Sex in the Carceral State

• In Event: Crime, Law and Deviance Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 1: Punishment and Criminal Justice Reform

Abstract

By utilizing the frameworks of sexual citizenship, sexual projects, and sexual geographies (Epstein & Carillo, 2014; Fields, 2008; Hirsch, 2003, 2010; Johnston & Longhurst, 2010; Khan & Hirsch, 2020; Richardson, 2000; Sampson, 2011), I seek to disentangle and emphasize how, with a nurtured and informed sexual citizenship, it is possible to fulfill one’s sexual project in carceral sexual geographies. Nonetheless, I will demonstrate how the carceral state seeks to impose sanctions and limit the exercise of one’s sexual citizenship, also functioning as a coercive space. I engage the sociological subfields of sexuality and gender, violence, race/racism, and the criminal justice system, along with other social science literature, to build an understanding of how researchers conceptualize sex in the carceral state, namely sexual projects in prisons, sexual intimacy during probation, parole, and house arrest, and shifting sexual projects post-release. This paper will contribute to an understanding of how the state and institutions seek to police and monitor the sexual citizenship of its population, especially those most under surveillance. This project is sociologically meaningful, drawing from multiple theoretical lineages, most importantly Foucault and Du Bois, to highlight the power dynamics of the carceral state, particularly how the sexual citizenship of justice-impacted individuals is policed or inhibited by the surveilling power of the prison and carceral apparatus, as well as how subjectivity is molded under confinement. Lastly, this paper engages a variety of critical perspectives, including critical race, feminist, and queer theory, which will emphasize the gendered and racialized power imbalances that are pervasive in the carceral state.

Author

• Max Calleo, University of Massachusetts-Amherst