Consuming Carcerality as Entertainment: Critical Perspectives and Opportunities to Practice Hope and Resistance

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract/Description

This thematic panel examines the overlaps between carceral spaces, experiences, and entertainment. Using critical and abolitionist frameworks, these papers draw from examples in television, music, and video games to explore representations of carceral logic. In particular, we investigate and highlight how the commodification of carcerality, as a source of entertainment, can reinforce carceral stereotypes and trivialize the harm produced through State punishment. The panel also explores international efforts that offer a stark contrast to the exploitative use of carceral settings through the repurposing of jails and prisons to serve as spaces that promote the humanities, arts, and community building which may serve as abolitionist alternatives.

Sub Unit

• Area X. Critical Criminology / 79. Critical Perspectives in Criminology

Individual Presentations

• Love After Lock Up: An Extension of Prison Girlies - Alessandra Early, John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Nicole McKenna, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

• Beyond the Prison Walls: An Abolitionist Analysis of Carceral Imagery in Music - Hayley Jackey, Old Dominion University

• Prison Tycoon: Depictions of Incarceration and Carceral Stereotypes in Video Games - Ashley Kilmer, Towson University; Hayley Jackey, Old Dominion University

• Creating Over Consuming: Repurposing Prisons for the Humanities (and for the Humans) - Alison Colby, East Carolina University; Ashley Kilmer, Towson University; Lucas Alan Dietsche, Adams State University

Chair

• Hayley Jackey, Old Dominion University