Expanding and Subverting the Carceral Net through the Voluntary Sector: The Case of US Youth Justice

• In Event: The Penal Voluntary Sector: Thematic Panel A

Abstract

Recent work in the sociology of punishment literature has called attention to how the state punishes through non-punitive means, forming what Beckett and Murakawa call the ‘carceral shadow state.’ This paper situates the ‘carceral shadow state’ within the community-based voluntary sector and marketization of punishment and service provisions under neoliberalism. In the case of US youth justice specifically, through partnerships with voluntary community-based organizations, the carceral state extends the state’s ability to punish and control marginal youth through non-criminal punishments. But the partnerships that arise out of this privatized arrangement also make possible various points of resistance to this carceral control, as progressive and critical community groups that compete (often successfully) to serve as partners in delivering ‘services’ manage to do so with a social justice-focus or welfarist-orientation. In this way, the turn to voluntary community organizations under neoliberalism gives rise to the escalation of the carceral state project and progressive alternatives to it.

Authors

• Randolph R Myers, Old Dominion University

• Kaitlyn J Selman, Old Dominion University

• Tim Goddard, Florida International University