Members' Publications: May Edition

As compiled by Kaitlyn Quinn

 LAW AND SOCIETY ASSOCIATION

Collaborative Research Network: Punishment and Society

 

Organizers:
Hadar Aviram, UC Hastings College of Law, USA
Ashley Rubin, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, USA

 

RECENTLY PUBLISHED WORKS 

May 2021

 

ARTICLES

 

Adorjan, Michael, Rosemary Ricciardeli, and James Gacek. 2021. “‘We’re both here to do a job and that’s all that matters’: Cisgender correctional officer recruit reflections within an unsettled correctional prison culture.” The British Journal of Criminology. Online first. [Access it here]

 

Reflecting on new trans prisoner placement policies within Canadian federal prisons, in light of recent changes instigated under the Canadian Liberal Trudeau government, we provide knowledge from cisgender correctional officer (CO) recruits regarding these policy changes and underscore their views of working with officers who identify as transgender. Canada’s new policies recognize the presence of trans prisoners and create new protocols accordingly, simultaneously challenging some of the foundational tenets of the carceral system. While overwhelming support exists from cisgender recruits for their trans colleagues, support among a relative minority of COs is contingent upon notions like safety and security grounded in a dominantly cisgender prison culture; a culture we situate within the wider context of an unsettled correctional prison culture.

 

 

Avila, Fernando and Máximo Sozzo. 2020. “Peculiar responsibilization? Exploring a governing strategy in an atypical prison in the Global South.” Punishment & Society. Online first. [Access it here]

 

Based on an ethnographic study of “Punta de Rieles” prison in Uruguay, where more than 600 prisoners coexist with increased levels of autonomy in a relatively peaceful environment, and that heavily relies on responsibilization as a strategy of governance, we seek to contribute to the analysis of the characteristics and boundaries of responsibilization in prison settings beyond the Global North. Considering the strong link between responsibilization and neoliberalism in recent prison studies, we describe the loose, lay and informal nature of responsibilization and the elements of collectivism that are present in our case study, connecting this strategy with broader political and cultural developments in this national context.

 

 

Ballucci, Dale and Garrett Lecoq. Forthcoming. “Expanding Mechanisms of Governance: Uncertainty and Risk in Police Decision Strategies in the Pursuit of Specialized Peace Bonds.” Crime & Delinquency.

 

 

Barker, Vanessa and Peter Scharff Smith. 2021. “This is Denmark: Prison Islands and the Detention of Immigrants.” British Journal of Criminology. Online first. [Access it here]

 

According to mainstream criminology, Nordic societies with their generous welfare states are supposed to moderate, if not restrict, penal powers. In the case of migration, we see the opposite pattern. In Denmark, we see extended use of penal institutions and penal harms to contain and remove unwanted populations from the region, including proposals for prison islands and the confinement of migrants in 19th century prisons. To make sense of these developments and interpret its social meaning, we unpack the logic of the punishment–welfare nexus and Nordic exceptionalism. We find that Denmark expands penal power to regulate non-citizens, deter migration and uphold national interests. These repressive practices are not exceptions to the rule but rather illustrate the exclusionary edge and very nature of the penal regimes in Denmark, a Nordic welfare state.

 

 

Burkhardt, Brett C. and Brian T. Connor. 2021. “Toward a Political Sociology of Privatized Punishment: Contestation, State Structures, and Stratification.” Sociology Compass. Online first. [Access it here]

 

Privatized punishment—in which nonstate actors carry out state‐mandated criminal punishments—has developed into a common practice since its rise in the 1980s. Many disciplines, including criminology, political science, public administration, and economics, have examined its use over the past four decades. However, privatized punishment has not garnered much attention in sociology. This is surprising, as privatized punishment touches on the key themes in sociology, and in the political sociology in particular. In this paper, we attempt to insert privatized punishment into classic and contemporary discussions in political sociology. Below, we offer an overview of privatized punishment and provide a high‐level review of how other social scientific disciplines have studied the phenomenon. Then we argue that political sociology provides a useful, if underutilized, lens for studying privatized punishment. In particular, we highlight three political sociological themes—contestation, state structures, and stratification—that can be fruitfully applied to the study of privatized punishment, and we sketch multiple lines of future research informed by these themes.

 

 

Crockett Thomas, Phil, Fergus McNeill, Lucy Cathcart Frödén, Jo Collinson Scott, Oliver Escobar, and Alison Urie. 2021. “Re-writing punishment? Songs and narrative problem-solving.” Incarceration 2(1): 1-19. [Access it here]

 

This article analyses findings from the Economic and Social Research Council/Arts and Humanities Research Council (ESRC/AHRC)-funded ‘Distant Voices – Coming Home’ project (ES/POO2536/1), which uses creative methods to explore crime, punishment and reintegration. Focusing on songs co-written in Scottish prisons, we argue that the songs serve to complicate and substantiate our grasp of what state punishment does to people, as well as perhaps affording their prison-based co-writers both moments and modalities of resistance to dominant narratives within criminal justice. In doing so, they creatively express and explore affective and perhaps even unconscious aspects of the self. We argue that our work contributes to a more expansive and considered treatment of narrative in criminology; one that admits and engages with a more diverse and creative range of expressions of experience and selfhood, all of them partial and some of them contradictory. By attending to diverse kinds of narratives embodied in these songs, we learn more about what criminalisation, penalisation and incarceration do to people and to their stories.

 

 

Crockett Thomas, Phil, Jo Collinson Scott, Fergus McNeill, Oliver Escobar, Lucy Cathcart Frödén, and Alison Urie. 2020. “Mediating Punishment? Prisoners’ Songs as Relational ‘Problem-Solving’ Devices.” Law Text Culture24(1/7): 1-25. [Access it here]

 

In this article we share some findings from the Distant Voices – Coming Home project. It is a partnership between the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and the West of Scotland, and the Glasgow-based arts charity Vox Liminis. Distant Voices aims to explore and practice re/integration after punishment through creative collaborations (primarily songwriting) and action-research. The project is complex and interdisciplinary, blurring boundaries between creative practices, community-building, research, knowledge exchange and public engagement. As such, this article does not present a synthesis of project findings, but instead discusses original music created within the project, proposing that an analysis of the ‘musical event’ (DeNora 2003) of the songwriting can tell us about punishment and re/integration.

 

 

DoCarmo, Tania, Stephen Rea, John Emery, Evan Conaway and Noopur Raval. 2021. “The Law in Computation: What Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Mean for Law & Society Scholarship.” Law & Policy. Online first. [Access it here]

 

Computational systems, including machine learning, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics, are not only inescapable parts of social life but also increasingly at issue in legal practice and processes. We propose turning more law and social science attention to new technological developments through the study of “law in computation,” that is, computational systems' integration with regulatory and administrative procedures, the sociotechnical infrastructures that support them, and their impact on how individuals and populations are interpellated through the law. We present cases for which examining law in computation illuminates how new technological processes potentially mitigate, exacerbate, or mask human biases present in legal systems, and propose future directions and methods for research. As computational systems become ever more sophisticated, understanding the law in computation is critical not only for law and social science scholarship, but also for everyday civics.

 

Jouet, Mugambi. Forthcoming 2021. “Foucault, Prison, and Human Rights: A Dialectic of Theory and Criminal Justice Reform.” Theoretical Criminology. [Access it here]

 

Michel Foucault’s advocacy toward penal reform in France differed from his theories. Although Foucault is associated with the prison abolition movement, he also proposed more humane prisons. The article reframes Foucauldian theory through a dialectic with the theories of Marc Ancel, a prominent figure in the emergence of liberal sentencing norms in France. Ancel and Foucault were contemporaries whose legacies are intertwined. Ancel defended more benevolent prisons where experts would rehabilitate offenders. This evokes exactly what “Discipline and Punish” cast as an insidious strategy of social control. In reality, Foucault and Ancel converged in intriguing ways. The dialectic offers another perspective on Foucault, whose theories have fostered skepticism about the possibility of progress. While mass incarceration’s rise in America may evoke a Foucauldian dystopia, the relative development of human rights and dignity in European punishment reflects aspirations that Foucault embraced as an activist concerned about fatalistic interpretations of his theories.

 

 

Jouet, Mugambi. Forthcoming 2022. “Revolutionary Criminal Punishments: Treason, Mercy, and the American Revolution.” American Journal of Legal History. [Access it here]

 

This Article focuses on the exceptional mildness of criminal punishments for alleged traitors in the wake of the American Revolution. American leaders were disinclined to inflict the death penalty on loyalists who supported British rule in the revolutionary war or on insurgents in the Shays, Whiskey, and Fries rebellions shortly after independence. In fact, the Founding Fathers and other first-generation officials commonly showed extraordinary mercy. Numerous “traitors” readily rehabilitated themselves by recognizing their faults, swearing an oath of allegiance to the new American republic, and promising to refrain from further wrongdoing. These revolutionary punishments were a striking prefiguration of modern penal practices: guilty pleas, probation sentences, and rehabilitation policies aiming to reintegrate wrongdoers into society. American revolutionary punishments were not only remarkably mild in themselves. They also were for the period. In contrast, the contemporary French Revolution led to wide-scale executions of purported traitors. Besides shedding light on historic events that criminal justice scholars have neglected, this Article’s findings are relevant to ongoing debates regarding American exceptionalism and the peculiar harshness of modern American justice. The rise of mass incarceration in the United States and its retention of the death penalty can foster cultural essentialism about how American culture traditionally lacks humanistic sensibilities. In reality, the revolutionary criminal punishments of the late eighteenth century demonstrate how America once was a trailblazer in embracing humanitarian justice.

 

 

Quirouette, Marianne. 2021. “‘The Struggle is Real’: Punitive Assessment in Community Services.” Punishment & Society. Online first. [Access it here]

 

Assessment tools are pivotal for the work of frontline community services providers, shaping client relationships, access to supports and producing evidence for agencies that need to allocate resources, demonstrate outcomes and secure funding. These tools are combined and used cumulatively, as marginalized individuals are cared for – but also controlled and punished - within these systems (e.g. in shelters, street outreach, mental health or re entry supports). Punishment literature has clarified that risk tools are impactful but also contested and resisted. Still, we know little about how the process is experienced and negotiated by frontline by practitioners working with people pushed through the ‘revolving doors'. Drawing from two years of ethnographic fieldwork and 105 interviews with community practitioners, I examine tools and practices used to ‘assess’ criminalized and marginalized individuals. I show that practitioners are producing evidence about problems occurring outside legal institutions while relying on criminal justice logics and engaging with criminal justice spaces and paces. I highlight the challenges service providers face and negotiate, focusing on three themes: the composition of tools, the process of using them, and the service context in which they are used. I argue that despite discretionary efforts and adaptations, community practitioners remain frustrated by assessment tools and practices, and particularly by their inability to meet the needs they are assessing.

 

 

Ravid, Itay. 2020. “Judging by the Cover: On the Relationship Between Media Coverage on Crime and Harshness in Sentencing.” Southern California Law Review 93(6): 1121-1188. [Access it here]

 

Does the mass media affect judicial decisionmaking? This first of its kind empirical study delves into this long-lasting question, and investigates the relationship between media coverage of crime and criminal sentencing. To do so, I construct a novel data set of media reports on crime, which I link to administrative state court sentencing records. The data span five years and more than forty-three thousand sentencing decisions across three jurisdictions that differ in their judicial selection models: Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. I find that crime coverage increases sentencing harshness. I also find evidence to suggest that this effect is mitigated through a state’s method of judicial selection. The findings go beyond traditional, case-study scholarship on the nexus between the media and the judiciary, offering evidence that the media can affect judicial decisionmaking in broader contexts. These findings hold significant implications for policy and judicial politics and raise questions at the core of the criminal justice system. Particularly, they call for renewed attention to the media as an important factor in the criminal process and a potential obstacle towards achieving the constitutional ideal of fair trials. The Article concludes by suggesting methods for countering such media effects.

 

 

van der Valk, Sophie, Eva Aizpurua, and Mary Rogan. 2021. “Towards a typology of prisoners’ awareness of and familiarity with prison inspection and monitoring bodies.” European Journal of Criminology. Online first. [Access it here]

 

Inspection and monitoring bodies have an important role in the protection of prisoners’ rights. Although these bodies are seen as widely beneficial, there is limited research examining their operations in practice. This study addresses this gap in the existing literature by identifying unique profiles of prisoners based on their familiarity with prison oversight bodies. In addition, the relationship between profiles and key factors (personal characteristics, sentence-related variables and those related to life in prison) was examined using multinomial regression. Participants were 508 males randomly selected from three prisons in Ireland. Data were collected between November 2018 and February 2019, using self-administered surveys. Latent class analysis revealed four subgroups of prisoners characterized by distinct patterns of awareness and contact with prison oversight bodies: (1) Low familiarity (44.1 percent); (2) High awareness with low contact (26.4 percent); (3) High familiarity with the Visiting Committees but low with other oversight bodies (14.2 percent); and (4) High familiarity (15.4 percent). Notably, the largest group was the low familiarity group, and few prisoners belonged to the high familiarity group. Nationality, sentence length, confidence in staff and complaint usage were linked to class membership. The results of this study point to the importance of increasing awareness of inspection and monitoring bodies among prisoners in general, and among certain groups in particular.

 

 

Williams, Monica. 2021. “Explaining public support for Body-Worn Cameras in law enforcement.” Police Practice and Research. Online first. [Access it here]

 

Public opinion surveys have clearly demonstrated broad support for the use of body-worn cameras (BWC’s) in law enforcement. Despite clear evidence of broad support, the factors that contribute to this support remain unclear. The current study uses data from a public opinion survey of policing in a mid-sized urban city to examine factors significantly related to public support for requiring police officers to wear cameras. Ordinal logistical regression analyses of the impacts of demographic and neighborhood factors, beliefs about whom BWC’s protect, good and bad experiences with police, and trust in the police on support for the cameras suggest that awareness of bad experiences with the police increases support for BWC’s, while believing that the cameras protect the police decreases support. These findings can inform discussions between communities and police agencies about the role of body-worn cameras in policing, particularly as they relate to the broader issues underlying the need for surveillance technologies in the first place.

 

 

BOOKS/BOOK CHAPTERS/EDITED COLLECTIONS 

 

Barker, Vanessa. 2021. “Punishing Inequality: Notes on Social Worth from Sweden.” Pp. 222-241 in Tracing the Relationship between Inequality, Crime and Punishment: Time, Space and Politics (Proceedings of the British Academy), edited by Nicola Lacey, David Soskice, Leonidas Cheliotis, and Sappho Xenakis. Oxford University Press. [More info here]

 

 

Barker, Vanessa. 2020. “The Criminalization of Migration: A Regional Transnational Legal Order or the Rise of a Meta-TLO?” Pp. 154-175 in Transnational Legal Ordering of Criminal Justice, edited by Gregory Shaffer and Ely Aaronson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [More info here]

 

Hörnqvist, Magnus. 2021. The Pleasure of Punishment. Routledge. [More info here]

 

Based on a reading of contemporary philosophical arguments, this book accounts for how punishment has provided audiences with pleasure in different historical contexts. Watching tragedies, contemplating hell, attending executions, or imagining prisons have generated pleasure, according to contemporary observers, in ancient Greece, in medieval Catholic Europe, in the early-modern absolutist states, and in the post-1968 Western world.

The pleasure was often judged morally problematic, and raised questions about which desires were satisfied, and what the enjoyment was like. This book offers a research synthesis that ties together existing work on the pleasure of punishment. It considers how the shared joys of punishment gradually disappeared from the public view at a precise historic conjuncture, and explores whether arguments about the carnivalesque character of cruelty can provide support for the continued existence of penal pleasure. Towards the end of this book, the reader will discover, if willing to go along and follow desire to places which are full of pain and suffering, that deeply entwined with the desire for punishment, there is also the desire for social justice.

An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, philosophy and all those interested in the pleasures of punishment.

 

 

Savelsberg, Joachim. 2021. Knowing About Genocide: Armenian Suffering and Epistemic Struggles. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. (paperback and open access online)

[More info here]

 

How do victims and perpetrators generate conflicting knowledge about genocide? Using a sociology of knowledge approach, the book answers this question for the Armenian genocide committed in the context of the First World War. Focusing on Armenians and Turks, it addresses strategies of silencing, denial, and acknowledgment in everyday interaction, public rituals, law, and politics. Special attention is paid to efforts to deny genocide via free speech claims in US courts and to criminalize denial through legislation in France. Drawing on interviews, ethnographic accounts, documents, and eyewitness testimony, the author illuminates the social processes that drive dueling versions of history. He reveals counterproductive consequences of denial in an age of human rights hegemony, with implications for populist disinformation campaigns against overwhelming evidence.

 

BOOK REVIEWS

 

Ben-Natan, Smadar. 2020. “Above and Beyond Denial: Incarcerated Children in Israel/Palestine.” Journal of Genocide Research. [Access it here]

 

 

PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP

 

Annison, Harry. (ed, 2021) 2020: Crisis or Kairos? Themed double issue of the Howard League ECAN Bulletin. [Access it here]

 

Contributors were encouraged to reflect on 2020 – a year of crisis, and possibly of Kairos. A year in which novel issues have emerged, while other long-standing issues have re-emerged into public consciousness. COVID-19 has caused widespread death and ill health, forced dramatic changes to working practices, and concerns about ongoing wellbeing – not least in relation to those subject to, working within, or otherwise affected by the criminal justice system and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. At the same time, police brutality resulting in several deaths in the US once again highlighted systemic injustice and inequality and provoked widespread and vital self-reflection when thinking about race and privilege. This also inspired worldwide and consequential demonstrations. Structural inequalities have been laid bare by violence and injustice in the criminal justice system. Recognition of a global climate crisis rumbles on in the background. No one issue stands alone.

 

Contributors include early career academics, practitioners and people affected directly by criminal justice institutions. Written pieces are complemented by audio contributions.

 

 

Barker, Vanessa. 2021. Discussion on US Police Killings and Racism. Foreign Bureau, Swedish Television. [Access video here]

 

 

Riley, Emily. 2021. “Youth Justice Reforms Offer Model for Ending ‘Merciless’ Punishment of Adults.” The Crime Report. [Access it here]

 

Review of Mugambi Jouet's forthcoming article in the Federal Sentencing Reporter: “Juveniles Are Not So Different: The Punishment of Juveniles and Adults at the Crossroads,” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3763704.

Members' Publications: February 2021 Edition

As compiled by Kaitlyn Quinn

 LAW AND SOCIETY ASSOCIATION

Collaborative Research Network: Punishment and Society 

Organizers:
Hadar Aviram, UC Hastings College of Law, USA
Ashley Rubin, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, USA

  

RECENTLY PUBLISHED WORKS

October 2020

ARTICLES

 

Annison, Harry. 2021. “The Role of Storylines in Penal Policy Change.” Punishment & Society Online first. [Access it here]

Bringing policy reform to fruition is an enterprise fraught with difficulty; penal policy is no different. This paper argues that the concept of ‘storylines’, developed within policy studies, is capable of generating valuable insights into the internal dynamics of penal policy change and particularly the ‘commmunicative miracle’ whereby policy participants sufficiently align to achieve reform. I utilize the part-privatization and part-marketization of probation services in England and Wales (‘Transforming Rehabilitation’) as a pertinent case study: a policy disaster foretold, but nonetheless inaugurated at breakneck speed. Drawing on interviews with policy makers, I demonstrate the means by which the ‘rehabilitation revolution’ storyline resolved (at least temporarily) the tensions and problems inherent in the reform project; without which it would have struggled to succeed. We see that storylines play at least three important roles for policy makers: they enable specific policies to ‘make sense’, to ‘fit’ in line with their pre-existing beliefs. They provide a sense of meaning, moral mission and self-legitimacy. And they deflect contestation. In closing, I consider the implications for scholars of penal policy change.

Brown, Michelle. 2020. “Foucault’s crows: Pandemic insurrection in the United States.” Crime, Media, Culture. Online first. [Access it here]

Brown, Michelle. 2020. “ICE comes to Tennessee: violence work and abolition in the Appalachian South.” Citizenship Studies. Online first. [Access it here]

By way of a case study of a key Trump-era Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) workplace raid amidst the arrival of 287(g) programs in Eastern Tennessee, this article places the violence of the carceral state in relation to the ongoing work of emancipation in the American South. It 1) reconceptualizes immigration enforcement as a key locus for intensifying the carceral state’s power via a specific form of violence work and 2) maps the manner in which horizons of abolition take shape in the shadow of this violence. The radical reimagining of immigration as the abolition of policing, detention, and borders is linked to everyday grassroots efforts that seek to counter the pervasive state violence of 287(g) policies. Distinct forms of relational care have slowed and, in some cases, halted the political dominance of carcerality, drawing upon historic emancipatory projects of Southern abolition democracy. 

Corda, Alessandro. 2020. “The Transformational Function of the Criminal Law: In Search of Operational Boundaries.” New Criminal Law Review 23(4): 584-635. [Access it here]

It is often maintained that the criminal law is supposed to intervene only when a certain social norm has become so significant within a given society to justify its protection by means of penal sanctions. The criminal law is thus thought to mirror a hierarchy of values it neither shapes nor contributes to building; rather, it is required to stand at least one step behind social change. This article challenges this view, presenting a normative account that contributes to the debate on what is permissible for the criminal law to try to achieve. It does so by defining and theoretically substantiating the “transformational function” of the criminal law. The term refers to the use of criminalization and punishment to change, rather than merely reflect, social norms, attitudes, and beliefs alongside, and combined with, non-penal policy-making tools in contested domains. Four operational conditions of legitimacy are identified and discussed. Within such operational boundaries, this article contends that the criminal law can play an important role in promoting social change—i.e., the establishment of new norms and values—as well as helping the coagulation of norms, attitudes, and beliefs not yet fully entrenched within the societal body.

Corda, Alessandro and Rhys Hester. 2021. “Leaving the Shining City on a Hill: A Plea for Rediscovering Comparative Criminal Justice Policy in the United States.” International Criminal Justice Review. Online first. [Access it here] 

Over the past several decades, American penal exceptionalism—the tendency for U.S. penal policies and practices to proudly diverge from those of other Western countries—has severely limited the development of comparative criminal justice research from a U.S. perspective. However, in recent years, a growing consensus that America’s criminal justice policies and practices are too expensive, ineffective, excessively punitive, and often inhumane has laid the ground for a new phase of soul-searching. This article argues for an explicit rediscovering of comparative criminal justice policy in America, which would prove extremely helpful in providing bold yet practicable solutions in the current commendable but unimaginative era of criminal justice reform. We first contend that American exceptionalism is not as embedded in U.S. penal policy and culture as the past few decades might seem to suggest. Second, we discuss the main causes of the gradual demise of the comparative criminal justice enterprise in America. Finally, we discuss two areas of U.S. criminal justice reform suggesting mechanisms of comparative criminal justice policy that should be nurtured: (1) new prison reform initiatives pointing to renewed openness to comparative insights and (2) the growing chorus calling for prosecutorial reform, showing how many of the reform ideas proffered tap into characteristics found in continental systems.

Crewe, Ben. 2020. “The depth of imprisonment.” Punishment & Society. Online first. [Access it here]

Based on a large, comparative study of prisoner experiences in England & Wales and Norway, this article explores the concept of the ‘depth of imprisonment’ – put most simply, the degree of control, isolation and difference from the outside world – in two stages. First, it sets out the various factors that contribute to ‘depth’ i.e. its core components. Second, it outlines the most frequent metaphors used to communicate depth, highlighting the ways in which these metaphors bring into focus a range of ways in which the basic fact of imprisonment – the deprivation of liberty, and the removal of the individual from the community – is experienced. In doing so, the article also makes a case for the adoption of conceptual metaphors as a means of describing prison systems and regimes, and thereby attending to the ways in which prisoners experience some of the most fundamental elements of incarceration. 

Fisher, Benjamin W., Ethan M. Higgins, Aaron Kupchik, Samantha Viano, F. Chris Curran, Suzanne Overstreet, Bryant Plumlee, and Brandon Coffey. (2020) “Protecting the Flock or Policing the Sheep? Differences in School Resource Officers’ Perceptions of Threats by School Racial Composition.” Social Problems. Online first. [Access it here]

 

Law enforcement officers (often called school resource officers or SROs) are an increasingly common feature in schools across the United States. Although SROs’ roles vary across school contexts, there has been little examination of why. One possible explanation is that SROs perceive threats differently in different school contexts and that the racial composition of schools may motivate these differences. To investigate this possibility, this study analyzes interviews with 73 SROs from two different school districts that encompass schools with a variety of racial compositions. Across both districts, SROs perceived three major categories of threats: student-based, intruder-based, and environment-based threats. However, the focus and perceived severity of the threats varied across districts such that SROs in the district with a larger proportion of White students were primarily concerned about external threats (i.e., intruder-based and environment-based) that might harm the students, whereas SROs in the district with a larger proportion of Black students were primarily concerned with students themselves as threats. We consider how these results relate to understandings of school security, inequality among students, racially disparate experiences with school policing, and school and policing policy.

Hanan, M. Eve. 2020. “Invisible Prisons.” UC Davis Law Review 54: 1185-1244. [Access it here]

 

Modern punishment theory is based on an inadequate conceptualization of the severity of incarceration. While the severity of a prison sentence is measured solely in terms of the length of time, the actual experience of imprisonment is often more punishing and more destructive than a simple loss of liberty. Yet, lawmakers and judges evince a surprising lack of institutional interest in understanding the experience of imprisonment and applying this knowledge to sentencing. This lack of official attention to how prison is experienced by incarcerated people is one of the drivers of mass incarceration.

 

This Article is the first scholarly work to analyze the weaknesses of punishment theory using a new and flourishing branch of political philosophy: epistemic injustice theory. The theory posits that disfavored social groups are excluded from contributing information about their experience that should be relevant to policy decisions. Epistemic injustice theory can be applied to analyze why incarcerated people’s accounts of prison’s cruelties are ignored or discounted in punishment decisions. As a disfavored group, prisoner accounts of prison’s harshness are discredited. As a result, sentencing decisions are made with only the thinnest understanding of the punishment being imposed — number of years of lost liberty — and with no accounting for the actual impact of incarceration on the person sentenced.

 

Applying the framework of epistemic injustice to explore the thinness of punishment theory serves more than a descriptive function. It also forms the basis for concrete recommendations to improve sentencing policy and practice. To this end, the Article suggests (1) how sentencing authorities can exercise epistemic responsibility in punishment decisions; (2) how incarcerated people can participate in knowledge-creation; and (3) how the problem of variability of prison conditions can be accounted for in sentencing.

Harper, Annie, Tommaso Bardelli, and Stacey Barrenger. 2020. “Let Me Be Bill-free: Consumer Debt in the Shadow of Incarceration.” Sociological Perspectives 63(6): 978-1001. [Access it here]

Low-income U.S. households are increasingly burdened by unaffordable debt, with profound long-term economic and health consequences. Households of color are disproportionately negatively affected. This article examines the nexus of this rising indebtedness and mass incarceration through the experiences of a particularly marginalized group, people with mental illness. Drawing on qualitative research with 31 individuals with mental illness and recent incarceration in the city of New Haven, Connecticut, we show how carceral institutions and predatory financial practices intersect to create complex entanglements for poor and vulnerable people. While a growing body of scholarship focuses on criminal justice fines and fees, we highlight other types of debt that add to the overall burden, describing how incarceration deepens people’s existing debts of poverty and adds new debts from in-prison costs and identity theft. After release, those debts complicate the search for housing, employment, and financial stability, leading to further debt, stressing social relationships and reproducing social and economic inequality. The experiences of people with mental illness illuminates structures of marginalization and disadvantage that affect many others involved with the criminal justice system.

Jouet, Mugambi. 2021 (forthcoming). “Juveniles Are Not So Different: The Punishment of Juveniles and Adults at the Crossroads.” Federal Sentencing Reporter. [Access it here]

The “juveniles are different” doctrine is gaining ground in America. It holds that children, unlike adults, should not receive merciless punishments like life without parole given their immaturity, impulsivity, and limited brain development. The doctrine’s impact has been both significant and modest because it operates in an exceptionally repressive context considering the advent of mass incarceration. Unless construed more broadly, it may help rationalize draconian sentences for adults and cement the status quo.

This Article offers a wider historical and comparative perspective. Over time age has recurrently served to legitimize punitiveness toward children or adults. America has oscillated between deeming that juveniles deserve fewer rights than adults, that they deserve more rights or that they should essentially be treated the same. After diverse paradigm shifts, mass incarceration led to a downward-leveling process whereby juveniles were punished just as ruthlessly as adults. “Juveniles are different” was a reaction to this trend, although punitive assumptions undergird its rigid age carve-outs. This Article calls for a new phase: an upward-leveling process under which juveniles’ emerging right to be free from merciless punishments would apply to everyone. This is the norm in other Western democracies, which have gravitated toward universal human rights and moderate punishment. A broader outlook may spell the difference between a conception of “juveniles are different” casting adults as irredeemable and a stepping stone toward meaningful systemic reform.

Jouet, Mugambi. 2022 (forthcoming). “Death Penalty Abolitionism From the Enlightenment to Modernity.” American Journal of Comparative Law. [Access it here] 

The modern movement to abolish the death penalty in the United States stresses that this punishment cannot be applied fairly and effectively. The movement does not emphasize that killing prisoners is inhumane per se. Its focus is almost exclusively on administrative, procedural, and utilitarian issues, such as recurrent exonerations of innocents, incorrigible racial discrimination, endemic arbitrariness, lack of deterrent value, and spiraling financial costs. By comparison, modern European law recognizes any execution as an inherent violation of human rights rooted in dignity. This humanistic approach is often assumed to be “European” in nature and foreign to America, where distinct sensibilities lead people to concentrate on practical problems surrounding executions. In reality, this Article demonstrates that the significant transatlantic divergence in abolitionism is a relatively recent development. By the late eighteenth century, abolitionists in Europe and America recurrently denounced the inhumanity of executions in language foreshadowing modern human rights norms. Drawing on sources overlooked by scholars, including the views of past American and French abolitionists, the Article shows that reformers previously converged in employing a polyvalent rhetoric blending humanistic and practical objections to executions. It was not before the 1970s and 1980s that a major divergence materialized. As America faced an increasingly punitive social climate leading to the death penalty’s resurgence and the rise of mass incarceration, its abolitionists largely abandoned humanistic claims in favor of practical ones. Meanwhile, the opposite generally occurred as abolitionism triumphed in Europe. These findings call into question the notion that framing the death penalty as a human rights abuse marks recent shifts in Western Europe or international law. While human rights have indeed become the official basis for abolition in modern Europe, past generations of European and U.S. abolitionists defended similar moral and political convictions. These humanistic norms reflect a long-term evolution traceable to the Renaissance and Enlightenment. But for diverse social transformations, America may have kept converging with Europe in gradually adopting humanistic norms of punishment.

Kupchik, Aaron, F. Chris Curran, Benjamin W. Fisher, and Samantha L Viano. 2020. “Police Ambassadors: Student-Police Interactions in School and Legal Socialization.” Law & Society Review 54(2): 391-422. [Access it here] 

The recent influx of police officers into US public schools has reshaped the context and frequency of children's interactions with police. Yet we know little about how the presence of these officers in schools impacts the legal socialization of students, and whether youth of color might be affected or socialized in different ways than white youth. In this study, we analyze data from interviews with school police officers as well as focus group data from school staff, parents, and students that shed light on how school police interact with youth. In particular, school police officers discussed their desire to build relationships with students that instill trust in police among students. Officers discussed their efforts to teach students that police should be trusted and relied on, and that negative views of policing and involvement with the justice system are the result of a negative news media and individual citizens' criminality, respectively. Importantly, officers discussed how they devote particular attention to imparting these lessons on youth of color and others who may see police in a negative light. We consider how these outreach efforts, what we call acting as police ambassadors, might have different impacts on youth of color compared to white youth, given existing racial disparities in interactions with police. 

McGlynn-Wright, Anne, Robert D. Crutchfield, Martie L. Skinner, and Kevin P. Haggerty. 2020. “The Usual, Racialized, Suspects: The Consequence of Police Contacts with Black and White Youth on Adult Arrest.” Social Problems. Online first. [Access it here]

Research on race and policing indicates that Black Americans experience a greater frequency of police contacts, discretionary stops, and police harassment when stops occur. Yet, studies examining the long-term consequences of police contact with young people have not examined whether criminal justice consequences of police contact differ by race. We address this issue by examining whether police encounters with children and adolescents predict arrest in young adulthood and if these effects are the same for Black and White individuals. The paper uses longitudinal survey data from 331 Black and White respondents enrolled in the Seattle Public School District as eighth graders in 2001 and 2002. Our findings indicate that police encounters in childhood increase the risk of arrest in young adulthood for Black but not White respondents. Black respondents who experience contact with the police by the eighth grade have eleven times greater odds of being arrested when they are 20 years old than their White counterparts.

Phelps, Michelle S. and Ebony L. Ruhland. 2021. “Governing Marginality: Coercion and Care in Probation.” Social Problems. Online first. [Access it here] 

While the scale and consequences of mass incarceration in the United States have been well-documented over the past two decades, sociologists have focused less attention on mass probation and the expansion of community supervision. Originally designed as a rehabilitative alternative to imprisonment, probation represents the largest form of penal control and a critical intersection between criminal justice and welfare—two systems that govern citizens at the margins. We analyze qualitative data from over 100 focus groups conducted in 2016-2017 with adults on probation and probation officers in several jurisdictions across the country to show the enmeshing of coercion and care in probation. Drawing on the concept of carceral citizenship, we detail the duties, burdens, and perverse benefits of supervision across four domains: relationships with probation officers, access to services and programs, time and financial constrictions, and the threat of revocation (or incarceration for non-compliance). We argue that probation provides barebones welfare services for some of the most vulnerable adults, while also imposing the unique harms of a criminal record, burdens of supervision, and risk of incarceration.

Piehowski, Victoria. 2020. “Under the punitive aegis: Dependency and the family justice center model.” Punishment & Society. Online first. [Access it here]

The San Diego Family Justice Center (FJC) model seeks to lessen the burden on domestic violence victims by co-locating social service agencies, law enforcement, and prosecution at one site. Shortly following the inception of the model in 2002, it gained widespread acclaim (and federal funding), spreading the model across the country. Using visual and textual discourse analysis, this paper examines the promotional and procedural material produced by proponents of the San Diego FJC model. FJC materials construct victimhood using discourses of crime control and therapeutic intervention. The resulting discursive formation is that of the passive, dependent battered woman, curable only through robustly punitive state intervention. In this way, FJC materials not only advance a distinct construction of victimhood but also a particular agenda for punishment policy. Extending Jonathan Simon’s contentions regarding the resonance of victim discourse within American society, I argue that therapeutic discourse can bolster the effectiveness of punitive campaigns.

Russell, Emma K. 2020. “Carceral atmospheres on Manus Island: Listening to how are you today.” Law Text Culture24(5): 1-21. [Access it here]

This paper develops a conception of ‘carceral atmospheres’ as a way of framing our encounter with the sound art and archive how are you today, created by the Manus Recording Project Collective (MRPC). Over a period of fourteen weeks in 2018, this work involved the creation and collection of 84 field recordings by six men indefinitely detained on Manus Island by the Australian government. Highlighting the mobile qualities of sound, each 10-minute field recording was sent from Manus to Melbourne and uploaded for playback as part of the Eavesdropping exhibition, originally staged at the Ian Potter Museum of Art in Melbourne in 2018 and later at City Gallery in Wellington in 2019. Following its temporary staging in the gallery – each day of the exhibition featuring a new recording, played on loop – how are you today was developed into an online archive. In this digital archive, the recordings can be played and paused as the listener pleases, but not otherwise controlled through rewinding or fast-forwarding. Each field recording is accompanied by a date, the name of the creator, and a brief textual description of the soundscape it captures.

Slavinski, Ilya, and Becky Pettit. 2021. “Proliferation of Punishment: The Centrality of Legal Fines and Fees in the Landscape of Contemporary Penology.” Social Problems. Online first. [Access it here] 

Decades of significant crime declines and recent reductions in the number of people confined in prisons and jails in the United States have been accompanied by the emergence of new, and the resurgence of old, forms of punishment. One of these resurgent forms is the assessment of fines, fees, and costs to those who encounter the criminal legal system. Legal financial obligations (LFOs) have become widespread across the United States and are levied for offenses from alleged traffic violations in some states to felony convictions in others. Their emergence has been heralded by some as a less punitive alternative to spending time in prison or jail but recognized by others as uniquely consequential for people without the means to pay. Drawing on data from 254 counties in Texas, this article explores the emergence and enforcement of LFOs in Texas, where LFOs play a particularly prominent role in sanctions for alleged misdemeanor offenses and serve as an important source of revenue. Enforcement of LFOs varies geographically and is related to conservative politics and racial threat. We argue that LFOs are a defining feature of a contemporary punishment regime where racial injustice is fueled by economic inequality.

Ward, Geoff, Nick Petersen, Aaron Kupchik, and James Pratt. 2021. “Historic Lynching and Corporal Punishment in Contemporary Southern Schools.” Social Problems 68(1): 41-62. [Access it here]

This study examines how corporal punishment in contemporary public schools, a disciplinary practice concentrated in southeastern U.S. states, relates to histories of lynching in the region. Using school-level data from the U.S. Department of Education, we examine these relationships in a series of multi-level regression models. After controlling for numerous school- and county-level factors, we find an increased likelihood of corporal punishment for all students in counties where greater numbers of lynchings occurred, and that lynching is particularly predictive of corporal punishment for black students. Consistent with prior research associating historic lynching with contemporary violence, these results suggest general and race-specific legacies for violent school discipline. We consider potential mechanisms linking histories of lynching with school corporal punishment, and implications for research and policy.

 

BOOKS/BOOK CHAPTERS/EDITED COLLECTIONS  

 

Kaufman, Nicole and Megan Welsh. 2021. “Contested Forms of Knowledge in the Criminal-Legal System: Evidence-Based Practice and Other Ways of Knowing Among Frontline Workers.” Pp. 397-421 in Luken, Paul C., and Vaughan, Suzanne (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Institutional Ethnography. Palgrave Macmillan. [More info here]

 

Rubin, Ashley T. 2021. The Deviant Prison: Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary

and the Origins of America’s Modern Penal System, 1829-1913. Cambridge University Press. [More info here]

 

Early nineteenth-century American prisons followed one of two dominant models: the Auburn system, in which prisoners performed factory-style labor by day and were placed in solitary confinement at night, and the Pennsylvania system, where prisoners faced 24-hour solitary confinement for the duration of their sentences. By the close of the Civil War, the majority of prisons in the United States had adopted the Auburn system - the only exception was Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary, making it the subject of much criticism and a fascinating outlier. Using the Eastern State Penitentiary as a case study, The Deviant Prison brings to light anxieties and other challenges of nineteenth-century prison administration that helped embed our prison system as we know it today. Drawing on organizational theory and providing a rich account of prison life, the institution, and key actors, Ashley T. Rubin examines why Eastern’s administrators clung to what was increasingly viewed as an outdated and inhuman model of prison - and what their commitment tells us about penal reform in an era when prisons were still new and carefully scrutinized.

 

PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP 

 

Jouet, Mugambi. 2020. “Reading Camus in Time of Plague and Polarization.” Boston Review. [Access it here]

On the sixtieth anniversary of Albert Camus's death, the article discusses how he addressed criminal justice and other key issues relevant to the evolution of modern society. The article further offers a Law & Literature perspective given Camus's influential writings on the death penalty.

 

Job Listing: Assistant Professor at U. of Washington

The University of Washington is seeking scholars in Ethics & Justice for an Assistant Professor position at the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance. Please see the full job posting here. I am a member of the Search Committee and am happy to answer questions about the position.

Job Listing: Assistant and Associate, UC Berkeley

 My name is Erin Kerrison and I am currently serving as a Search Committee member working to fill a UC Berkeley Assistant (tenure-track) or Associate Professor (tenured) senate faculty position.  Candidates are invited to submit applications demonstrating their suitability for a joint appointment in the School of Social Welfare and the Department of Ethnic Studies. 

Specifically, we are eager to review applications from candidates with at least the following qualifications:

• an established or promising track record of research with substantial impact in the area of Native American Community Health
• direct experience working with Native American communities
• evidence of engagement with Indigenous research methodologies
• an understanding of overlaps between social welfare programs and practices, and health and wellness priorities of Native communities
• a capacity for interdisciplinary research and teaching linked to the school of Social Welfare’s specializations, and the Native American Studies area within the Ethnic Studies Department
• a PhD or equivalent international degree, or enrolled in a PhD or equivalent international degree program, at the time of application

For full consideration, candidates are encouraged to apply by December 7, 2020: https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF02788.  

Please feel welcomed to share this announcement with any parties you believe might be interested.

I have attached the full Call for Applications here, and will happily answer any questions that you and colleagues in your network may wish to pose.

Thank you very much for you consideration and know that I am sending my warmest wishes for a safe and restful weekend.

Please take good care, 

Erin 

Job Listing: Assistant Professor, Dominican University

The Department of Sociology and Criminology is seeking a critical criminologist at the rank of assistant professor for a tenure-track position beginning Fall 2021 (August 15, 2021). Preferred qualifications include specializations in research and teaching about youth and social justice, the carceral state, restorative and transformative approaches to crime, pedagogies for social change, and research methods. Successful candidates will have a record of supporting first generation, Black and Latinx student populations with demonstrated effectiveness in helping students build quantitative, writing, oral communication and information literacy skills, and a commitment to inclusive teaching and community building.

 

Qualifications:   

Candidates must have a Ph.D. in Criminology, Sociology or related fields (PhD documentation by Fall 2021), a strong interest in undergraduate teaching and advising, an established research agenda, an interest in shared governance, a commitment to service, and a dedication to diversity and social justice.

 

Application:

Please provide cover letter and resume, including a list of at least three professional references. Dominican University will accept applications for this position until it is filled.

 

Official transcripts will be required of finalists; submission instructions will be provided to applicants as necessary.

 

An offer will be pending a background screening.

 

About Dominican University:

Dominican University is a Catholic, comprehensive teaching university located in River Forest, a suburb of Chicago, with an enrollment of nearly 3,200 students. The University is designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution, with 37% of undergraduates first generation in college, 69% female, 61% Hispanic of Any Race, and 5% Black/African-American. Dominican University’s mission, in part, is to prepare students to participate in the creation of a more just and humane world. Toward that end, the university is committed to building a culturally diverse educational environment. For more information about Dominican University, see www.dom.edu.

 

Dominican University is an equal opportunity employer. The University is dedicated to the goal of building a diverse faculty and staff committed to teaching and working in a multicultural environment.  We look forward to a diverse pool of applicants who bring varied experiences, perspectives and backgrounds.  Upon request, reasonable accommodations in the application process will be provided to individuals with disabilities.