Conceptualizing the Carceral State & Bridging Critical University Studies & Critical Carceral Studies

• In Event: Carceral Studies

Abstract

For some, the carceral state is a powerful heuristic to articulate how “institutions, people, and processes embody logics, practices, and technologies of prison” (Martensen 2020: 1). Yet, for others it remains imprecisely or inadequately defined, inconsistently employed, and ‘political’. Some have sought to develop ideas such as the ‘shadow carceral state’ (Beckett and Murakawa 2012) to advance conceptualizations and account for how carceral logics and practices have become enmeshed with other state agencies and institutions. In this paper, I develop a conceptual understanding of the carceral state that accounts for the co-constitutive force of the university, and particularly the discipline of criminology. Specifically, I work to bridge scholarship within the fields broadly understood as critical carceral studies and critical university studies to account for the nexuses between institutions and actors that operate within these spaces. To do this, I ground these conceptualizations in scholarship on settler colonialism and racial capitalism. This work seeks to advance criminological scholarship on legitimations of carcerality, and seeks to extend scholarship on the university as a state entity. I argue that criminology is part of the carceral state – both through its development as a discipline, and through its institutional home in the neoliberal university.

Author

• Mitra Mokhtari, University of Toronto