A Matter of Carceral Citizenship

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

Abstract

The growing literature on mass incarceration has examined the emergence, causes and consequences of criminal justice expansion on and within the social body. Among the most productive work in this area, scholars have documented the severity and impact of criminal justice contact on a large and growing segment of the population, raising questions about the character of U.S. democracy. Arguing forcefully that mass incarceration has transformed American citizenship, these scholars have shown how formal processes of legal exclusion coupled with ubiquitous criminal justice contact has relegated the largely black poor targets of the carceral state to a kind of second class citizenship. Building upon and extending this work, we argue that carceral expansion has not just resulted in the relegation of the black poor to second class citizenship, but the emergence of an alternate form of political membership—what we call carceral citizenship. This article delineates the features of carceral citizenship, and discusses its implications for how we understand the role, force and consequence of the state in the lives of the raced and criminalized poor.

Authors

• Reuben Miller, University of Chicago

• Forrest Stuart, University of Chicago