully within or outside of law but, rather, in the margins and cracks of legal institutions and processes.
Jenness, Valerie, Sophia Castillo, Kelsie Chesnut and Jennifer Peirce. 2026. “Rethinking Sex-Segregated Incarceration: What Transgender Prisoners Want and Why It Matters.” Advancing Corrections 20: 129–140. [Access it here]
Media and political attention have put a spotlight on transgender women living inside prisons designated for men and, in some cases, requesting placement in a women’s prison. This, in turn, has raised questions about where to house transgender people who are incarcerated in High Income Countries, given they face high rates of verbal, physical, and sexual victimization and other harms. Some legislation and policies seeking to address the issue emphasize the
incarcerated person’s expressed preference for prison type and housing situation should be considered. Data from a national survey of 280 transgender prisoners in 31 states reveals 70% of transgender women prefer to be housed in prisons for women, representing a notable shift from previous research, in the direction of preferring women’s prisons. More than three quarters of transgender men and transgender women prefer to be housed with other transgender people. Only about a third of transgender women and about half of transgender men reside in prison facilities that align with their preference (i.e., men’s or women’s prison). These and other findings emerge amid evolving legal frameworks, including the Prison Rape Elimination Act (2003) and California’s Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act (2020), which mandate consideration of prisoners’ gender identity and perspectives on safety and housing. Given the political prominence of this topic and the problems with the status quo, policymakers and correctional leaders must understand transgender people’s preferences for prison housing reveal both patterns and variation.
Kerrison, Erin M.T. 2026. “Thermal Abandonment: Best Practices to End Correctional Heat Death for Menopausal Black Women in Prison.” Journal of Correctional Health Care 32(4): 260–269. [Access it here]
Menopausal Black women in U.S. prisons face a convergence of three accelerating crises: bodies made biologically older by structural racism and incarceration exposure, a menopausal transition that arrives earlier and manifests more severely for Black women than for any other group, and thermally hostile carceral infrastructure designed without their safety in mind. Estrogen decline disrupts thermoregulation —producing hot flashes, cardiovascular strain, and syncope risk—that becomes life-threatening when ambient temperatures reach 112°F–118°F and access to cooling, hydration, and hormone therapy is blocked. Drawing on a narrative synthesis of peer-reviewed literature, legal precedent, and policy documentation, I document how heat-related deaths are obscured through diagnostic miscoding, how formulary exclusions and copay requirements function as de facto bans on evidence-based care, and how symptom misclassification delivers women into solitary confinement as punishment for physiological events. Under the Estelle v. Gamble (1976) deliberate indifference standard, these patterns constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Drawing on the 2025 Tiede v. Collier ruling, I present a four-tier best practices toolkit—compassionate release, zero-copay hormone replacement therapy, thermometer protocols, and federal mandates sequenced within a longer arc of structural decarceration. Thermal abandonment is deliberate indifference. It is also reversible.
Meng, Yuchen and Jize Jiang. 2026. “Digitalized Penality and Networked State Power: Implementing Chinese Community Corrections with Algorithmic Technologies.” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 86: 100883. [Access it here]
Artificial intelligence (AI) is extensively used to assist with legal decision-making in contemporary China. Against this backdrop, a growing body of scholarship has addressed the effects of integrating advanced technologies into Chinese legal practices and what this technological integration means for China's the rule of law. Nonetheless, little research has examined the expanding application of AI within the newly established Chinese community corrections (CCC) system. Using ethnographic data from urban CCC settings and guided by Werth's (2019) conceptual framework of performative punishment, this study explores how AI in CCC embodies, enhances, and expresses Chinese penal power. The analysis reveals three ways in which these AI-related technologies function to constitute Chinese state power: actuarial punching, valorizing rehabilitation, and observing due process. The rehabilitative work around AI, in practice, pivots to legitimize Chinese state power by establishing a surveillance network and communicating modernist values. The results imply that AI-based correctional practices may interact with existing social and legal structures in intricate ways, thereby reinforcing state authority while potentially undermining the rehabilitative efficacy of the CCC for offenders.
Motluk, Kate and Sarah Turnbull. 2026. “Carceral Maneuvers, Carceral Distractions: Analyzing the Retraction and Expansion of Canada’s Power to Detain Non-Citizens.” Social & Legal Studies OnlineFirst. [Access it here]
This article traces the Canada Border Services Agency's (CBSA) turn to federal prisons in response to all 10 Canadian provinces ending their immigration detention arrangements with the CBSA by 2025. We analyze the CBSA's insistence that additional carceral spaces are needed to manage a small but persistent population of “high risk detainees” deemed unsuitable for confinement in one of its immigration holding centers. We situate this current turn to federal prisons within the broader context of Canadian immigration detention reform and the productive power of racialized risk thinking to justify carceral solutions to unwanted non-citizens, arguing that moments of reform
“victory,” while important and often necessary, may offer distraction from the carceral state's power to ensure its capacity to detain. Drawing on Gurusami et al.'s conceptualization of “carceral distractions,” we bring an abolition feminist analysis to these reform efforts.
Peirce, Jennifer. 2026. “Rehabilitation through Inclusion or Psychology? An Analysis of Discourses and Practices of “Treatment” Programs in the Dominican Republic’s Prison Reform.” Incarceration 7: 1–18. [Access it here]
The Dominican Republic’s “New Prison Management Model” has been a beacon of progressive corrections reform in Latin America, with “rehabilitation” as a key pillar. This article analyzes reform leaders’ discursive claims about rehabilitation programs, the actual practices of education, work, and artistic programs in prisons, and the explanations that staff and incarcerated people offer about how these programs rehabilitate. Prison staff deploy concepts of internal moral change through reflection, adversity, and work. Yet, they also speak about and allocate resources to programs in ways that uplift social exclusion and stigma as root causes of crime. This emphasis, combined with relatively shallow clinical interventions, disrupts assumptions rooted in Global North research about criminal behavior and desistance. Even though the Dominican perspective is infused with paternalism and religiosity, its grounding in structural inequalities is more progressive and appropriate than a focus on individual attitudes or cognitive deficiencies.
Rice, Orlaith and Colm Walsh. 2026. “The Gendered Nature of Community- and Family-Level Adversity: Perspectives from Justice-Involved Youth in Northern Ireland.” Criminal Justice and Behavior OnlineFirst. [Access it here]
This qualitative study explores the gendered dimensions of community- and family-level adversity among justice-involved young people in Northern Ireland. Drawing on 30 semi-structured interviews with boys and girls referred to the Northern Ireland Youth Justice Agency, this research examines how gender shapes experiences of community and family deprivation, instability, and adversity, generally considered to be gender-neutral criminogenic needs. Findings reveal that while socioeconomic and family stressors affect both genders, their impacts on girls, as compared with boys, differ. The lens through which their community was viewed differed according to gender. Street violence and crime were more salient in boys’ lives, while family dysfunction appeared to impact girls more acutely. These insights underscore the need for early, gender-responsive youth offending interventions that meaningfully address relational safety and community marginalization.
Rothschild Elyassi, Gil. 2026. “When Universities Turn Carceral: Between Academic Freedom and Elimination.” The British Journal of Sociology OnlineFirst: 1–10. [Access it here]
Seo, Juhwan. 2026. “Lawyers as Domestic Counselors: Curating Legitimate Immigrant Families.” Law & Society Review OnlineFirst. [Access it here]
Lawyers instruct their clients to make performative and fleeting modifications in comportment to appease judges or officers. But how do they guide their clients to routinize everyday behaviors and lifestyles seen as desirable and respectable by the state? Expanding on theories of social control, nonstate governance, and lawyering, this paper considers the role of lawyers who guide mixed-status couples applying for marriage-based green card and naturalization petitions in the United States. Interviews with immigration attorneys, paralegals, and nonprofit advocates reveal their three-step strategy to shape intimate dimensions of mixed-status couples’ lives that connote marital legitimacy. First, lawyers translate immigration law into personalized checklists that function as the blueprint of marriage that couples must follow. Then, lawyers instruct and correct their clients’ family behaviors so that they are enacted and documented in compliance with vague immigration law as interpreted by the archetypal immigration officer. Crucially, lawyers help couples routinize and painstakingly archive these curated lifestyles for ongoing adjudication. Findings suggest that nonstate actors like immigration lawyers are more than intermediaries who broker and coach; they become domestic counselors who, as indirect agents of the state, coerce subjects toward acculturation.
Shteynberg, Reveka V. and Kristin A. Morgan. 2026. “The Docket Disrupted: Insights into the Impact of COVID-19 on Court Operations, Workloads, Workgroup Well-Being from a National Survey of Court Professionals.” Journal of Crime and Justice OnlineFirst: 1–33. [Access it here]
This study examines how the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped U.S. court operations, workgroup dynamics, workloads, and case processing. Prior research focuses on single jurisdictions, courts, or roles, and little is known about comparative nationwide cross-role experiences. We surveyed 803 court professionals, including judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, civil and appellate attorneys, administrators, and external workgroup members, who worked in U.S. courts during the first year of the pandemic. Regional and job-based differences shaped experiences more than jurisdiction or court type. Although procedural adaptations were shaped by highly localized leadership, resources, and guidance, the core experiences were remarkably consistent. Shared themes reflected variation at the procedural level (e.g. different rules, technology use, consent procedures, safety protocols) but similarity at the experiential level (e.g. shared stressors, workload shifts, uncertainty). The pandemic exposed persistent gaps where clear protocols, equitable training, administrative support, and sustainable technology are essential for resilient and adaptable courts.
Song, Apei and Jize Jiang. 2026. “Pride and Prejudice: Strategic Coupling of Punishment and Welfare in Chinese Community Corrections.” Theoretical Criminology OnlineFirst. [Access it here]
The recent legal enactment of Chinese Community Corrections (CCC) typically meshes punishment and welfare principles in Chinese penality. Few studies, however, have addressed how these principles are applied in the daily activities of the correctional workgroup, mainly correctional officers and social workers. Drawing on ethnographic data from China's urban community corrections, this study examines how the ideal of rehabilitation or penal welfarism is interpreted and embodied in the collaboration between correctional authorities and social workers, as well as negotiated within the organizational dynamics related to rehabilitation. The analysis reveals an observed pattern of ‘pride and prejudice’ that emerges from the daily practices of the correctional workgroup when handling offenders. The ‘pride’ dimension signifies that the CCC's institutional leitmotif is continual punitiveness and latent strict supervision over the stated goal of promoting offenders’ welfare. The prejudice aspect of the penal-welfare nexus indicates the ingrained notion of offenders as evil and the social impulse to exclude them. The CCC's pride and prejudice are marshaled and configured in a process termed ‘strategic coupling’ of punishment and welfare tenets to garner legitimacy. Correctional officers wield ultimate power and strategically conjure penal and benevolent elements to legitimize the CCC as the Chinese state's capacity to deliver the People's welfare.
Song, Apei and Jize Jiang. 2026. “The Sacred Red Tape: Bureaucratic Rehabilitation, Managerial Care, and Organisational Formalities in Chinese Drug Policing.” Journal of Criminology OnlineFirst. [Access it here]
With the therapeutic turn in China's drug governance, researchers have identified numerous factors that undermine the success of police-led rehabilitation for drug offenders. Yet existing scholarship on Chinese drug policing has largely overlooked the organisational logics and dynamics that shape treatment delivery within police agencies. Drawing on ethnographic data from drug policing in a large Chinese city, this study examines drug rehabilitation and its implementation within a police agency. Our analysis reveals that distinct bureaucratic norms – which we term the “sacred red tape” – have emerged in officers’ routine activities and permeate their interactions with drug offenders. We demonstrate how the police's mystification of organisational formalism and reverence for bureaucratic rigidity shape officers’ interpretations of drug offenders’ vulnerabilities and their framing of rehabilitation objectives. Overall, drug policing practices are caught in an organisational vortex structured by bureaucratic edicts that prioritise formalism and managerialism over offender well-being. By illuminating the influence of bureaucratic norms and ideologies on drug policing practices, this study carries implications for research and policy on contemporary China's expanding penal modernism.
Spendik, Amy. 2025. “‘Authorize, Justify, and Excuse’: Accountability and the Escalation of Force.” Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 67(4): 17–36. [Access it here]
Correctional facilities are coercive institutions where violence is anticipated and exercised. Correctional officers (COs) have a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, employing it to maintain control over prisoner behaviour. The study described here was a 9-week embedded ethnography of a Canadian provincial CO training program. The goal was to show how recruit training positions the use of physical control tactics as legitimate and reasonable mechanisms
for reducing risk. Findings showed that CO training constructs narratives that absolve COs of responsibility for the force they use by compiling detailed documentation and by using pain to get compliance in camera-friendly ways.
Şot, Irem and Ipek A. Celik-Rappas. 2026. “Displaying Devotion in Social Media: Letter TikToks by the Partners of Incarcerated People.” Crime, Media, Culture 22(1): 45–61. [Access it here]
This article examines TikTok videos created and shared by partners of incarcerated individuals, using hashtags including #prisonwifetiktok, #prisonwifelife, #prisonlove, #prisongirlfriends, and #prisonmail. The research explores how these partners depict their relationships with incarcerated people on TikTok and how prison communities use the platform to discuss shared challenges. A key focus is on videos showcasing letter exchanges between couples, which are longer, more frequent, and emotionally intense than other videos. These TikToks serve as a platform for sharing grievances and connecting with others in similar situations, making private emotions public to spark conversations about the hardships faced by incarcerated individuals and their loved ones. The study analyzes 74 “letter TikToks” from five accounts run by prison partners, focusing on videos that highlight communication challenges, the emotional struggles of maintaining a prison relationship, the sentimental rewards of #prisonlove, attempts to destigmatize both themselves and their partners, and efforts to leverage their image as devoted partners to build trust as influencers. The article argues that these TikToks act as alternative archives, reshaping communication between prison partners by remediating letters through a medium free from penitentiary control and incorporating supportive prison communities into the couples’ dialogue.
BOOKS/BOOK CHAPTERS/EDITED COLLECTIONS
Corda, Alessandro. 2026. “Introduction to the Research Handbook on Penal Policy: What Is “Penal Policy”? Why Does It Matter?” In A. Corda (ed.), Research Handbook on Penal Policy, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 1–19. [Access it here]
This chapter clarifies the meaning of “penal policy”, distinguishing it from related but conceptually distinct terms such as “crime policy”, “criminal policy”, and “criminal justice policy”. Although often used interchangeably, these terms reflect different intellectual traditions, institutional logics, areas of focus, and policy objectives. Penal policy is understood here as the formulation and application of measures and mechanisms through which the state defines deviance, maintains social order, and exercises its punitive authority. It encompasses the principles, strategies, and practices involved in framing, justifying, and implementing the state's power to punish. The chapter traces the evolution of penal policy from a long-overlooked aspect of public policy to its gradual, yet still underdeveloped, emergence as a distinct field of inquiry. It concludes by outlining the structure and contents of the volume, which brings together diverse contributions exploring the complexities and contemporary relevance of penal governance.
Corda, Alessandro. 2026. “Policy Transfer, Policy Mobility, and Policy Hegemony in the Penal Field.” In A. Corda (ed.), Research Handbook on Penal Policy, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 44–65. [Access it here]
This chapter examines the cross-border movement of penal policies through the conceptual lenses of policy transfer, policy mobility, and policy hegemony. In a globally interconnected world, penal policy ideas increasingly travel across jurisdictions, shaped by complex interactions between local contexts and global power dynamics. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship, the chapter analyzes how and why penal policies are adopted, adapted, or resisted, and critically assesses the actors and mechanisms driving these transnational flows. Emphasizing the politically charged and culturally embedded nature of penal policymaking, it challenges technocratic models and advocates for more pluralistic, context-sensitive approaches to penal reform – ones that take seriously local conditions, power asymmetries, and the contested character of penal policy in the global age.
Corda, Alessandro (ed.). 2026. Research Handbook on Penal Policy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. [Access it here]
This thought-provoking Research Handbook explores how penal policies are shaped, contested, and transformed. It examines the development of penal strategies, analysing why systems converge in some areas and diverge in others. Leading scholars and experts highlight emerging trends and challenges in the field, covering key topics including policy transfer, penal populism, technocratic approaches to penal policy, the influence of human rights, outcome
assessment of penal policy decisions, and decarceration strategies. The chapters examine penal governance and the politics of crime and punishment, investigating how decisions about penal interventions are made, as well as the values, interests, and practical constraints which influence them. Combining theoretical examination and normative inquiry with a cross-national perspective and real-world analysis, the Handbook bridges theory and practice, serving as a foundational resource for engaging with contemporary debates in penal policy.
Crewe, Ben. 2026. Deep Confinement: Everyday Imprisonment and Extremity in the Close Supervision Centre. London: Palgrave Macmillan. [Access it here]
This open access book describes everyday life in Close Supervision Centres – special units within the England & Wales prison system that hold men considered too difficult or dangerous to be accommodated in mainstream prisons. Based on unprecedented access to these sites of ‘deep confinement’, and involving interviews with 40 men held within them, it documents in close and vivid detail the subjective experience of acutely controlled conditions, staff-prisoner dynamics, psychological power, and often tense relations between prisoners themselves. The analysis characterises the ‘CSC system’ as a kind of crucible: a highly intense social and relational environment, which places extreme men alongside each other in an environment of extreme restriction. In capturing the social and emotional texture of deep incarceration, including feelings ranging from hopelessness and distress to sanctuary and mental liberation, the book explores penal legitimacy, and what humans can endure, at the outer edges of state power.
