When Families Pay: Carceral Harms, Financial Debt, and Neoliberal Power

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract/Description

The use of imprisonment as a form of social control has been widely documented by socio-legal scholars across a range of disciplines. However, the relationship between carceral violence, fines and fees, and the contemporary family has only recently been addressed––often narrowly. Furthermore, there remains a dearth in criminological scholarship that understands these families as uniquely stigmatised underneath modern regimes of governance.

To address this gap, this paper session examines the collateral impact of penal power on the loved ones of those enduring the pains of incarceration, remand, and detention. Applying an analytical framework that borrows from critical legal theory, political economy, the sociology of punishment, and experiential knowledge from solidarity work, the papers in this session highlight the entangled and 'symbiotic' (Condry and Manson 2021) relationships between state punishment, financial debt, familial relationships, and the stigmatisation of justice-involved people.

Sub Unit

• Area VI. The Criminal Justice System / 53. Collateral Consequences of Incarceration

Individual Presentations

• Carceral Welfare: The Familial Debt of Incarceration - Lynne Haney, New York University; Tommaso Bardelli, New York University; Zachary Gillespie, New York University; Jacob Hood, New York University

• The Carceral Shift: Understanding and Theorizing Women’s Invisible Labor in the Aftermath of Crime - Mari Kita, Eastern Illinois University

• Motherhood at the Margin: Stigma, Social Order, and the Political Economy of Punishment - Adam Kluge, Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford

Chair

• Rachel Condry, University of Oxford

Discussant

• Adam Kluge, Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford

Organized by a Division or external group?

EXTERNAL GROUP

Global Prisoners' Families Research Network
https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/global-prisoners-families/global-prisoners-families