Research News

New paper: “Mapping the shadow carceral state”

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There’s a new paper in pre-print in Theoretical Criminology: ‘Mapping the shadow carceral state: Towards an institutionally capacious approach to punishment’ which might be of interest to carceral geographers.

In the paper, Katherine Beckett and Naomi Murakawa of the University of Washington, USA, argue that although recent scholarship has highlighted the expansion of the US carceral state (and estate), ‘criminal law and criminal justice institutions increasingly represent only the most visible tentacles of penal power‘ (p2, my emphasis). In an attempt to ‘map the more submerged, serpentine forms of punishment’ (ibid) they describe the ‘shadow carceral state’, which they argue makes use of legally liminal authority, where punitive power is expanded through the combination of civil, administrative and criminal legal authority.

They identify the capacity of institutions in the US which are beyond what is ‘formally’ recognised as the criminal justice system, to impose punitive sanctions including incarceration, and they liken this situation to Cohen’s (1979) dystopian vision of the ‘punitive city’, with blurred boundaries between inside and outside, fuzzy definitions of ‘crime’, and ‘dispersed state social control beyond the prison walls’ (p2). In particular, there’s a table within the paper that shows the types of legal charges for which incarceration is a possible outcome, and whether or not the state defines such incarceration as ‘punishment’. The ‘shadow carceral state’ is manifest in part in these ‘not-punishment’ incarcerations.

Beckett and Murakawa argue that ‘a variety of institutional actors have manipulated the ostensibly discrete boundaries of civil, administrative and criminal law, thereby creating and/or enlarging non-criminal pathways to punishment’ (p18). For carceral geography, the paper represents a call for research not to focus exclusively on the ‘tail-end’ of the carceral process – incarceration itself – but to widen its scope to consider both the carceral state and the ways in which it ‘ensnares and sanctions’ by creating new non-criminal routes to punishment which impose regulation of restriction of mobility, and the legal opacity between civil, administrative and criminal law which make this possible.

Carceral geography recognises the parallels and overlaps between incarceration as a result of the criminal justice process, and, for example, the detention of migrants with unclear or contested legal status; a forthcoming book and seminar series specifically seek to draw together scholarship of these practices rather than to see them in isolation. The idea of the ‘shadow carceral state’, though, pushes this further, encouraging us to think about the carceral state as well as the carceral estate, what ‘punishment’ means, what constitutes it, and the ‘consequential pathways’ (p18) that lead to incarceration.

Carceral Geography – new books!

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What’s that saying? You wait forever for a bus and then three come along at once? Well, this is not quite all at once, but the great news is that there are four new forthcoming books which should be of interest to geographers and others working on spaces and practices of incarceration.

Further details are available on all of these books through the links above, but some brief information is below:

“Border Watch: Cultures of Immigration, Detention and Control”

Alexandra Hall 2012

Questions over immigration and asylum face almost all Western countries. Should only economically useful immigrants be allowed? What should be done with unwanted or ‘illegal’ immigrants? In this bold and original intervention, Alexandra Hall shows that immigration detention centres offer a window onto society’s broader attitudes towards immigrants.

“Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders and Global Crisis”

Jenna Loyd, Matt Mitchelson, Andrew Burridge [Eds] 2012

The crisis of borders and prisons can be seen starkly in statistics. In 2011 some 1,500 migrants died trying to enter Europe, and the United States deported nearly 400,000 and imprisoned some 2.3 million people—more than at any other time in history. International borders are increasingly militarized places embedded within domestic policing and imprisonment and entwined with expanding prison-industrial complexes. Beyond Walls and Cages offers scholarly and activist perspectives on these issues and explores how the international community can move toward a more humane future. Working at a range of geographic scales and locations, contributors examine concrete and ideological connections among prisons, migration policing and detention, border fortification, and militarization. They challenge the idea that prisons and borders create safety, security, and order, showing that they can be forms of coercive mobility that separate loved ones, disempower communities, and increase shared harms of poverty. Walls and cages can also fortify wealth and power inequalities, racism, and gender and sexual oppression. See the related blog here.

“Carceral Spaces: Mobility and Agency in Imprisonment and Migrant Detention”

Dominique Moran, Nick Gill & Deirdre Conlon [Eds] 2013

This book draws together the work of a new community of scholars with a growing interest in carceral geography: the geographical study of practices of imprisonment and detention. It combines work by geographers in ‘mainstream’ penal establishments that incarcerate people convicted of a crime by the prevailing legal system, with geographers’ recent work on migrant detention centres, in which refused asylum seekers, irregular migrants and some others are detained, ostensibly pending decisions on admittance or repatriation. In each of these contexts, contributions investigate the geographical location and spatialities of institutions, the nature of spaces of incarceration and detention and experiences inside them, governmentality and prisoner agency, cultural geographies of penal spaces, and mobility in the carceral context. In dialogue with emergent and topical agendas in geography around mobility, space and agency, and in relation to international policy challenges such as the (dis)functionality of imprisonment, and the search for alternatives to detention, the book draws upon and speaks back to geography, criminology and prison sociology.

Look out for this one early in 2013 – more details to come.

“Carceral Geography: Prisons, Power and Space”

Dominique Moran 2013

The so-called ‘punitive turn’ has brought about new ways of thinking about geography and the state, and has highlighted spaces of incarceration as a new terrain for exploration by geographers. This book introduces ‘carceral geography’ as a geographical perspective on incarceration, tracking the ideas, practices and engagements that have shaped the development of this new and vibrant sub-discipline, and suggesting future research directions which are dynamically open to transdisciplinarity, which are both informed by and extend theoretical developments in geography, but which also, and critically, interface with contemporary debates over hyperincarceration, recidivism and the advance of the punitive state. This book conveys a sense of the debates, directions, and threads within the field of carceral geography, tracing the inner workings of this dynamic field, its synergies with criminology and prison sociology, and its likely future trajectories. By synthesizing existing work in carceral geography, and by exploring the future directions it might take, the book develops a notion of the ‘carceral’ as spatial, emplaced, mobile, embodied and affective.

More details to come as this one progresses…

Geographies of Justice RGS-IBG pre-conference 2/7/2012

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For anyone attending the RGS-IBG conference in Edinburgh this July, please note that there is a pre RGS-IBG conference event sponsored by the RGS-IBG & Space and Society Research Group, held at the School of Environment, University of Dundee, which is approximately an hour from Edinburgh

Geographies of Justice RGS-IBG pre-conference

2nd July 2012 10.15 – 17.30

Events include:

  • Opening lecture
  • Spaces of Justice Research
  • Giving Voice in Justice Research
  • ‘New Directions’ expert panel discussion

Keynote Speakers include:

  • Dr Elizabeth Olson (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA)
  • Prof Rachel Pain (Durham University, UK)
  • Prof Sue Parnell (University of Cape Town, South Africa)
  • Prof Gordon Walker (Lancaster University, UK)

The event is free to attend but places are limited.

To book a place please email Dr Lorraine van Blerk (l.c.vanblerk@dundee.ac.uk) by 1st June 2012.

Faith in Carceral Space

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In her recent paper in Political Geography, JoAnn McGregor argues that removal centres for detained immigrants in the UK are acting as spaces of religious revival. By exploring why confinement for removal fosters enhanced religious engagement, her paper examines experiences of detention and deportability based on ex-detainees’ accounts, investigates institutional provision, and detainees’ own initiatives regarding faith, and treats faith in its affective, emotional, narrative and performative dimensions. McGregor finds that faith acts as as a source of resilience for non-citizens faced with legal exclusion.

McGregor’s work is amongst the first within geography to explore the importance of faith during confinement. However, in cognate disciplines there are intriguing glimpses of the role that faith plays within and beyond carceral space. For example, Revd. Peter Phillips, a mature PhD student at the University of Cardiff, UK, is working on the role of prison chaplains ‘caught in no-man’s land’ as both agents of the prison establishment and/or as counter-agents within it.  In so doing, he works with theories of liminality to explore participation in ritual-like activities, affiliation/disaffiliation, and the importance of prison chaplaincy in prison ethnography, focusing particularly on prison chapels and reception areas. Within criminology, Grant Duwe and Valerie Clark find in their study of prison visitation and recidivism in Minnesota US, that visits from clergy lowered the risk of prisoners reoffending after release by 24%. They suggest that the training that clergy often receive in helping individuals through difficult life circumstances, may mean that they are able to give offenders the kind of effective counsel and support that they need. Their study contributes to a growing body of work considering the effectiveness of faith-based rehabilitation programmes during incarceration (e.g. Dodson et al 2011), and the role of faith in facilitating ‘reintegration’ after release (such as Kerley et al’s 2011 study of a faith-based transitional centre for women in the Southern United States).

Within carceral space, recent geographical research in Russian prisons suggests that in constructing prison chapels, the Russian Orthodox Church provides spaces of retreat and escape from the oppressively communal prison environment. Women interviewed for a recently completed research project suggested that not only were chapels used as spaces for devout prayer, and for recreation in the form of choral singing, but that they also provided a rare sense of solitude and privacy within prison walls, where prisoners retreated into the privacy of the self.

McGregor’s work highlights the potential for faith to act as a “‘coping mechanism’” to help detainees “through distressing periods in detention” (2012, 243). By drawing attention to the complex role of faith in the lives of the detained (and those released after detention), though, her work points to ways in which carceral geography, along with cognate disciplines, can nuance understandings of faith in carceral space, perhaps to problematise what might be understood by the  ‘effectiveness’ of faith-based interventions.

Are you working on faith in carceral space? Let us know about your work by posting a comment below:

Beyond spaces of confinement – papers at RGS-IBG 2012

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The provisional schedule for the RGS-IBG conference in Edinburgh in July this year is now available online. For those interested in geographies of imprisonment and detention, as well as the two sessions themed around ‘Everyday Geographies of the Punitive State’, there are a number of fascinating papers in store.

Selecting just two of these, both Menah Raven-Ellison’s paper Home beyond detention  and Avril Maddrell’s paper Doing time in the charity shop: space of reparation and rehabilitation for the Licensed Prisoner? A ten year review draw attention to practices of ‘confinement’ which take place beyond formal institutonal boundaries. Abstracts, taken from the RGS-IBG provisional programme, are given below.

Home beyond detention (Menah Raven-Ellison) In the third quarter of 2011, 6,593 people were detained in the UK for the purposes of immigration control (Home Office, 2011). While 1,123 of those detained were women, major shortcomings are identified in their treatment and calls made for a more gender sensitive asylum system that meets the needs of women asylum-seekers. Although 35% of these women went on to be released there is a lack of research that investigates the on-going legacy of detention and the consequences for the belonging, social integration and mental wellbeing of ex-detainees and those close to them. This paper presents some preliminary empirical findings, drawing on in-depth narratives of ‘home’ for previously detained women living in the UK. In doing so it seeks to uncover how women’s experiences of detention may endure over time and space, often defined by the enduring indeterminacy and exceptionality of detention and the imposing ‘spectre’ of future confinement. Conceptually, this paper seeks to contribute a critical feminist perspective to the emerging geographic research on detention, imprisonment and confinement by focusing on how geographies of detention may extend beyond institutional boundaries to the home as an equally geopolitical space as experienced in the everyday lives of women.

Doing time in the charity shop: space of reparation and rehabilitation for the Licensed Prisoner? A ten year review (Avril Maddrell) Research on charity shops ten years ago showed that they fulfil a number of social functions and draw on a wide range of volunteers, including licensed prisoners on day- release from open prisons. This identified the space of the charity shop not only as a conduit for fundraising, recycling and alternative consumption, but as a complex social environment in which prisoners ‘do time’ and shadow state functions are performed by shop managers and other volunteers who undertake explicit and implicit surveillance, re-training and social rehabilitation of prisoners on licence (Maddrell 2000; Horne and Maddrell 2002). In-depth interviews with charity shop prisoners, volunteers, licensed prisoners and prison officers are used to undertake a ten year review of this scheme, the implications for prisoners, prisons, charity shops and personnel, the general public and custodial policy. Questions addressed include whether in this context the charity shop can be read as panopticon? And whether the near-compulsory nature of community service work under licence challenges definitions of what constitutes a ‘volunteer’?

Distance Matters: Parenting in Prison

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Where prisons are matters – not just for the local inhabitants of surrounding areas concerned for their house prices or their employment prospects, but for the families of the incarcerated who face problems in visiting prisoners when they are held at distance from home, and for imprisoned parents who want to see their children.

In New York, USA, two politicians have recently introduced bills that would establish a pilot program for 60 parents to be incarcerated near their children. According to a piece in the NY Daily News, although more than 73% of incarcerated women in New York are mothers and roughly 100,000 New York children have a parent in prison, the state Department of Corrections makes no provisions for parents when it assigns them to prisons across New York state.

The impact of distance on the experience of imprisonment, particularly for mothers with young children, is the focus of  a recently completed project looking at the experience of women in Russia’s prison system, and is discussed in a forthcoming book, as well as in a recent paper which describes Russia’s geography of punishment.

While carceral geography has tended to concentrate on the impact of the spatial distribution of places of incarceration on the communities which host or surround them, research into the impact of distance from home and family during imprisonment would complement the wealth of research within criminology and prison sociology into the ‘collateral’ effects of  incarceration.

Abandoned or converted prisons – transient carceral landscapes

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Joliet prison, owned by the state of Illinois, US, closed in 2002, and although it has since been used as a filmset by TV and movie crews, it lacks a long term future plan.  With a large bill for renovation, and no immediate source of funding, as Bob Okon writes, there will be ‘no fast redevelopment’ at Joliet.

Joliet is an example of the dilemma facing those involved in dealing with prison buildings once they reach the end of their penal function, and the conversion, adaptation or destruction of these sites is often a contentious and highly politicised process. Geographers researching memory and landscape have investigated some of these sites.

Carolyn Strange and Michaela Kempa’s work on Alcatraz, for example, identifies this defunct prison, now converted into a museum and heritage site, as a popular tourist experience, and they consider the nature of  ‘dark tourism’ at Alcatraz  in terms of memory management. In contrast, Brian Graham and Sara McDowell focus on Long Kesh/Maze prison in Northern Ireland, one of the key heritage sites of the Northern Ireland conflict/Troubles, and site of contestation between various stakeholders in the peace process. Concluding that only one stakeholder group has a ‘clearly defined sense of the heritage value of the Maze and an understanding as to how the site might be appropriated and exploited as an iconic place for remembering, contestation and resistance’, they anticipate the problematic future of the site (initially cleared, to be the site of an EU-funded Peace Building and Conflict Resolution facility but more recently sold to the Royal Ulster Agricultural Society to accommodate an agricultural show and centre of excellence).

The commercial exploitation of former prisons is widespread, either deploying the prison’s own heritage, as in the case of Patarei prison in Tallinn, Estonia, or Kilmainham jail in Dublin, Ireland, or converting it for profitable use, as in the case of the Malmaison hotel in Oxford, UK or Katajanokka hotel in Helsinki, Finland.

Relatively little geographical scholarship has tracked such conversions, although Chin-Ee Ong, Claudio Minca and James Sidaway’s forthcoming paper at the RGS-IBG this July will do so. The Empire and its Hotel: The Changing Biopolitics of Hotel Lloyd, Amsterdam, The Netherlands traces the early days of the hotel’s beginnings as a node for housing immigrants,  to its ‘carceral’ phase as an adult prison and juvenile detention centre, to its contemporary use as a hotel and cultural embassy for a mobile travelling society. The authors interrogate the discursive and spatial practices for producing disciplined subjects and bodies in the refugees, prisoners and, in a ‘punitive turn’, the disciplining of contemporary tourists and modern-day tourism workers.


PhD opportunity in Carceral Geography

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The so-called ‘punitive turn’ has brought about new ways of thinking about geography and the state, and has highlighted spaces of incarceration as a new terrain for exploration by geographers. This PhD project supervised by Dominique Moran at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, at the University of Birmingham, UK, will enable the Doctoral Researcher to investigate their chosen aspect of ‘carceral geography’ as a geographical perspective on incarceration, in relation to the ideas, practices and engagements that have shaped the development of this new and vibrant sub-discipline.

Proposals which are transdisciplinary, which are both informed by and extend theoretical developments in geography, and which interface with contemporary debates over hyperincarceration, recidivism and the advance of the punitive state, will be particularly welcome. There is considerable scope for applicants to explore synergies with criminology and prison sociology, and to develop a notion of the ‘carceral’ as spatial, emplaced, mobile, embodied and affective.

See the full ad here

Carceral Geography: Prisons, prisoners and mobilities: “Geography Directions” blog

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Carceral Geography: Prisons, prisoners and mobilities

by Fiona Ferbrache

…Carceral geography is also the focus of Moran, Piacentini and Pallot’s paper in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. Their work draws from empirical research on the Russian Penal system, and mobility theories.  The authors argue that much mobility has been conceptualised in a way that emphasises association with freedom and autonomy.  The downside is that mobility is seldom considered as an instrument of power that disciplines and limits a subject’s agency.  As the authors indicate, the academic question ‘why travel?’ is seldom answered: ‘because I had no choice’…

ESRC Seminar Series “‘Exploring Everyday Practice and Resistance in Immigration Detention”

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The ESRC intends to fund a seminar series entitled ‘Exploring Everyday Practice and Resistance in Immigration Detention’. This seminar series brings together scholars from the universities of Oxford, York, Birmingham, Lancaster and Exeter, who span the disciplines of politics, sociology, geography and criminology, across five events during 2012-2014. These events aim to provide a means of networking between academics and practitioners, and those who have experienced detention, in order to exchange expertise and knowledge around the operation and implications of immigration detention in a national and international context. They also aim to raise public awareness of immigration detention and provide a foundation for a strong future research bid to the ESRC in this important and under-researched area. The seminar series is coordinated by Dr Nick Gill of Exeter University’s Geography Department (Principle Investigator) and will involve international speakers from Canada, America, Finland and Australia.