There is just one week left before the Call for Papers for this conference closes (at 8am UK time on Friday 4th October)!

Carceral Geography Conference 2016 at the University of Birmingham : Confinement, Crossings and Conditions

The School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham will host the first dedicated conference for Carceral Geography, on Tuesday 13th December 2016.

Call for Papers

Abstracts are invited for papers which address the themes of this conference: Confinement, Crossings and Conditions. These themes pertain to the nature and experience of carceral confinement, broadly interpreted; the notion of crossing of an assumed or contested boundary both between spaces of confinement and ‘other’ spaces,  and to the ways in which carceral experiences persist after periods of custody have ended – both for those confined, and for affected others. During ESRC research projects to which the conference is linked, (focused on the experience of carceral spaces) issues of absence, intimacy, choreography and the microscale emerged as significant, and prospective speakers are invited to engage with (but are by no means limited to) these notions. Papers which discuss methodological or theoretical approaches for carceral geography, and those exploring the ‘place’ of carceral geography in relation to human geography / criminology / carceral studies more generally are also welcome.

Abstracts from postgraduate and early career researchers are particularly welcome.

As well as providing a forum for dissemination and discussion of new and recent research in carceral geography, this event is intended provide a ‘springboard’ for the development of an organisational structure for this subdiscipline: there will formal and informal opportunities to discuss and plan actions and activities around this topic.

A limited number of travel and accommodation bursaries will be available for paper presenters.

Please use this URL to:

• Register to attend as a speaker, and submit your abstract
• Register to attend as a non-presenting delegate

If you are submitting an abstract, please note that the closing date to do so is 8am (UK time) on Friday 7th October. Selection decisions will be communicated by Friday 14th October.

The French journal Critique Internationale has just published a special issue on “Confinement and social categories”, edited by Tristan Bruslé and Bénédicte Michalon: http://www.sciencespo.fr/ceri/fr/critique

“In the name of peacekeeping and of an effective organization of daily life inside carceral settings, confinement goes in pair with processes of categorisation through gender, ethnicity and religion. The papers presented here examine how confinement affects categorisation processes and social categories; and, reciprocally, how logics of classification are transformed, weakened or reinforced in carceral institutions. Indeed, the possibility of identifying, classifying and naming seems an effective management tool of the social relations and finally meets few resistances from categorised people – be they incarcerated or professionals working for/with the institution. Categories and categorisation processes are analysed here as disciplinary and normative procedures, being part of the power relationships in penal institution as well as in migrants’ camps and detention centres confinement settings for migrants.”

Contents:

Bénédicte Michalon, Tristan Bruslé : ‘Ethnicity, religion and gender in carceral institutions : processes and categorisation effects’

Aurore Mottet, ‘Distribution and Circulation: Categorizing Detainees in the Choucha Camp (Tunisia)’

Louise Tassin, ‘The Frontiers of Detention: Gender and Ethnicity in the Supervision of Foreigners Awaiting Expulsion’

Claire de Galembert, ‘The “radical”: A New, Ill-Defined Figure of Prison Danger’

Irene Becci, Mohammed Khalid Rhazzali, Valentina Schiavinato, ‘Perception and Experience of Religious Plurality in Swiss and Italian Prisons : An Ethnographic Approach’

• 40 names and membership numbers of RGS-IBG members (this can include postgraduate members, and members of the AAG who have linked RGS-IBG memberships). The names and numbers of these individuals would be submitted to the RGS-IBG as evidence of the community of scholars willing to join the group if created. (Whether the group would be proposed as a Research Group or a Limited Life Working Group is for discussion with the RGS-IBG).

2016 has already been, and looks set to continue as a great year for carceral geography on the conference circuit. Keep reading for a summary of presentations at the AAG conference in San Francisco; and news about Troubling Institutions sessions at the upcoming RGS-IBG in London.

Dominique Moran and Jennifer Turner co-organised three sessions on Carceral Geography at the AAG conference in San Francisco. The first session focused on conceptualisations of the carceral, the second on carceral spaces, and the last on carceral mobilities.

Dominique presented first about conceptualisations of the ‘carceral’, then Joaquin Villanueva spoke about the relationship between carceral and legal geographies in a social housing estate in the Parisian banlieue; Christophe Mincke interrogated the relationship between deprivation of liberty and immobilisation, and Jewell Bohlinger addressed the sustainability of incarceration.

In the carceral spaces session, tactics of privacy in carceral space were explored by Anaïs Tschanz; Marina Richter presented on the end of life in prison; Ellie Slee spoke about prison architecture and communities local to prisons; and Marie Hutton gave her presentation electronically on prison visitation and human rights. In each case, presenters questioned what the prison is – how it is understood and experienced, from a variety of perspectives which, in multiple and interesting ways, emphasised the fluidity of the carceral.

In the carceral mobilities session we heard about the mobility of prison reform policy in Colombia from Julie de Dardel; about prison and probation as multiple levels of institutional life from Luca Follis; from Tom Disney about situated fathering in prison visiting rooms, and finally from Jen Turner about colour in custodial settings. In these papers, ideas about how the notion of the prison ‘travels’, both literally and metaphorically, shape the ideas presented.

In diverse ways, the papers chosen for these sessions explored the nature of the carceral, from multiple and cross-disciplinary perspectives. Those papers which focused on ‘the prison’, asked, in various ways, what it is, what it consists of, and how we are to understand it. Those which looked at carcerality outside of the prison test the plausibility, and indeed the utility, of the carceral metaphor. Speaking from a range of situated studies, including from the US, Canada, France, UK, Switzerland and Colombia, where what the prison ‘is’ varies markedly, they also implicitly addressed the issue of the geographical reach of the metaphor.

There was also a terrific set of papers in the session Critical Penal Geographies I: Histories, Political Economies, and Epistemologies of the Carceral State chaired by Judah Schept, including presentations by Judah with Brett Story, by Orisanmi Burton,  and by Anne Bonds and Jenna Loyd.

What’s next?

Tom Disney (University of Birmingham) and Anna Schliehe (University of Glasgow) are co-convening three sessions at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference entitled Examining troubling institutions and geographies at the nexus of care and control.

These sessions aim to consider the multiplicity of institutional spaces of care and control which can be found in various settings, ranging from psychiatric establishments, centres of migrant detention, prisons, orphanages, but also encompassing environments such as schools or youth camps. Building upon previous work into the geography of institutions and geography in institutions (Parr and Philo 2000: 514), these papers will explore the complicated and sometimes opaque relationship between care and control.

In particular these sessions are organised in response to recent calls in carceral geography (Moran and Turner, AAG 2016) and aim to illustrate the diversity of research in this area and beyond. This meeting intends to collect different perspectives on empirical and theoretical engagements with everyday life in institutional spaces, to examine the troubling relationship between care and control; where one is at risk of being transformed into the other (see Disney 2015, Schliehe 2014). These papers will contribute wide ranging perspectives from different fields to discuss this relationship, such as carceral geography, mental health geography, historical geography, children’s studies, theatre studies, criminology, anthropology and sociology.

Examining troubling institutions and geographies at the nexus of care and control (1): Care in Spaces of Control

Akhila L. Ananth The Green Prison: Ecological Preservation and Environmental Racism in the Design of Juvenile Detention Centers

Elisabeth Fransson The CLICK – Carceral spaces for young people

Laura Louise Nicklin Ariel or Caliban?  Care, Control and Shakespeare as a Successful Approach to Prison Based Criminal Rehabilitation

Franck Ollivon Electronic monitoring: the difficult balance of care and control in a penal technology

Marina Richter The dying body as a site of negotiation: care and control in end-of-life situations in Swiss prisons

Examining troubling institutions and geographies at the nexus of care and control (2): Controlling spaces of care

Cheryl McGeachan ‘Prisons are silent from the outside’: art therapy and Barlinnie’s Special Unit

Shilpi Rajpal and Debjani Das Ideology, Space and Cure: The North and East India Asylums in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Hazel Morrison From moral deficiency to the psychopathic states. Negotiating care, control, identity and diagnosis, in 1920s Gartnavel Mental Hospital

Frida Wikstrom The meeting room – Discharging patients from St Lars hospital in Lund, Sweden 1967–1992

Jennifer Farquharson Soldiers and asylum care: the peculiar case of Craig Dunain hospital, 1914-1934

Examining troubling institutions and geographies at the nexus of care and control (3): Looking beyond ‘closed’ spaces towards other institutions of care and control

Sylvia Meichsner Residential child- and youth care at the intersection of care and control

Rachael Stryker Juvenile Boot Camps and the Making of Interstitial Citizens in the United States

Katrine Syppli Kohl Troubled Encounters: the governmentalization of the accommodation centre for asylum seekers

Emma Wainwright and Elodie Marandet Housing Associations as institutional space: tenant welfare/workfare, care and control

Repo Virve Legally limited spaces: Spatial control in Finnish retirement homes

And later this year, look out for a carceral geography call for the Nordic Geographers Meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, in June 2017.

Jennifer Turner and Dominique Moran

CALL FOR PAPERS for the Annual Conference of the Royal Geographical Society with Institute of British Geographers 2016, 30 August – 2 September 2016, London

Examining troubling institutions and geographies at the nexus of care and control

Convenors: Tom Disney (University of Birmingham) and Anna Schliehe (University of Glasgow)

Institutional spaces of care and control can be found in various settings, ranging from psychiatric establishments, centres of migrant detention, prisons, orphanages, but also encompassing environments such as schools or military academies. Building upon previous work into the geography of institutions and geography in institutions (Parr and Philo 2000: 514), we want to explore the complicated and sometimes opaque relationship between care and control. This CFP responds to recent calls in carceral geography (Moran and Turner, AAG 2016) and aims to explore the potential diversity of research in this area. The session intends to collect different perspectives on empirical and theoretical engagements with everyday life in institutional spaces, to examine the troubling relationship between care and control; where one is at risk of being transformed into the other (see Disney 2015, Schliehe 2014). Does care inevitably cede into control? To what degree does this trouble us? Do we wish to trouble our conceptualisation of care and control – shake the ideas from the Foucault’s and the Goffman’s back to life in these ever changing institutional landscapes or find new lenses to unpick these spaces? We are interested in wide ranging perspectives from different sub-fields to discuss this relationship, such as carceral geography, mental health geography, children’s geographies and architectural geography. We also welcome contributions from other disciplinary backgrounds such as criminology or arts-based research to explore innovative methodological approaches and interdisciplinary engagement with the nexus of care and control.

Papers are invited which explore:
• Institutional spaces where care and control are seen to intersect or collide
• Methodological approaches, ethics and researcher positionality
• Conceptual frameworks around institutional geographies
• Spatiality of places of care and control including tactics, agency and resistance
• Vulnerable and marginalised groups within institutional spaces of care and control, in particular in relation to age and gender
• Embodied experiences and corporeal practices
• Aspects of design and spatial practice
• Beyond the ‘traditional’ carceral environment – the boarding school, military environments, hospices, care homes

Deadline for submitting abstracts is Wednesday 10th February 2016

Please send abstracts up to a maximum of 250 words and proposed titles (clearly stating name, institution, and contact details) to Tom Disney (t.n.disney@bham.ac.uk) and Anna Schliehe (a.schliehe.1@research.gla.ac.uk).

Dates: 30 August – 2 September 2016: Location: Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and Imperial College London
Further details about the conference at:
http://www.rgs.org/WhatsOn/ConferencesAndSeminars/Annual+International+Conference/Annual+International+Conference+2016.htm

How ‘super’ are the new, super-sized prisons? Building a better future for prisoners

Professor Yvonne Jewkes: Wednesday 30 September, 5-7pm, University of Leicester

With new, giant prisons being built to house up to 2,500 inmates and the prison population at 86,000, there arguably has never been a more important time to study prisons and punishment. Why is society’s cultural attachment to the prison seemingly unshakeable? Why does the prison population appear to rise unabated, despite falling recorded crime rates? Are new, modern prisons more effective and more efficient than the old Victorian gaols? What changes have we seen in terms of the types of offenders being sentenced to custody? And what are the most pressing challenges facing the Prison Service?

In this first Scarman Lecture of 2015/16, Professor Yvonne Jewkes, will address these questions, drawing on data from her current research, including a major three-year ESRC-funded study of prison architecture, design and technology.

This free lecture is open to graduates, students, staff and members of the public

For more information, click here

Fascinating piece by Anna Clark on the reuse and repurposing of prisons, and the shaping of identities of US prison towns faced with the possible closure of facilities.

“How do you detach a community from its dependency on the prison economy, without doing undue harm to local citizens? Is it even possible to wholly extract these forbidding fortresses from their intended purpose? After all, they were designed to be a place that nobody wants to be in. Puzzling out a way to find a new use, especially in rural areas and small towns, is a critical challenge for 21st-century planners.”

At the same time, The Navy Greene development in Brooklyn, New York, sees a 104,600-square-foot property on the site of a former federal prison, now being sold as high-end private residences. Even though the original prison building is gone, media coverage highlights the carceral past of the site, apparently as a selling point: “Former Prison Cells in Brooklyn Flipped Into $2 Million Townhouses. What a difference 20 years and a yuppie takeover can make.”

Thought-provoking articles for carceral geographers interested in the post-prison, and in the different post-functional existences possible for former prisons, or their sites.