Backlists of Our Scholars' Recently Published Works

RECENTLY PUBLISHED WORKS

June 2017

ARTICLES

Burkhardt, Brett C. (2017). Who Is in Private Prisons? Demographic Profiles of Prisoners and Workers in American Private Prisons. International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijlcj.2017.04.004

Fleury-Steiner, Benjamin. (2017). Book Review: Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court, by Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve. British Journal of Criminology, 57(3): 763-765.

Garland, David. (2017). Book Review: Reinventing Punishment: A Comparative History of Criminology and Penology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, by Michele Pifferi. Theoretical Criminology. DOI: 10.1177/1362480617705807

Quirouette, Marianne. (2017). Community Practitioners in Criminal Courts: Risk Logics and Multiply-Disadvantaged Individuals. Theoretical Criminology. DOI: 10.1177/1362480617707951

Steele, Linda. (2017). Book Review: Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada, by Liat Ben-Moshe, Chris Chapman, and Alison Carey (Eds.). Punishment and Society. DOI: 10.1177/1462474517703582

Super, Gail. (2017). Book Review: The Myth of Mob Rule: Violent Crime and Democratic Politics, by Lisa L. Miller. Theoretical Criminology. DOI: 10.1177/1362480617709840

BOOKS/BOOK CHAPTERS/EDITED COLLECTIONS

Crete, Jean-Philippe. (2017). “Punitive Healing and Penal Relics: Indigenous Prison Labour and the (Re)production of Cultural Artefacts.” In Jacqueline Z. Wilson, Sarah Hodgkinson, Justin Piché, and Kevin Walby (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Tourism. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED WORKS

April 2017

ARTICLES

Ballucci, Dale, Carmen Gill, and Mary Ann Campbell. (Forthcoming). The Power of Attitude: The Role of Police Culture and Receptivity of Risk Assessment Tools in IPV Calls. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice.

Jiang, Jize. (2017). Book Review: From Deportation to Prison: The Politics of Immigration Enforcement in Post-Civil Rights America, by Patrisia Macías-Rojas. Punishment & Society. DOI: 10.1177/1462474517699727

Hatton, Erin. (2017). When Work is Punishment: Penal Subjectivities in Punitive Labor Regimes. Punishment & Society. DOI: 10.1177/1462474517690001

Laniyonu, Ayobami. (2017). Coffee Shop and Street Stops: Policing Practices in Gentrifying Neighborhoods. Urban Affairs Review. DOI: 10.1177/1078087416689728

Lewis, Myrisha. (2017). Criminalizing Substance Abuse and Undermining Roe v. Wade: The Tension Between Abortion Doctrine and the Criminalization of Prenatal Substance Abuse. William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law, 23(2), 185-217.

Schoenfeld, Heather. (2017, March 23). On race and criminal sentencing, prosecutors escape blame. Tampa Bay Times. [Available online: http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/column-on-race-and-criminal-sentencing-prosecutors-escape-blame/2317722]

Verma, Anjuli. (2017). Book Review: Progressive Punishment: Job Loss, Jail Growth, and the Neoliberal Logic of Carceral Expansion, by Judah Schept. British Journal of Criminology. DOI: 10.1093/bjc/azx001

Welsh, Megan. (2017). How Formerly Incarcerated Women Confront the Limits of Caring and the Burdens of Control Amidst California’s Carceral Realignment. Feminist Criminology. DOI: 10.1177/1557085117698751

BOOKS/BOOK CHAPTERS/EDITED COLLECTIONS

Borchert, Jay. (2017). “A New Iron Closet: Failing to Extend the Spirit of Lawrence v. Texas to Prisons and Prisoners.” In David M. Halperin and Trevor Hoppe (Eds.), The War on Sex. Durham: Duke University Press.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED WORKS

February 2017

ARTICLES

Corda, Alessandro. (2016). More Justice and Less Harm: Reinventing Access to Criminal History Records. Howard Law Journal, 60(1), 101-160.

Corda, Alessandro. (2016). Sentencing and Penal Policies in Italy, 1985-2015: The Tale of a Troubled Country. Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, 45, 107-173.

Garland, David. (2017). Penal Power in America: Forms, Functions and Foundations. Journal of the British Academy, 5, 1-35. [Open access: http://www.britac.ac.uk/publications/penal-power-america-forms-functions-and-foundations]

Jiang, Jize. (2016). Bringing Parental Subjectivity Back In: Examining the Impact of Parents’ Family Experiences on Delinquency. Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society, 17(3), 35-56.

Kaufman, Nicole, Joshua Kaiser, and Cesraea Rumpf. (2017, Forthcoming). Beyond Punishment: The Penal State’s Interventionist, Covert, and Negligent Modalities of Control. Law & Social Inquiry.

Lageson, Sarah. (2017, Forthcoming). Crime Data, the Internet, and Free Speech: An Evolving Legal Consciousness. Law & Society Review.

Longazel, Jamie, Jake Berman, and Benjamin Fleury‐Steiner. (2016). The Pains of Immigrant Imprisonment. Sociology Compass, 10(11), 989-998.

Lynch, Mona. (2017). Backpacking the Border: The Intersection of Drug and Immigration Prosecutions in a High-Volume US Court. British Journal of Criminology, 57(1), 112-131.

Maurutto, Paula, and Hannah-Moffat, Kelly. (2016). Aboriginal Knowledges in Specialized Courts: Emerging Practices in Gladue Courts. Canadian Journal of Law & Society, 31(3), 451-471.

Omori, Marisa. (2017). Spatial Dimensions of Racial Inequality. Race and Justice, 7(1), 35-58.

Phelps, Michelle S. (2017). Mass Probation: Toward a More Robust Theory of State Variation in Punishment. Punishment & Society, 19(1), 53-73.

Phelps, Michelle S. (2016). Possibilities and Contestation in Twenty-First-Century US Criminal Justice Downsizing. Annual Review of Law & Social Science, 12, 153-170.

Quirouette, Marianne, Tyler Frederick, Jean Hughes, Jeff Karabanow, and Sean Kidd. (2016). Conflict with the Law: Regulation & Homeless Youth Trajectories toward Stability. Canadian Journal of Law & Society, 31(3), 383-404.

Rubin, Ashley T. (2017). The Prehistory of Innovation: A Longer View of Penal Change. Punishment & Society. DOI: 10.1177/1462474517690522

Schoenfeld, Heather. (2017, January 6). Reforming Criminal Justice: The Real Impact of a Law & Order Administration. The Hill. [Available online: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/judicial/313023-reforming-criminal-justice-the-real-impact-of-a-law-order#bottom-story-socials]

Steele, Linda. (2016). Disabling Forensic Mental Health Detention: The Carcerality of the Disabled Body. Punishment & Society. DOI: 10.1177/1462474516680204

Vuolo, Mike, Sarah Lageson, and Chris Uggen. (2017, Forthcoming). Criminal Record Questions in the Era of “Ban the Box.” Criminology & Public Policy.

Xenakis, Sappho, and Leonidas K. Cheliotis. (2017, Forthcoming). Carceral Moderation and the Janus Face of International Pressure: A Long View of Greece’s Engagement with the European Convention of Human Rights. Crime, Law and Social Change.

BOOKS/BOOK CHAPTERS/EDITED COLLECTIONS

Cheliotis, Leonidas K. (2017, In Press). “Inclusion’s Dark Side: The Political Economy of Irregular Migration in Greece.” In Dario Melossi, Máximo Sozzo, and José A. Brandaríz García (Eds.). The Political Economy of Punishment Today: Visions, Debates and Challenges. London: Routledge.

Cheliotis, Leonidas K. (2017, In Press). “Penology.” In Avi Brisman, Eamonn Carrabine, and Nigel South (Eds.). The Routledge Companion to Criminological Theory and Concepts. London: Routledge.

Goodman, Philip, Joshua Page, and Michelle Phelps. (2017, In Press). Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Reiter, Keramet. (2016). 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Social Justice: A Journal of Crime Conflict & World Order. (2017). What Now? The Possible Futures of the US Under Trump. San Francisco: Social Justice. [Available online: http://www.socialjusticejournal.org/the-possible-futures-of-the-us-under-trump-ebook/]

Van Cleve, Nicole Gonzalez. (2016). Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Xenakis, Sappho, and Leonidas K. Cheliotis. (2017, In Press). “Neoliberalism and the Politics of Imprisonment.” In Walter S. DeKeseredy and Molly Dragiewicz (Eds.). Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology, 2^nd ed. London: Routledge.

If you would like your recently published book or article to be included in the next digest,

please send your citation information to Miltonette Craig (mocraig@fsu.edu) by July 31.

New Position of Interest (UC Irvine Criminology, Law and Society)

Punishment & Society scholars will be interested in this new position at Irvine. It is an open position aimed at (advanced) assistant professor. Full ad below:

Can Criminology be Neutral?

The following is a guest post by Michelle Phelps, Philip Goodman, and Joshua Page.

In the wake of the March for Science last month (April, 2017), the internet buzzed with debate over the “neutrality” of science. Jesse Singal at Science of Us parsed the two sides: while some marchers argued that science is intrinsically political (and, therefore, ought to be social justice-oriented), others (including renowned psychologist Steven Pinker) accused organizers of compromising their “goals with anti-science PC/identity politics/hard-left rhetoric.” Singal concludes that while “Science is a human enterprise that has been frequently used for abusive and oppressive ends,” “there is something uniquely important about the scientific method and empiricism in general.” Over at Cyborgology, Joseph Waggle called apolitical science a “fantasy” and a “myth.” Being both for and against science are “two strategies toward the same end of winning and keeping political power,” with elites using science-talk to cloak deeper political struggles.

Criminologists have entered the fray in a big way. In March, more than 25 former presidents of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) and other academic luminaries wrote an open letter to President Trump, entitled “Keep Science in the Department of Justice.” The signatories argued that federal justice agencies should continue to support and follow “good science” that is “free of ideological bias, and conducted without political interference.” As we were writing this post, the ASC Executive Board published a statement on “The Trump Administration’s Policies Relevant to Crime and Justice” that critiqued the “incongruity” between Trump’s Executive Orders and “well-established science about the causes and consequences of crime.” The ASC letter further implored the Trump administration to use criminological science to “promote justice.”

We agree wholeheartedly with much of the two ASC letters. Agencies like the National Institute of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Statistics are vitally important, and they ought to be helmed by criminological experts. And much of Trump’s criminal justice rhetoric has dismissed or manipulated basic social science findings like the effect of immigration on crime and trends in violent crime rates. So too do we agree that the criminal justice system ought to be oriented toward justice for all.

To agree with the letters is not, however, to overlook another truism: criminological research in the U.S. (and, we suspect, across the world) has always been entangled in politics. (As Johann Kohler quipped, it is not as though “CJ knowledge was political” and then “Science fixed it.”) At the risk of being overly dramatic, we cannot think of a time or place in American history during which criminology was not political. Politicians, together with bureaucrats, academics, journalists, prisoners, and everyday citizens have continually fought over who to punish, and how to do it. These struggles are always about both the logistics of punishment (e.g., Can prisons rehabilitate or reform the people locked inside their walls and, if so, how?) and the nature of those who commit crime (e.g., Are those who commit crime fallen souls who can be redeemed, or are they incorrigible monsters?).

There is no clearer example of this than Robert Martinson’s famous “nothing works” article published in 1974 in The Public Interest. In the version of events re-told by many criminologists, Martinson’s (now infamous) article over-simplified the research he conducted during the early 1970s with Douglas Lipton and Judith Wilks. In particular, Martinson is remembered for concluding that in-prison treatment programs almost never work to reduce recidivism. Although this conclusion was unwarranted given existing evidence, pundits and scholars insisted that Martinson’s article had an immediate and massive effect. As legend has it, this article swept the legs out from under the rehabilitative enterprise.

But this version of events, as documented in our book Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice (and as explored by other scholars, including Michelle Brown in The Culture of Punishment), gets almost everything about Martinson and his article wrong. The research was shoddy and the article wasn’t all that interesting—at least to criminologists. And Martinson surely wasn’t the first to point out the failures of correctional treatment programs. To understand the article’s fanatical reception, we need to situate it within a larger struggle over punishment raging in the first half of the 1970s. Whether using it to justify new sentencing regimes, or to explain a shift from education to reentry in prison programs, or as a rallying cry for doing research on “what works,” Martinson’s article became very influential because powerful actors made it so: the nature and impact of Martinson’s article cannot and should not be understood outside its political and historical context.

Similarly, the push to reform criminal justice policies in the 2010s was propelled by political actors deploying criminological knowledge on the harms of mass penal control. This research, steadily built in the 1990s and 2000s, produced a number of important findings, including that some kinds of targeted intervention could reduce recidivism rates, states could change parole policies to minimize technical violations, mass incarceration harms children and communities, imprisonment rates (especially for the drug war) have profoundly disproportionate effects on black families, and more. This body of scholarship became politically influential as it became increasingly voluminous and as actors began to employ it as a part of a symbolic struggle to undercut mass incarceration and related processes.

In the same way, John Hagan’s Who Are the Criminals? The Politics of Crime Policy from the Age of Roosevelt to the Age of Reagan shows how criminological research on “career criminals” undergirded the turn toward incapacitation as a dominant penal goal (see also Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, on this history). Or Tony Platt’s lecture on the brief flourishing (and, shortly thereafter, institutional crippling) of radical criminologists in the 1970s.

To return to the ASC letters, criminological data and findings are inherently political—because political actors use research/data to support or oppose current arrangements and future developments. But, as the second ASC letter highlights, this is exactly the point. Democratic governance means political debate—debates, we would agree, that should be based in data and deep empirical research. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves in thinking that the side with the best data, best models, and best arguments will always win. Politics isn’t a game of equals; powerful actors can (and often do) support claims with bad science or misuse good science to support harmful policies. In short, the political uses of criminological knowledge depends in large part on the shape of struggle—that is, the distribution of power among actors involved in battles over crime policy.

By writing the second letter, the ASC directly entered this fray as an agonist, struggling to impose their vision of the state of the world. We can see this symbolic struggle, for example, in the framing of the recent uptick in homicides in 2015. The national uptick was driven by substantial increases in a small number of large cities. The ASC letter frames this as a “non-existent crime wave”—a framing contested even among some criminologists (see, for example, this twitter thread by Thomas Abt). Similarly, despite the letter’s emphasis on “evidence-based” policy, the agenda outlined by ASC includes tactics that have faced relatively little academic scrutiny (such as federal consent decrees for embattled police departments). Thus, despite their framing of “just the facts, ma’am,” the letter represents a very specific vision of justice.

In short, we argue that the production of criminological science will always be a politically charged endeavor. It is not enough to publish sound findings—political actors must also champion those ideas in their attempts to reshape who and how we punish. Groups such as the ASC taking on these explicitly political roles will not automatically win the debate by entering as the “expert” in the room, but they do change the shape of the struggle. Whether this will help or hinder the reform effort remains an empirical question.

P&S Scholars in the News: Josh Page on California's Proposed Bail Reform---and Bail Industry Efforts to Stop It

Josh Page recently wrote an article, copied below, for the Sacramento Bee on California's effort to reform its bail system.

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Assemblyman Travis Allen and reality TV star “Dog the Bounty Hunter” have a message: California bail reform is a threat to public safety. 

In a recent video, Allen insists, “Senate Bill 10 would eliminate the bail system in California.” He’s wrong. “If it passes, criminals would no longer have to post bail and would be free to roam our neighborhoods.” He’s wrong about that, too. “My good friend Duane ‘Dog’ Chapman joined me at the Capitol to fight SB 10 and protect our communities and keep fugitives where they belong.” Third strike: that’s not why the bail industry is fighting to protect commercial bail.

Across a growing number of states, industry representatives are working to protect the status quo by making false claims about pretrial release and stoking fear about the consequences of reform.

First, SB 10 would restructure California’s bail system, but it would not, as industry defenders claim, “eliminate the bail system.” With reform, few defendants would still need to pay a nonrefundable fee to a bond company to get pretrial release. Instead, courts would assess whether individual defendants were flight risks or threats to public safety. Defendants deemed “bad risks” would have to submit to release with conditions, like checking in with a pretrial officer or taking random drug tests. 

Second, bail industry representatives claim reform is dangerous because bail bond companies help protect public safety. That assertion bears little resemblance to my firsthand experience. 

I worked as a bail bond agent in a large urban county for a little over a year for my ethnographic research. During this fieldwork, I heard a great deal about “public safety” from lawyers arguing about bail and judges making pretrial release decisions. But I rarely encountered mentions of public safety in the bail office. So long as defendants could pay us 10 percent of their bail, provide a solid co-signer (and, in some cases, collateral), and convince us they weren’t a major flight risk, we’d bail them out. Once defendants are out, the company’s main concern is protecting its investments – not the public’s safety. 

To quote Allen, a Republican from Huntington Beach, our clients were “free to roam our neighborhoods.” We rarely kept in touch with clients unless they missed court or a payment; our office staff sent email and text reminders to avoid missing court. And we didn’t worry whether they might commit crimes while on release – that was the cops’ concern, not ours. Even if the police arrested someone we’d bailed out, our investment was protected: Defendants who are locked up don’t miss court. 

When pressed, industry representatives will insist that bail companies protect public safety by returning fugitives to justice. And yes, some defendants fail to appear for their court date, and recovery agents usually track them down. But our bail company typically waited days or weeks after receiving forfeiture notices before sending out a bounty hunter or otherwise spending money on fugitive recovery. Often, before any expenditure was needed, the police arrested our clients or defendants turned themselves into the local jail. No need to open our wallet and send out our own cavalry. 

The connection between commercial fugitive recovery and public safety, then, is truly tenuous. Even if we assume defendants roam the streets committing crimes as they await trial, that’s hardly a justification for cash bail. It would be at least as effective – though less profitable – to strengthen police departments’ capacities to track down fugitives. 

The bail lobby’s “tough on crime” campaign paints a misleading portrait of commercial bail. Their fight against SB 10 is not about protecting public safety. It’s about protecting a lucrative industry.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article151392712.html#storylink=cpy

Terrorism, Sexual Assault, and School Shootings: Crime as a Social Fact in Modern Times

Today, London was hit with a terrorist attack outside of the British Parliament buildings. As such events are ever politicized these days, the American president's son criticized London's Mayor, Sadiq Kahn, for a statement made following terror attacks in New York last year. Kahn had said in an interview with London's The Evening Standard, that  "part and parcel of living in a great global city" is being prepared for terrorism. He further explained, 

"It is a reality I'm afraid that London, New York, other major cities around the world have got to be prepared for these sorts of things," he said.  

Kahn is correct. Terrorism has become a fact of life. Moreover, it's not just terrorism. 

In the 1990s, Punishment & Society scholars noted the way in which crime had become a social fact. (Liska in the 1980s, but more well known, Garland in 1996, 2000, and 2001, among others.) They were interested in why (how had this happened) and what were its consequences.  Just as scholars were starting to write about this however, in the late 1990s, fear of crime began to decrease (after a delay, following several years of crime declines) and it continued to decrease in the early 2000s. 

Importantly, just as crime (in general) as a social fact started to decrease, other specific types of crime as a social fact increased. In the early 2000s, following 9/11, fear of crime was displaced by fear of terrorism. Likewise, school shootings became another focal point in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As the acknowledgement of sexual assault, particularly on college campuses, increases, we probably have seen an increase in that as well (Gallup does not seem to have historical data on this, after an admittedly quick check, but for the last fifteen years or so, the numbers for women's fear of sexual assault as been fairly stable at around one in three).

I started to recognize the way in which terrorism, school shootings, and sexual assault have become a social fact---almost background noise---a few years ago. 

The first was in graduate school (c. 2012---the fact that I'm unsure of the date or incident is itself telling). I walked into the cafe at the law school to get my morning coffee; CNN was on the TVs, as it always is. I glanced up, saw the special alert, and paid attention---until I saw that it was "only" a school shooting. The "body count" wasn't "that high," so I stopped paying attention and went to order my coffee. After a moment, I realized how shocking my response had been. I had started to take school shootings for granted. I was in junior high, about to graduate into high school, when Columbine happened and I remember how shocking it was in 1999. Then Virginia Tech happened in 2007 while I was about to graduate from college. Sometime between Virginia Tech and the shooting I cannot recall at some point late in graduate school, school shootings had become normalized for me. In fact, in my last year in graduate school, we had a minor incident on campus in which a mentally ill man had brought a gun to the business school and was shot by the police. 

A few years later, at my first job as an assistant professor at another school, another mentally ill man brought a gun into the library around midnight and shot several students. My students' reactions were telling---to most, it was no big deal because, as they put it, no one had died. (Three students had been shot, in addition to the shooter, a former student; one of the students was paralyzed.) For the students who had actually been in the library at the time, however, it had been a traumatizing event; for the others, even though this had happened on campus at one of the busiest libraries I had ever seen (the fact that there were not just students at the library around midnight, but lots of students illustrates the point), it was not really worth talking about. Some of them were even dismissive of those students who were traumatized. By late 2014, a school shooting, even at one's own school, had become normal---unless it had a big body count, again reflecting my own assessment of the CNN coverage of a "miscellaneous" shooting late a few years earlier. 

I started to realize how much campus-based crimes were part of this new version of crime as social fact around the same time while teaching my students a Punishment and Society class. As I've mentioned before, I organize that class around the punitive turn and especially mass incarceration. I always have a discussion about what the late 1980s/1990s were like and how afraid of crime people were. I would also emphasize how people remain afraid of crime but how so often the people who are most afraid are the least likely to be victims---namely, white, upper/middle class people. Or rather, that the type of crime that they are afraid of is much less likely for them. (Avoiding digression on intimate crime in gated communities or the general fear of stranger violence while overlooking the more probable sources of violence.) I used to further tell my students that, as a group, their chances of victimization were relatively low by virtue of the fact that, as future college graduates, they would be among the class strata that experience less victimization. The first time I taught this class, while still in grad school, the problem with my statement didn't strike me. It was only later, as a first-year assistant professor, that I started to realize the problem. Many of my students did not hail from the same middle/upper class backgrounds and might not enter those ranks after graduating. Many of my students, as I increasingly found out, in fact battled serious challenges, including victimization of various kinds; a few had even been homeless earlier in life. These facts weren't what made me realize the complete falseness of my statement. Instead, it was the recognition that possibly 20% of my female students and some portion of my male students had already been the victim of sexual assault or would by the time they graduated. As I found out around this time, there was a "rape trail" near campus that young women were told not to jog on because of the high probability of assault. There was also a frat on campus that was notorious for assaulting young women---again the advice was basically don't go unless you expect to get assaulted. (Sigma Alpha Epsilon was also known as Sexual Assault Expected---not just at my former university but elsewhere, too.)

Putting these two ideas together---how school shootings and sexual assault (primarily of women) were an expected part of life---I started to think of campus crime as a new social fact. A few other illustrations of this, drawing on my own experience: On a campus where students love their guns---and some told me about the gun(s) they kept in their car (campus carry was still in legislative debates)---I had frequently thought about what I would do in the event of a shooting. Each new classroom I taught in, I would have a little strategy session with myself about what to do. Likewise, I do not know how common this was or if it was unique to my particular .edu account at the time, but shortly after starting my first job as an assistant professor, I received a number of mass mailings advertising jewelry and clothing I could purchase to protect myself from sexual assault. I started to pay attention to other advertisements I saw elsewhere. I saw an ad for rape-proof pants, panic-button jewelry, rufie-proof nail polish (dip your fingernail in your drink before drinking), and (moving closer to the non-stranger forms of danger) an app to document your willingness to have sex and your level of intoxication. There was also a whole host of campus-based security protocols students learned about at orientation---these were similar to some that became common across the country several years before while I was in grad school---including campus alerts (emails/texts in the event of emergencies), crime alerts (emails/texts about crime in the area), blue light emergency pillars, campus police escorts for returning from late-night studying, etc. A new one was a special app where if you didn't check in by a particular time, a message would instantly be sent to the police so they would check on you. In general, when there is an industry around a particular crime fear, I think it's safe to say it's become a social fact. 

Interestingly, some of these social facts emerge whether or not the actual risk is low or high. Sexual assault on college campuses appears to be quite high: the statistics certainly vary by study and how sexual assault is defined (it often includes rape, but can involve other forms of non-penetrating sexual assault), but it seems to affect more than 20% of female college students. (I haven't checked, and I'm not sure if there is data on this, but I suspect it has long been around this high. The number of cases of sexual assault we are starting to hear about in other privileged spaces like job interviews, airplanes, office jobs, etc. suggests this is a widespread problem that we are only just now starting to discuss.) School shootings, however, are generally less common, and those that have occurred, terrible though they were, were relatively small---Columbine remained the worst school shooting for nearly a decade, but the frequency of "high body count" shootings seems to have increased in recent years, although there are many more non-casualty or low-casualty shootings (and stabbings) that we do not hear about. (There is actually a wikipedia page listing school massacres by body count.)

Finally, we come back to terrorism. Terrorism is more like school shootings than sexual assaults. As with crime more generally, our chances of being in a terrorist attack are much lower than other potentially fatal problems---car accidents and cancer, as Jonathan Simon (among others) have noted, are far more likely than crime or terrorism, but crime (and now) terrorism remain scarier possibilities or at least those we (seem to) think about more frequently and do more to (look like we are trying to) prevent. At the same time, it also seems to be becoming more common. In the last several years, there have been way more terror attacks than I remember previously. Limited to mass casualty events alone: 
Tunis
Sousse
Paris
San Bernadino
Istanbul
Brussels
Orlando
Kabul
Dhaka
Nice
Ansbach
St. Cloud
New York
Columbus
Karak
Berlin
A longer list of terrorist attacks since 2014 is available here. When somewhere like San Bernadino, CA, has a mass casualty event (which I'm defining here as 10 deaths or more), I think it's safe to say terrorism is a fact of life. More importantly (for our purposes), it is also a social fact. Unless it injures or kills a large number of people---and even when it does---we don't seem to have the same sense of outrage or other emotions. 

The question for us as punishment scholars is how are these new social facts shaping not just our policies---there's lots on this already---but our lives, our actions, our thoughts, our reactions, our expectations. 

Post-Script

Over the last several months, we've developed a new social fact: hate crime. We've had hate crime for a long, long, long time in the States and elsewhere. But hate crimes targeting Jewish, Muslim, Latino, Black, and LGBTQ individuals, among other groups, have increased over the last several years and particularly over the last month. (See here and here and here.) Earlier in 2016 (pre-election), some countries issued travel alerts warning their citizens about traveling to the US because of its gun violence, anti-LGBT harassment and violence, racism, and xenophobia. (See here and here.) What worries me is the possibility that this change will be like school shootings and sexual assault---a new normal---something we need to prepare/plan for, but also something we get used to. What I do look forward to is how our colleagues make sense of this in the coming years. How much of our received wisdom needs revision in light of what might be a sea change? What are the sources of continuity and difference with the past (for example, a move away from a general "crime as a social fact" model to a specific version in the form of certain crimes as social facts). 

"It's Bigger than Christmas": Thoughts on the Significance of the Super Bowl in Prison

[Note: A version of this essay was originally posted at www.gibson-light.com]

Last Sunday, millions of men and women around TVs everywhere watched the Patriots and Falcons compete in Super Bowl LI (51 to non-Romans such as myself). Many of these viewers followed from behind bars in US prisons. Indeed, during my 18 months in "Sunbelt State Penitentiary" (SSP) – the anonymous state prison where I conducted observations and interviews for my dissertation research – I learned just how central the NFL season and the Super Bowl in particular are to prison life. Here, I will share four insights into the power of football in the American prison (a lens through which we might catch a glimpse of other pressing prison concerns, such as diminishing services, economic inequality between the disenfranchised, and the alienation of the prisoner population).

1. Somebody Got a Big Payout

Like many a corporate office or friendship circle on the outside, prisons are home to competitive football pools. Behind bars, however, where cheap, durable food items have become the de facto money of choice in response to downturns in institutional food services, the incarcerated cannot easily bet with cash. Instead, at SSP, prisoners wagered packets of ramen noodles. Following the exciting comeback of the Patriots, the big winners collected the pot: a sweet stash of delicious and valuable soups.

With their newfound ramen bounty, these pool winners can purchase a variety of goods and services in the underground prison market. For instance, they can buy contraband fruits and veggies (smuggled out of the kitchens), clothes or other necessary wares from others looking to make a quick buck (or quick "bite" in this case), or arts and crafts goods (called "hobbycraft"), such as portraits or birthday cards, which they can mail to friends or family on the outs. Or, they can pay more entrepreneurial individuals for services such as bunk cleaning or laundry for a reasonable ramen fee.

2. Time is About to Slow Down

In prison, the biggest struggle is often that against time. This world of slow monotony can be more than challenging for its captive residents and they will resort to many means to help time slip by faster. One common strategy is to get a job. Many participants in my research discussed their prison sentences in terms of their prison work histories – X through Y months were spent in one work program, Y through Z at another. And getting lost in one’s work is not unique to the outside world. Many seek out the busiest, most physically or mentally engaging work in an effort to lose the hours of the day in the rush of the work week. Whereas many workers in the free world “live for the weekend,” many prisoners “live for the week,” dreading the long Saturday and Sunday hours when they must sit in their bunks or shuffle around the yard.

However, football season offers a perfect distraction from the typical drag. It was a common refrain at SSP that “once football season starts, time flies.” The entertainment of watching and rooting for a favorite team is a common enjoyment for the imprisoned and the free. Behind bars, however, it can also represent a lifeline amidst years of incarceration, distance from family and friends, and alienation from the workings of the outside world. In addition to helping speed along the day, the ritual of watching football helps connect the incarcerated to the rest of the world in some small way. These types of connections may be vital to coping with life behind bars. Now that the season has ended, it's back to prison as usual.

3. Not Everyone Gets a Good Seat

In some prisons, shared TVs occupy communal spaces. In such institutions, informal rules may dictate which individuals or groups are allowed prime seating (and when). In other prisons, such as SSP, prisoners must instead procure their own entertainment systems. Small TVs – like those that people on the outs might find at Walmart for $50 – cost hundreds of dollars in the prison commissary store. Such goods are all the more unattainable for the majority of men who make below $0.20 per hour for their labors in prison work programs.

Financial help from family and friends on the outside (often in need of financial assistance themselves) is rare for many on the inside, who must instead hustle and save if they hope to deck out their bunk with a television, portable CD player, or other approved entertainment device. For the select few who manage to secure competitive higher-paying jobs in penal labor sites (which can pay closer to $1.00, $2.00, or $3.00 per hour at some sites), saving may not be as much of a burden, relatively speaking. The rest, however, must rely on the good graces of their pals or neighbors in their housing units, who might allow them to sit in their bunks to watch the game. While it is possible to purchase a TV directly from another prisoner in the black market, this form of exchange is technically prohibited – those caught with entertainment items registered in another’s name face having their goods searched and confiscated, disciplinary tickets, Loss of Privileges, or other sanctions.

4. The Super Bowl is the Biggest Holiday of the Year

Despite the issues listed above, this year’s Super Bowl Sunday, as in past years, was the biggest holiday of the year at Sunbelt State Penitentiary. On this day, these men received a special meal in the chow line (last year it was roast beef sandwiches with actual tomatoes and onions, which was a big deal in an institution where any fresh vegetables are valued “like lobster”). Prisoners are served dinner early on Super Bowl so that they can eat it while they watch the game – a rare allowance of autonomy in a space in which every movement and activity is surveilled and controlled.

It is, in the words of one participant, “bigger than Christmas” and more people turn up for Super Bowl chow than for any other holiday or special occasion. That means that last Sunday, far more prisoners than usual ate the state-provided meal and did not turn to the formal or informal markets (via the prison commissary store or the underground ramen economy, respectively) to procure food that was healthier, tastier, and more filling than what the institution offers (in the words of incarcerated and staff member participants alike).

Monday, the off-season began. As we on the outside returned to routines as usual, the men and women in the nation’s penal institutions still face a range of issues. Economic disadvantage, stratification between prisoner groups, unequal access to goods and services, poor quality of food, and other hardships remain facts of everyday life. These and other aspects of the state of US prisons are unlikely to improve under the current presidential administration. Regardless of which team you root for (in athletics or politics), the conditions faced by the millions of Americans behind bars are in need of our attention. 95% of the currently incarcerated will one day return to their communities. Let’s hope they come back having gained more than just fond memories of the Super Bowl.

(Michael Gibson-Light is an ABD student at the University of Arizona School of Sociology. His dissertation entails an 18-month ethnographic study of the structure of penal labor, the practices and strategies of working prisoners, and the formal and informal economic outcomes of work behind bars in a US men's state prison. More information can be found on his personal website.)