Beyond Punishment: The Penal State’s Interventionist, Covert, and Negligent Modalities of Control

• In Event: 371 - Regular Session. Deviance and Social Control

Abstract

This paper investigates penal state control in the lives of criminalized people by analyzing punishment alongside various other forms of penal state involvement. We propose the concept of modalities of penal control and identify three additional modalities besides expressive punishment: interventionist, covert, and negligent penal control. We distinguish these modalities by locating them along three spectra of penal state involvement: legal/extralegal, surface/submerged, and positive/negative. We illustrate cases of each modality, using data drawn from three distinct projects based in Chicago, Southern Wisconsin, and a national sample; the data include observations of post-prison groups and homes, interviews with criminalized people and NGO staff, and information from statutory and regulatory legal research. Our research highlights the need for comprehensive reform that overhauls not just forms of expressive punishment but penal state involvement more broadly. We suggest that moving the focus beyond punishment can generate not only a deeper understanding of how the penal state involves itself in criminalized people’s lives, but also how to comprehensively reform a wide range of modalities of penal control.

Authors

• Nicole Kaufman, Ohio University

• Joshua Kaiser, Northwestern University and American Bar Foundation

• Cesraea Rumpf, Fayetteville State University