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

Session Submission Type: Pre-arranged Panel

Abstract

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.

Subtopic

• Topic 3: Crime Correlates / Family and Intergenerational Perspectives (Intergenerational Criminology WG)

Chair

• Adam Kluge, Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford

Individual Presentations

• Choosing Between Debt and Dinner: How Criminal Legal Debt Impacts Parents in the United States - Brittany Martin, The University of Rhode Island; Andrea Giuffre, California State University, San Bernardino; Veronica L. Horowitz, University at Buffalo, State University of New York; Timothy Edgemon, University of Birmingham

• 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

• Recontextualizing stigma experienced by families of prisoners as a site of neoliberal power relations - Anna Kotova, University of Birmingham

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