Introduction: Constructing the Carceral State

Hernández, Kelly Lytle; Muhammad, Khalil Gibran; Thompson, Heather Ann

doi:10.1093/jahist/jav259

Cited by 31 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…However, many recent analyses seek to do precisely this, namely, to map the development, operation, and effects of criminal justice institutions (including the police) in the context of US penal expansion and welfare retrenchment (Beckett & Murakawa 2012). Studies aimed at this broader objective often use the term "carceral state" to call attention to the expanding role of penal institutions, broadly defined, in the lives of the poor and in communities of color (e.g., Hernandez et al 2015). Scholarship showing that penal intervention matters even absent incarceration provides support for this conceptual framework.…”

Section: Conceptualizing the Problem: From Mass Incarceration To The mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This body of scholarship thus suggests that it is not just the growth of incarcerative institutions but rather the expansion of penal institutions more generally that adversely impacts poor people and enhances inequality over time. For this reason, some scholars use the term carceral state to highlight the adverse and stratifying role of criminal justice institutions in the lives of the disadvantaged (e.g., Hernandez et al 2015).…”

Section: Conceptualizing the Problem: From Mass Incarceration To The mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Politics, Promise, and Peril of Criminal Justice Reform in the Context of Mass Incarceration

Beckett

2018

Annu. Rev. Criminol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Mass incarceration is an unprecedented development, one with myriad adverse consequences. Although the expansion of US penal institutions is largely a function of changes in practice and policy rather than rising crime rates, reversing this trend will nonetheless be challenging. The need for comprehensive sentencing reform is clear, but political limits on legislative remedies and the failure of the courts to notably reduce the scale, or improve conditions, of confinement render these approaches highly uncertain. In the short term, unconventional methods that do not require legislative authorization, such as electing, pressuring, and incentivizing prosecutors to reduce penal severity, may be a promising way of addressing mass incarceration. The return and revitalization of parole or other systems of post-sentence review are also crucial and may be legitimated in terms of the need to incentivize rehabilitation and prevent the unnecessary and costly incarceration of the elderly. The recent mobilization of grass-roots movements for penal change that include those directly affected by both violence and mass incarceration is also auspicious, as their work may help to humanize the justice-involved and undermine the erroneous assumption that crime survivors are well-served by mass incarceration. 235

show abstract

Section: Conceptualizing the Problem: From Mass Incarceration To The mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conceptualizing the Problem: From Mass Incarceration To The mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics, Promise, and Peril of Criminal Justice Reform in the Context of Mass Incarceration

Beckett

2018

Annu. Rev. Criminol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Despite state-enforced labor subordination's centrality to slavery and Jim Crow, work is strikingly marginal to accounts of racial domination in today's "carceral state" (Beckett and Murakawa 2012;Hernández, Muhammad, and Thompson 2015). "Go away," not "go to work," is the decree typically attributed to mass incarceration, understood as a structure of mass exclusion from labor markets and containment of those excluded (Pager 2008;Simon 2007;Wacquant 2009).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Get to Work or Go to Jail: State Violence and the Racialized Production of Precarious Work

Zatz¹

2019

Law Soc. Inq.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Work requirements backed by threats of incarceration offer a fertile but neglected site for sociolegal inquiry. These “carceral work mandates” confound familiar accounts of both the neoliberal state’s production of precarious work through deregulation and the penal state’s production of racialized exclusion from labor markets. In two illustrative contexts—child support enforcement and criminal legal debt—demands for work emerge as efforts to increase and then seize earnings from indigent debtors; an ability to pay is defined to include an ability to work. In a third, demands for work are imposed directly through probation, parole, and other community supervision. In each context, the carceral state regulates work outside of prison. It defines appropriate labor conditions through concepts of voluntary unemployment, and it enables employers to discipline or retaliate against workers by triggering state violence. Additionally, mandated work may be removed from employment law protections when the carceral context dominates its sociolegal meaning. Finally, the resulting vulnerable workforces can be used to displace or discipline other workers not personally subject to carceral work mandates. Analogies to welfare work requirements, workplace immigration enforcement, and prison labor illustrate these points. Implications are considered for theorizing contemporary racial political economy.

show abstract

“…1 Use of both terms has increased dramatically, becoming staples of the contemporary punishment and society literature. These terms have spread beyond interdisciplinary journals for punishment studies to law and society (e.g., Comfort, 2008; Gottschalk, 2009; Kaufman et al 2016; Schoenfeld, 2010; Simon, 2013), sociology (e.g., Wacquant, 2009c, 2010; Lacey, 2010; Bernstein, 2012), political science (e.g., Gottschalk, 2008; Grasso, 2017; Walker, 2014; Weaver and Lerman, 2010), geography (e.g., Peck, 2003), anthropology (e.g., Gilmore, 1999), history (e.g., Hernández et al 2015; Lichtenstein 2011; Thompson 2010; Thompson and Murch 2015), gender studies (e.g., McKim, 2014), and philosophy (e.g., Nichols, 2014). 2 Although primarily used to describe the US context, the terms have been used to discuss Canada (Nichols, 2014), England (Garland, 1996), Europe (Wacquant 2009a), Norway (Shammas, 2016), and Latin American countries (Müller, 2012), among others (see also Garland, 2013; Gottschalk, 2009), even as some scholars question its applicability outside the US (Lacey, 2010; Zedner, 2016: 5).…”

Section: The Rise Of the Penal State Conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fracturing the penal state: State actors and the role of conflict in penal change

Rubin

Phelps

2017

Theoretical Criminology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The concept of a penal or carceral state has quickly become a staple in punishment and criminal justice literature. However, the concept, which suffers from a proliferation of meanings and is frequently undefined, gives readers the impression that there is a single, unified, and actor-less state responsible for punishment. This contradicts the thrust of recent punishment literature, which emphasizes fragmentation, variegation, and constant conflict across the actors and institutions that shape penal policy and practice. Using a case study of late-century Michigan, this paper develops an analytical approach that fractures the penal state, demonstrating that, far from a unified entity, it is a messy, often conflicted amalgamation of the various branches and actors in charge of punishment and the ways they resist the aims and policies sought by their fellow state actors. Ultimately, we argue that fracture is itself a variable that scholars must measure empirically and incorporate into their accounts of penal change.

show abstract

Introduction: Constructing the Carceral State

Cited by 31 publications

References 0 publications

The Politics, Promise, and Peril of Criminal Justice Reform in the Context of Mass Incarceration

The Politics, Promise, and Peril of Criminal Justice Reform in the Context of Mass Incarceration

Get to Work or Go to Jail: State Violence and the Racialized Production of Precarious Work

Fracturing the penal state: State actors and the role of conflict in penal change

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About