Prisons in the Neoliberal Era: Class and Symbolic Dimensions
Prisons in the Neoliberal Era: Class and Symbolic Dimensions

Author: Dimitris Koros

Publisher: Universal-Publishers

Published: 2011-04-04

Total Pages: 64

ISBN-13: 1599423987

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The aim of this paper is to explore prison's class and symbolic dimensions in the Neoliberal Era. Neoliberalism was approached as the empowerment of the market which leads to the dismantlement of the social welfare state and to the strengthening of the penal state for the marginalised populations. Also, it was analysed as the 'conduct of conduct' in the Foucauldian sense, as it was argued that prison is a tool of government, functioning for the management of the marginalised populations. An effort was undertaken to discuss the differences of the US, the 'carceral example', with the European Union countries. The class and symbolic dimensions of punishment were first approached from a historical and a theoretical perspective respectively, before attempting to discuss neoliberalism, aiming to show the maintenance of prison's main characteristics through time under capitalism. It was argued that the dismantlement of the welfare state brought to the fore the destabilisation of the labour market and the concurrent strategies of responsibilisation which led to the increased use of imprisonment. The result is the phenomenon of mass imprisonment, mainly affecting poor and marginalised populations and communities, leading to their further exclusion and social control. Furthermore, the relation of the industry with the penal policies was discussed, as part of the passage from welfare to 'workfare' and 'prisonfare'. Concerning the symbolic dimensions of prisons, it was argued that the dominant representations of the criminals should be explored under the scope of the demonisation strategies, which aim to legitimise the harsher penal policies and to naturalise the discourse on 'criminal classes'. Therefore, emotional attitudes are emphasised, as leading to the uncritical acceptance of mass imprisonment. On the other hand, the risk management strategies were discussed, which despite having rationalistic and apolitical objectives, disguise the responsibilisation strategies of the neoliberal era and the narrative of institutionalised insecurity. The analysis of the actuarial practises showed that the targeting of the population as a whole marks the transition from the disciplinary society to the control society. The objective of this analysis was to establish an account of neoliberalism and the phenomenon of mass imprisonment, contributing to the radical analyses on prison aiming to provide argumentation for the promotion of radical social action towards prison abolition.

Why Prison?
Why Prison?

Author: David Scott

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-08-29

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 110729245X

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Prison studies has experienced a period of great creativity in recent years, and this collection draws together some of the field's most exciting and innovative contemporary critical writers in order to engage directly with one of the most profound questions in penology - why prison? In addressing this question, the authors connect contemporary penological thought with an enquiry that has received the attention of some of the greatest thinkers on punishment in the past. Through critical exploration of the theories, policies and practices of imprisonment, the authors analyse why prison persists and why prisoner populations are rapidly rising in many countries. Collectively, the chapters provide not only a sophisticated diagnosis and critique of global hyper-incarceration but also suggest principles and strategies that could be adopted to radically reduce our reliance upon imprisonment.

Prison Land
Prison Land

Author: Brett Story

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9781517906887

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"Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America offers a geographic excavation of the prison as a set of social relations-including property, work, gender and race-enacted across various spatial forms and landscapes within American life"--

The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States
The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States

Author: Stephen Haymes

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-12-17

Total Pages: 634

ISBN-13: 1317627407

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In the United States, the causes and even the meanings of poverty are disconnected from the causes and meanings of global poverty. The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States provides an authoritative overview of the relationship of poverty with the rise of neoliberal capitalism in the context of globalization. Reorienting its national economy towards a global logic, US domestic policies have promoted a market-based strategy of economic development and growth as the obvious solution to alleviating poverty, affecting approaches to the problem discursively, politically, economically, culturally and experientially. However, the handbook explores how rather than alleviating poverty, it has instead exacerbated poverty and pre-existing inequalities – privatizing the services of social welfare and educational institutions, transforming the state from a benevolent to a punitive state, and criminalizing poor women, racial and ethnic minorities, and immigrants. Key issues examined by the international selection of leading scholars in this volume include: income distribution, employment, health, hunger, housing and urbanization. With parts focusing on the lived experience of the poor, social justice and human rights frameworks – as opposed to welfare rights models – and the role of helping professions such as social work, health and education, this comprehensive handbook is a vital reference for anyone working with those in poverty, whether directly or at a macro level.

Hegemony, Security Infrastructures and the Politics of Crime
Hegemony, Security Infrastructures and the Politics of Crime

Author: Gideon van Riet

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-01

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1000467937

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This book examines the politics of crime and the response to it in Potchefstroom, a small settler colonial city in South Africa. It draws on the city’s everyday practices and experiences to offer local bottom-up insights into security beyond the state. The book provides a comprehensive understanding of security beyond the state and how security workers and residents experience and perceive their own security practices, their daily interactions with other security providers which influences power dynamics between those who express fear through various platforms and those deemed potential criminals. It aids in re-conceptualising violence and security governance in South Africa with a view to analysing the processes of crime prevention and management, the changing nature of public and private spaces and how these spaces interact with state and local authorities. In a rigorous exploration of the ways to tackle the complex problem of crime, the book critiques an overreliance on security infrastructures such as social media, gated barriers, neighbourhood residents’ associations and private security companies. It also looks at how crime is treated as an individual as opposed to a societal problem. The book addresses the urgent need for collaboration across these fault lines to promote a more inclusive security in a broader fragmented social and political context. With a novel analytical approach based on the twin optics of infrastructure and post-structural hegemony, the book will be relevant to scholars and students of South African politics and critical security studies, as well as international audience interested in crime and private security.

Black Boys Apart
Black Boys Apart

Author: Freeden Blume Oeur

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2018-08-07

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1452957533

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How neoliberalism and the politics of respectability are transforming African American manhood While single-sex public schools face much criticism, many Black communities see in them a great promise: that they can remedy a crisis for their young men. Black Boys Apart reveals triumphs, hope, and heartbreak at two all-male schools, a public high school and a charter high school, drawing on Freeden Blume Oeur’s ethnographic work. We meet young men who felt their schools empowered and emasculated them, parents who were frustrated with co-ed schools, teachers who helped pave the road to college, and administrators who saw in Black male academies the advantages of privatizing education. While the two schools have distinctive histories and ultimately charted different paths, they were both shaped by the convergence of neoliberal ideologies and a politics of Black respectability. As Blume Oeur reveals, all-boys education is less a school reform initiative and instead joins a legacy of efforts to reform Black manhood during periods of stark racial inequality. Black male academies join long-standing attempts to achieve racial uplift in Black communities, but in ways that elevate exceptional young men and aggravate divisions within those communities. Black Boys Apart shows all-boys schools to be an odd mix of democratic empowerment and market imperatives, racial segregation and intentional sex separation, strict discipline and loving care. Challenging narratives that endorse these schools for nurturing individual resilience in young Black men, this perceptive and penetrating ethnography argues for a holistic approach in which Black communities and their allies promote a collective resilience.

Research Handbook on Modern Legal Realism
Research Handbook on Modern Legal Realism

Author: Shauhin Talesh

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2021-03-26

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 1788117778

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This insightful Research Handbook provides a definitive overview of the New Legal Realism (NLR) movement, reaching beyond historical and national boundaries to form new conversations. Drawing on deep roots within the law-and-society tradition, it demonstrates the powerful virtues of new legal realist research and its attention to the challenges of translation between social science and law. It explores an impressive range of contemporary issues including immigration, policing, globalization, legal education, and access to justice, concluding with and examination of how different social science disciplines intersect with NLR.

Neoliberalism and Punishment
Neoliberalism and Punishment

Author: Ignacio González-Sánchez

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-06-03

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1040040012

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Exploring the expansion of the penal system in Spain during the first 40 years of democracy, this book puts forward the importance of studying punishment from a sociological perspective and examines the neoliberal penality thesis. Today, Spain has more police officers and more people in prison than 50 years ago and a tougher penal code than that which existed at Franco’s death; however, crime has not increased for three decades, while most of the hardening of the penal system has occurred after its stabilisation. Studying the development of penality in Spanish democracy, this book explores Loïc Wacquant’s proposal that the expansion of the penal system should be understood as a characteristic of neoliberalism. It examines the parallel and reciprocal development of three policies in relation to the gradual implementation of neoliberal ideas and highlights how the evolution of the labour market, social policies, and the penal system are linked to one another and to neoliberal ideas related to the sacralisation of the utilitarian individual and the role of the state. Advocating for a sociological study of state punishment and contributing to a better understanding of the implementation of neoliberal policies, Neoliberalism and Punishment will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, and politics.

Criminalisation and Advanced Marginality
Criminalisation and Advanced Marginality

Author: Peter Squires

Publisher: Policy Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1447300017

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Lo c Wacquant's writings have shaken the world of criminology--and social science more generally--to their foundations with a wide-ranging critique of neoliberal governance's approach to crime and poverty and its reorientation of state power from welfare to discipline. The first book to fully engage with Wacquant's work, Criminalisation and Advanced Marginality presents critical but constructive essays on his challenging ideas, focusing on the governance of crime and disorder, welfare, and "diswelfare." It concludes with Wacquant's responses to the authors' comments and critiques.

Foucault and Neoliberalism
Foucault and Neoliberalism

Author: Daniel Zamora

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-01-06

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 1509501800

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Michel Foucault's death in 1984 coincided with the fading away of the hopes for social transformation that characterized the postwar period. In the decades following his death, neoliberalism has triumphed and attacks on social rights have become increasingly bold. If Foucault was not a direct witness of these years, his work on neoliberalism is nonetheless prescient: the question of liberalism occupies an important place in his last works. Since his death, Foucault's conceptual apparatus has acquired a central, even dominant position for a substantial segment of the world's intellectual left. However, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate, Foucault's attitude towards neoliberalism was at least equivocal. Far from leading an intellectual struggle against free market orthodoxy, Foucault seems in many ways to endorse it. How is one to understand his radical critique of the welfare state, understood as an instrument of biopower? Or his support for the pandering anti-Marxism of the so-called new philosophers? Is it possible that Foucault was seduced by neoliberalism? This question is not merely of biographical interest: it forces us to confront more generally the mutations of the left since May 1968, the disillusionment of the years that followed and the profound transformations in the French intellectual field over the past thirty years. To understand the 1980s and the neoliberal triumph is to explore the most ambiguous corners of the intellectual left through one of its most important figures.