Third Digest of Member's Recent Work!

As compiled by Miltonette Craig:

ARTICLES

Burkhardt, Brett C., and Connor, Brian. (2015). Durkheim, Punishment, and Prison Privatization. Social Currents. DOI: 10.1177/2329496515604641

Kleinstuber, Ross. (2015). Attorneys’ Use of Hegemonic Tales and Subversive Stories in the Presentation of Capital Mitigation. Criminal Justice Review. DOI: 10.1177/0734016815611726

Rubin, Ashley T. (2015). The Consequences of Prisoners’ Micro-Resistance. Law & Social Inquiry. DOI: 10.1111/lsi.12158

Verma, Anjuli. (2015). The Law-Before: Legacies and Gaps in Penal Reform. Law & Society Review, 49(4), 847-882. 

Zaykowski, Heather, Kleinstuber, Ross, and McDonough, Caitlin. (2014). Judicial Narratives of Ideal and Deviant Victims in Judges’ Capital Sentencing Decisions. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 39(4), 716-731.

BOOKS/BOOK CHAPTERS/EDITED COLLECTIONS

Bowers, William J., Kelly, Christopher E., Kleinstuber, Ross, Vartkessian, Elizabeth, and Sandys, Marla. (2014). “The Life or Death Sentencing Decision: It’s at Odds with Constitutional Standards; Is It beyond Human Ability?” In James R. Acker, Robert M. Bohm, and Charles S. Lanier (Eds.), America’s Experiment with Capital Punishment, 3^rd ed.. Durham: Carolina Academic Press.

De Giorgi, Alessandro (special issue editor). (2015). Beyond Mass Incarceration: Crisis and Critique in North American Penal Systems. Social Justice, 42(2).

Fleury-Steiner, Benjamin and Kleinstuber, Ross. (2015). “The Death Penalty.” In James D. Wright (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2^nd ed., Vol. 5. Oxford: Elsevier.

Kleinstuber, Ross. (2016). “McCleskey and the Lingering Problem of ‘Race.’” In David Keys & R. J. Maratea (Eds.), Race and the Death Penalty: The Legacy of McCleskey v. Kemp. Boulder: Lynne Reinner.

Kleinstuber, Ross. (2015). “Genocide: Social and Economic Aspects.” In James D. Wright (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2^nd ed., Vol. 10. Oxford: Elsevier.

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 January 31.

New Special Issues of Especial Interest!

A new and very exciting special issue of Social Justice is forthcoming in just a few weeks entitled Beyond Mass Incarceration: Crisis & Critique in North American Penal Systems and features an all-star lineup of authors and subjects (more information here), including a book review symposium of Jonathan Simon's Mass Incarceration on Trial. A brief description of the issue (cribbed from the website) follows:

After decades of vertical increases in imprisonment rates, the US carceral system is in a state of structural crisis. A growing public awareness of the spiraling social and economic costs of this hypertrophic carceral machine seems to provide a window of opportunity to challenge the American penal state. Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of mass incarceration, or are the recent reform initiatives subtle ways to tinker with the system? What radical agendas for penal reform could emerge in the present conjuncture? Using an interdisciplinary lens, the essays featured in this special issue of Social Justice analyze the carceral field in the United States and Canada in an attempt to decode current trends and anticipate future developments.

Copied from the site:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editor’s Introduction [free download available soon]

Five Theses on Mass Incarceration
Alessandro De Giorgi

Razing the Carceral State
Marie Gottschalk 

Injury and Accumulation: Making Sense of the Punishing State
Noah De Lissovoy 

Assessing the Boundaries of ‘Public Criminology’: On the Pitfalls of Reformist, Elite-Oriented Engagement and Discipline JustificationJustin Piché 

Advocacy and Academia: Considering Strategies of Cooperative EngagementAbby Deshman & Kelly Hannah-Moffat

Policing Carceral Boundaries: Access to Information and Research with PrisonersDawn Moore, Lisa Wright & Vincent Kazmierski 

Complicity and Redemption: The Boundaries of Scholarly GazingShoshana Pollack & Tiina Eldridge 

“Ripping Off Some Room for People to Breathe”: “Peer to Peer” Education in PrisonSimone Weil Davis & Bruce Michaels 

Book Review Symposium: Jonathan Simon, Mass Incarceration on Trial
Contributors: Leonidas Cheliotis, Benjamin Fleury-Steiner, Mona Lynch, Rebecca McLennan, Tony Platt & Jonathan Simon

Book Review: Hadar Aviram, Cheap on Crime: Recession-Era Politics and the Transformation of American Punishment
Reviewed by Alessandro De Giorgi

Book Roundup: Oxford U. Press Edition

The first several books to highlight are part of the Clarendon Studies in Criminology, a series I particularly like. These include:

Harry Annison's Dangerous Politics: Risk, Political Vulnerability, and Penal Policy, which centers around the rise and fall of "Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence," a form of indeterminate sentencing in the UK. From the description:

This book argues that the IPP story demonstrates the need to be cautious of equating substance with process - while on one view the IPP sentence constitutes a penal manifestation of the risk society, its development refutes the 'evolutionary growth' of such policies as implied by the 'new penology' thesis.

Emma Kaufman's Punish and Expel: Border Control, Nationalism, and the New Purpose of the Prison, examines immigration detention in the UK:

Today, prison officers refer anyone suspected of being foreign to immigration authorities and prisoners facing deportation are detained in special prisons devoted to confining non-citizens. Those who cannot be deported linger, sometimes for years, indefinitely detained behind prison walls. The British approach to foreign nationals reflects a broader trend in punishment. Over the past decade, penal institutions across England, the United States, and Western Europe have become key sites for border control. ... Punish and Expel links prisons to the history of British colonialism and the contemporary politics of race, whilst challenging the reader to rethink their approach to prisons, and to the people held inside them.

Ian O'Donnell's Prisoners, Solitude, and Time, examines solitary confinement and especially "the roles of silence and separation in penal policy"; specifically, it "assesses both the degree to which prisoners can withstand the rigours of solitude and how they experience the passing of time." From the description: 

Through a re-examination of the roles of silence and separation in penal policy, and by contrasting the prisoner experience with that of individuals who have sought out institutional solitariness (for example as members of certain religious orders), and others who have found themselves held in solitary confinement although they committed no crime (such as hostages and some political prisoners), Prisoners, Solitude, and Time seeks to assess the impact of long-term isolation and the rationality of such treatment.

In addition to Clarendon series books, we have several additional wonderful contributions to several literatures, including:

Mary D. Looman and John D. Carl's A Country Called Prison: Mass Incarceration and the Making of a New Nation, which uses a fascinating framework in which they consider "how prison became a country." For example, " If those currently incarcerated in the US prison system were a country, it would be the 102nd most populated nation in the world." From the description, 

Looman and Carl form a foundation of understanding to demonstrate that prison is more than an institution built of fences and policies - it is a culture. Prison continues well after incarceration, as ex-felons leave correctional facilities (and often return to impoverished neighborhoods) without money or legal identification of American citizenship.

Jack Glaser's Suspect Race: Causes and Consequences of Racial Profiling, examines the causes of racial profiling. From the description:

In Suspect Race, social psychologist and public policy expert Jack Glaser leverages a century's worth of social psychological research to provide a clear understanding of how stereotypes, even those operating outside of conscious awareness or control, can cause police to make discriminatory judgments and decisions about who to suspect, stop, question, search, use force on, and arrest.

Andrew Dilts's Punishment and Inclusion: Race, Membership, and the Limits of American Liberalism, examines the historical background to felon disenfranchisement and its relationship to mass incarceration. From the description:

It demonstrates that the history of felon disenfranchisement, rooted in postslavery restrictions on suffrage and the contemporaneous emergence of the modern "American" penal system, reveals the deep connections between two political institutions often thought to be separate, showing the work of membership done by the criminal punishment system and the work of punishment done by the electoral franchise.

Martin Innes's Signal Crimes: Reactions to Crime and Social Control, "presents the results from a series of inter-linked empirical studies that have resulted in the concept of a 'signal crime': an incident that changes how people think, feel and behave about their safety due to their actions operating as signals to the presence of wider risks and threats." From the description:

Signal Crimes explores how the fear of crime 'travels' in the aftermath of criminal homicide incidents, and why some homicides impact more significantly upon local communities than others.

David Skarbek's The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System, "[o]ffers the controversial theory that gangs form to promote order among inmates. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, they are not formed primarily to enhance their ability to engage in violence or to promote racist beliefs. Gangs are quasi-governments that make inmates better off." From the description:

He uses economics to explore the secret world of the convict culture, inmate hierarchy, and prison gang politics, and to explain why prison gangs form, how formal institutions affect them, and why they have a powerful influence over crime even beyond prison walls

Finally, we have two edited volumes.

Popular Punishment: On the Normative Significance of Public Opinion, edited by Jesper Ryberg and Julian V. Roberts, examines "what role public opinion should play in the way criminal offenders are punished." From the description:

The chapters address the myriad complexities surrounding this issue by first weighing the justifications for incorporating public views into punishment practices and then considering the various ways this might be achieved through juries, prosecutors, restorative justice programs, and other means.

Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: An International Exploration, edited by Justice Tankebe and Alison Liebling, examines "the meaning of legitimacy and advance its theoretical understanding within the context of criminal justice." From the description:

This resulting volume aims to: advance conceptual understanding of legitimacy in the contexts of policing and criminal justice; to develop a better understanding of the implications of analyses of legitimacy for the practical contexts of policing, prisons and criminal justice; and to recognise the growing number of contexts in which criminal justice personnel encounter ethnically and religiously diverse communities, such as the acute dilemmas for legitimate authority posed by perceived terrorist threats. Attention is also devoted to the growing importance of international organisations in relation to legitimacy, both in its international and domestic manifestations.

Second Digest of Recently Published Work by P&S Members

As compiled by Miltonette Craig:

ARTICLES

Bachman, Ronet, Kerrison, Erin, O’Connell, Dan, Paternoster, Raymond, and Smith, Lionel. (2015). Desistance for a Long-Term Drug-Involved Sample of Adult Offenders: The Importance of Identity Transformation. Criminal Justice and Behavior. DOI: 10.1177/0093854815604012

Burkhardt, Brett C., and Jones, Alisha. (2015). Judicial Intervention into Prisons: Comparing Private and Public Prisons from 1990 to 2005. Justice System Journal. DOI: 10.1080/0098261X.2015.1062738

Campbell, Michael, Vogel, Matt, and Williams, Joshua. (2015). Historical Contingencies and the Evolving Importance of Race, Violent Crime and Region in Explaining Mass Incarceration in the United States. Criminology, 53(2), 180-203.

Hannah-Moffat, Kelly. (2015). Needle in a Haystack: Logical Parameters of Treatment Based on Actuarial Risk-Needs Assessments. Criminology and Public Policy, 14(1), 113-120.

Hannah-Moffat, Kelly. (2015). The Uncertainties of Risk Assessment: Partiality, Transparency, and Just Decisions. Federal Sentencing Reporter, 27(4), 244-247.

Quirouette, Marianne, Hannah-Moffat, Kelly, and Maurutto, Paula. (2015). ‘A Precarious Place:’ Housing and Clients of Specialized Courts. British Journal of Criminology. DOI: 10.1093/bjc/azv050

Ricardelli, Rosemary, Mair, Katharina, and Hannah-Moffat, Kelly. (2015). Strategic Masculinities: Vulnerabilities, Risk and the Production of Prison Masculinities. Theoretical Criminology. DOI: 10.1177/1362480614565849

Savelsberg, Joachim J., and Nyseth Brehm, Hollie. (2015). Global Justice, National Distinctions:

Criminalizing Human Rights Violations in Darfur. American Journal of Sociology, 121(2).

Welsh, Megan. (2015). Categories of Exclusion: The Transformation of Formerly-Incarcerated Women into “Able-Bodied Adults without Dependents” in Welfare Processing. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, 42(2), 55-77.

BOOKS/EDITED COLLECTIONS

Aviram, Hadar. (2015). Cheap on Crime: Recession-Era Politics and the Transformation of American Punishment. Oakland: University of California Press.

Reiter, Keramet, and Koenig, Alexa. (2015). Extreme Punishment: Comparative Studies in Detention, Incarceration and Solitary Confinement. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Savelsberg, Joachim J. (2015). Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur. Oakland: University of California Press (open access version downloadable at no cost: http://www.luminosoa.org/site/books/detail/3/representing-mass-violence/)

New Position of Interest: U.C. Irvine!

In addition to the position advertised here, UC Irvine is advertising for a second position! They are looking for:

 an advanced Assistant or an early Associate Professor, who would contribute to our strength in the interdisciplinary field of criminology, in particular a scholar specializing in public policy. The ideal candidate will be a scholar whose work focuses on translational research—our ability to transform research findings into policies and to empirically evaluate the effectiveness of these policies. Successful candidates for this position will have an outstanding record of research, evidence of the ability to attract extramural funding, and evidence of excellent teaching and mentoring.  

To ensure your application is given full consideration, files should be completed by November 15, 2015. The position will begin July 1, 2016 (teaching duties to begin Fall 2016). Candidates must have a doctoral degree in a related field. Applications must be uploaded electronically. Applications will be accepted through the on-line Recruit system: https://recruit.ap.uci.edu/apply/JPF03106.  

Candidates should submit a letter of interest, a curriculum vitae, statement of research and teaching interests, representative publications, and arrange to have three letters of recommendation uploaded electronically. Complete your application by also submitting a statement on previous and/or past contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion (e.g. mentoring activities, committee service, research and/or teaching activities). Please direct questions about this position to Professor George Tita at: gtita@uci.edu. 

The full ad: 

New article of interest!

I won't usually call out a single article, but punishment and society/law and society articles do not typically appear in the leading American criminology journal, so it's kind of a coup for our field. Johann Koehler's article, "Development and Fracture of a Discipline: Legacies of the School of Criminology at Berkeley," is now available on EarlyView at Criminology. Here is the abstract:

In the early twentieth century, the University of California—Berkeley opened its doors to police professionals for instruction in “police science.” This program ultimately developed into the full-fledged School of Criminology, whose graduates helped shape American criminology and criminal justice until well into the 1970s. Scholarship at the School of Criminology eventually fractured into three distinct traditions: “Administrative criminology” applied scientific methods in pursuit of refining law enforcement practices, “law and society” coupled legal scholarship with social scientific methods, and “radical criminology” combined Marxist critiques of the state with community activism. Those scientific traditions relied on competing epistemic premises and normative aspirations, and they drew legitimacy from different sources. Drawing on oral histories and archival data permits a neo-institutional analysis of how each of these criminological traditions emerged, acquired stability, and subsided. The Berkeley School of Criminology provides fertile ground to examine trends in the development of criminal justice as a profession, criminology as a discipline and its place in elite universities, the uncoupling of criminology from law and society scholarship, and criminal justice policy's disenchantment with the academy. These legacies highlight how the development of modern criminology and the professionalization of American law enforcement find precedent in events that originate at Berkeley.

This article gives a nice historical explanation for the divergence of critical criminology, punishment and society, and law and society (and what we might also call European criminology) from "traditional" or more technocratic criminology. It helps to explain what we might call the geo-politics of criminology departments' placement across American universities. It's also a sort of pre-history to UC Berkeley's Jurisprudence and Social Policy doctoral program and the Center for the Study of Law and Society. Finally, the article is qualitative, theoretical, and historical, and those are three things that are not often represented in criminology journals (though they are occasionally), which makes its appearance extra exciting.

Blog Series of Interest

Alessandro De Giorgi has been contributed a fantastic series entitled, "Reentry To Nothing" to the Social Justice Blog. Here is a brief overview of the project: 

The materials presented in this blog series draw from an ethnographic study on prisoner reentry I have been conducting between March 2011 and March 2014 in a neighborhood of West Oakland, California, which is plagued by chronically high levels of poverty, unemployment, homelessness, drug addiction, and street crime. Since 2011, with the agreement of a local community health clinic that provides free basic health care and other basic services to marginalized populations in the area, I have been conducting participant observation among several returning prisoners, mostly African American and Latino men between the ages of 25 and 50. In this series of blog entries, I will be presenting ethnographic snapshots of some of these men (and often their partners) as they struggle for survival after prison in a postindustrial ghetto. For more detailed information on this project, please read here. To read the previous entries, please follow these links: Get a Job, Any Job (#1), The Working Poor (#2), Home, Sweet Home (#3).

The latest entry, "In the Shadow of the Jailhouse," De Giorgi examines the relationship between the urban impoverished and local jails. This piece triggered thoughts about "sociological ambivalence"---the complicated relationship incarcerated people (and their families and neighbors) have with carceral institutions and policies of the kind discussed by Megan Comfort, Todd Clear, and others when discussing prisons. Prison, for these groups, has both positive and negative effects---mostly negative, but (surprisingly) some positive. However, De Giorgi is examining the role of local jails, which are increasingly taking a larger role in California's penal landscape following Realignment (2011). He's also focusing particularly on the way in which, in our post-welfare society, one of the largest providers of services to the poor are jails. 

In the following notes I document how, despite the abysmal levels of neglect and abuse characterizing these institutions—particularly in terms of the physical and mental health of their guests—jails have come to represent one of the few residual forms of “public relief” from the sheer destitution the poor experience in the postindustrial ghetto, often representing their only chance to gain access to food, shelter, and sporadic healthcare. Of course, this is not to suggest that prisons should continue to offer their “services” to the urban poor; however, we should wonder whether the hands-off approach currently advocated by reformers and presidential candidates across the political spectrum represents nothing more than the latest chapter in a long history of public retrenchment from the ghetto and malign neglect toward racialized urban poverty.

His post offers one of the more jarring accounts of sociological ambivalence. The post discusses a morning when Alessandro is driving Rico to Marin County to pick up his girlfriend, Naira, from the Marin County Jail. On the way over, Rico tells Alessandro that he expects Naira to look better than she had, to be healthier after her stint in jail because she'll have been fed, have had time to sober up, sleep, and get her head right. On the way back to the East Bay, Naira tells Rico and Alessandro of her time in the jail, especially of the long delay before the people are giving their medications and the many people with serious mental illnesses and the various forms of decompensation they experience. With a healthy dose of irony, the post closes with the group running into a friend of Rico and Naira's; the friend "tells Rico that Naira looks much healthier after her period in jail. As she lights his cigarette, he comments, 'You look good, Naira! You really needed it, uh?'" Despite the terrible the jail conditions, they are still better than some of the conditions Naira faced on the outside. 

The other posts are also worth checking out: 

1) The Project: Reentry to Nothing—Urban Survival After Mass Incarceration

2) Reentry to Nothing #1 —Get a Job, Any Job
3) Reentry to Nothing #2 —The Working Poor
4) Reentry to Nothing #3 — Home, Sweet Home

5) Reentry to Nothing #4 — In the Shadow of the Jailhouse   

Keep them coming, Alessandro, and keep up the great work!