Hidden in Plain Sight: Criminological Apparatuses as Public Secrets

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

Public secrets pervade everyday life. According to digital arts scholar Sharon Daniel (2007, n.p.), the expansion of the prison population in the United States offers a case in point, characterizing it as "a secret kept in an unacknowledged but public agreement not to know what imprisonment really means to individuals and their communities." Many criminological concerns, including but not limited to, the criminal justice system, arguably occupy this complicated position. This panel queries how different apparatuses contribute to the emergence of public secrets and the concealment of many problematic contours. A focus on apparatuses enables exploration of a heterogeneous suite of mechanisms, discourses, institutional arrangements, or regulatory technologies at work across different domains. The papers feature distinct cases that capture architectures of control, modes of surveillance, and practices of embodied expression. They scrutinize the substantive qualities and material characteristics of seemingly divergent examples to unveil not only their hidden contours, but also the deeper social concerns (e.g., social control, violence) underpinning them.

Sub Unit

• Area X. Critical Criminology / 62. Cultural Criminology

Division of Special Interest

• Division Session of Interest / Division on Women & Crime

Individual Presentations

• Heavy Bag Heroines: Fighting Sports, Gender and the Commodification of Violence - Victoria E. Collins, Eastern Kentucky University

• Detecting Brain Injuries among Survivors of Interpersonal Violence: Dilemmas of Advocating for Inclusion - Kathryn Henne, University of Waterloo / Australian National University

• Architectures of Community Corrections: Public Secret or Secret from the Public? - Rita Shah, Eastern Michigan University

• Sexual Violence, Intersectionality, and the "Forensic Gaze" - Renee Shelby, Georgia Institute of Technology

Chairs

• Kathryn Henne, University of Waterloo / Australian National University

• Rita Shah, Eastern Michigan University