Carceral Shelter: Homeless shelters in the carceral continuum

• In Event: Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 18: Homelessness

Abstract

Ethnographic research on homelessness is replete with unhoused research participants drawing parallels between the conditions of homeless shelters and the carceral spaces of jails and prison. At the same time, quantitative researchers have detailed the demographic overlap between the shelter and jail and the movements of individuals across their “institutional circuit.” However, nearly all recent qualitative accounts come from perspectives of those outside shelter on the streets and encampments rather than those on the inside. And while recent research has specified the mechanisms propelling those exiting jail or prison into homelessness and those surviving homelessness into custody, there has been far less consideration of how the institutions of shelter and jail/prison relate in the broader political economy of governing the poor. Drawing on ethnographic observations from 96 nights residing in San Francisco’s shelters the paper elaborates the concept of carceral shelter. First, it details the carceral conditions and shared features between prison and shelter in terms of their (a) material conditions (b) disciplinary practices between staff, technology and residents, and (c) the experiential resonances among residents. Second it traces the carceral connections that tie the jail and shelter into symbiotic relationship for co-managing, secluding, and “housing” a shared population of society’s economically and racially marginalized. I conclude arguing that rather than being primarily aimed at punishing, disciplining, rehabilitating, or medicalizing the poor. In the case of homelessness, jails and shelters work first and foremost to neutralize poverty in the liberal city aimed at invisibilizing its presence in public space and legitimating its criminalization.

Author

• Chris John Herring, UCLA