Devereaux Kennedy

Out of Time: The Curtis-Wells Anomaly and the History of American Corrections Devereaux Kennedy attempts to evaluate the significance of the reform school regimes of E.M.P. Wells and Joseph Curtis. Kennedy examines the utilitarian correctional theory and practice dominant in the U.S. during the 1820s and 1830s and the Progressive approach to corrections that held […]

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Jordan T. Camp

The Bombs Explode at Home: Policing, Prisons, and Permanent War  In 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King observed: “The bombs in Vietnam explode at home. The security we profess to seek in foreign ventures we will lose in our decaying cities.” His words resonated amidst widespread social protest against Cold War policies designed to contain communism […]

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Lisa Guenther

Prison Beds and Compensated Man-Days: The Spatio-Temporal Order of Carceral Neoliberalism  The Trousdale Turner Correctional Center is a 2,600-bed private prison owned and operated by CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America. It is located in Hartsville, Tennessee, on the former site of the Hartsville Nuclear Plant and PowerCom Industrial Center. In this paper, […]

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Sarah Whetstone & Teresa Gowan

Carceral Rehab as Fuzzy Penality: Hybrid Technologies of Control in the New Temperance Crusade The steep escalation of mandatory drug rehabilitation since 1989 has incorporated “strong-arm” rehab as a central node of carceral control. This article draws on ethnographies of three Midwestern male residential rehab facilities that reflect three dominant treatment paradigms, which result in […]

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Vol. 18-3 Attica: 1971-1991 — A Commemorative Issue

This issue provides a retrospective on the Attica rebellion, an assessment of prisoner struggles in the United States, Canada, England and Wales, and Japan since 1971, and thoughts on a new penology for the 1990s. It is of enduring historical value. TABLE OF CONTENTS Attica: The “Bitter Lessons” Forgotten? Robert P. Weiss, Editor [free pdf […]

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Vol. 44-1: Ethnographic Explorations of Punishment and the Governance of Security

Ethnographic Explorations of Punishment and the Governance of Security edited by Robert Werth This special issue highlights the growth of ethnographic examinations of penal governance across multiple disciplines, emphasizing the possibilities and the potential blind spots of ethnography as a methodology for studying penality. By analyzing phenomena as varied as pre-trial incarceration, parole and reentry, female […]

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Vol. 44-2/3: Neoliberal Confinements: Social Suffering in the Carceral State

Neoliberal Confinements: Social Suffering in the Carceral State edited by Alessandro De Giorgi & Benjamin Fleury-Steiner This special issue aims to provide a cartography of some of the forms of social suffering experienced by marginalized and oppressed populations in the US carceral state. The contributors extend their gaze beyond the prison and its ancillary institutions […]

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Vol. 45-1: Emancipatory Justice: Confronting the Carceral State

Emancipatory Justice: Confronting the Carceral State edited by Michael Hallett This special issue of Social Justice expands previous editions’ explorations of emancipatory justice and incarceration. The issue begins with the premise that addressing structural violence is the greatest single challenge to establishing mechanisms of emancipatory justice. Looking beyond the prison walls, contributors identify areas in which new […]

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Vol. 45-2/3

TABLE OF CONTENTS Histories of Abolition, Critiques of Security Brendan McQuade Rebranding Mass Incarceration: The Lippman Commission and Carceral Devolution in New York City Zhandarka Kurti & Jarrod Shanahan Reproducing Disorder: The Effects of Broken Windows Policing on Homeless People with Mental Illness in San Francisco Tony Sparks You Have the Right to Remain Violent: […]

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Vol. 45-4 – Penal Abolition: Challenging Boundaries

Penal Abolition: Challenging Boundaries edited by Michael J. Coyle & Judah Schept The present issue’s focus reflects abolition’s foundational questioning of the material boundaries of capitalist societies—borders, prisons, property—as well as the matériel of those boundaries—barbed wire, cages, fences, walls, and increasingly their electronic manifestations. Whereas some reform efforts aim to tweak the size and […]

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Vol. 46-4 – Punishment and History

Punishment and History edited by Ashley T. Rubin This special issue appraises the role of history in the study of punishment, illuminating its utility and limitations for understanding penal change. Rather than seeking the origins of mass incarceration, as others have done, this issue examines how penal history might provide lessons for understanding punishment as a social […]

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Vol. 47-1/2

Abstracts (pdf download) TABLE OF CONTENTS In the Sites of Operation Condor: Memory and Afterlives of Clandestine Detention Centers Michael Welch Rounding Up the Undesirables: The Making of a Prostitution-Targeted Loitering Law in New York City Karen Struening Social Movements in Juvenile Prisons: An Investigation Alexandra L. Cox Exhausting People, Extracting Revenue: Police, Prisons, and Counterinsurgency Matthew […]

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Vol. 48-1

Abstracts (pdf download) TABLE OF CONTENTS Police Abolition as Community Struggle against State Violence Bronwyn Dobchuk-Land & Kevin Walby [read blog by the authors] What Works and What Doesn’t When Policing People with Mental Health Issues Jerry Flores & Joyce Chua On the Outs: Global Capitalism and Transcarceration Oscar Fabian Soto [read blog by the author] […]

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Vol. 49-1/2

TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACTS [pdf download] Eddie Ellis, Credible Messengers, and the Neoliberal Imagination of Anti-Violence David C. Brotherton Police Abolitionism: A Marxist Critique Howard Ryan Abolitionist Entanglements with Guards: Engagements to Deepen Analysis and Organizing Erica R. Meiners Uncomfortable Kinship: An Ethnography of the Professional World of Gang Experts and Street Outreach Workers in […]

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