Mapping Carceral Landscapes: Towards a Multi-institutional Theory and Measure of State Punishment

• In Event: Critical Perspectives on Coloniality and Carcerality

Abstract

Historically, scholars have hyper-focused on the criminal legal system—especially incarceration—as the defining source of state violence. However ideological and governance shifts have extended the controlling, surveilling, and punishing arms of the criminal legal system (i.e., carceral logics) into social institutions, including the child welfare system, welfare, immigration, education, and healthcare. The adoption of carceral logics by these institutions establishes them as tentacles of the carceral state and key sites of state social control. This study explores how states deploy carceral logics across institutions to construct their respective “carceral landscapes.” Expanding upon existing typologies of state punishment and control, I develop a robust framework and measure of state punishment and control. Using 11 sources of state-level data from 2009-2012, I model variations in state carceral landscapes using confirmatory factor analysis. Results reveal that states mobilize carceral logics across institutions to varying degrees. Moreover, using a broader measure of the carceral state reveals diverging patterns that contradict conventional measures of the carceral state (e.g., incarceration). My findings underscore the need to de-exceptionalize mass incarceration in theory and measurement, advancing a broader understanding of contemporary state punishment within the U.S.’s broader legacy of racialized and gendered state violence and control.

Author

• Kendall Riley, University of Iowa