scholarly journals Historical Modes of Perpetual Penal Confinement: Theories and Practices before Life Without Parole

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-332
Author(s):  
Christopher Seeds
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
General Phenomenon ◽  
Life Imprisonment ◽  
Comprehensive Review ◽  
State Custody ◽  
Life Without Parole ◽  
Versatile Tool ◽  
Primary Materials

Scholars now recognize life imprisonment without parole (LWOP) as a defining feature of contemporary American punishment. As LWOP becomes topical, it draws attention to a significant, more general phenomenon: the growth of state-sanctioned policies and practices by which prisoners face the remainder of their lives in prison. This article seeks to expand perspectives on contemporary punishment by looking closely at how lifetime incarceration took shape historically in different political projects and penal systems. Drawing from primary materials and a comprehensive review of secondary historical literature, I examine modes of perpetual penal confinement: combinations of sanctions and practices that result in holding people in state custody permanently. Interpreting classic penological paradigms anew, the article illuminates the significant role that perpetual confinement has played in influential theories of criminal justice and shows how it has proved a versatile tool for social control and prison administration across diverse penal schemes, largely because of its unique temporal character. The article concludes with a diagnosis of contemporary American punishment, suggesting that LWOP—beyond being a cruel and exclusionary penalty—is symptomatic of a system in which imprisonment until death has become uniquely ordinary.

Race, Criminal Justice, and Migration Control

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
Migration Control ◽  
Key Sites ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Way

In an era of mass mobility, those who are permitted to migrate and those who are criminalized, controlled, and prohibited from migrating are heavily patterned by race. By placing race at the centre of its analysis, this volume brings together fourteen essays that examine, question, and explain the growing intersection between criminal justice and migration control. Through the lens of race, we see how criminal justice and migration enmesh in order to exclude, stop, and excise racialized citizens and non-citizens from societies across the world within, beyond, and along borders. Neatly organized in four parts, the book begins with chapters that present a conceptual analysis of race, borders, and social control, moving to the institutions that make up and shape the criminal justice and migration complex. The remaining chapters are convened around the key sites where criminal justice and migration control intersect: policing, courts, and punishment. Together the volume presents a critical and timely analysis of how race shapes and complicates mobility and how racism is enabled and reanimated when criminal justice and migration control coalesce. Race and the meaning of race in relation to citizenship and belonging are excavated throughout the chapters presented in the book, thereby transforming the way we think about migration.

scholarly journals Foucault, prison, and human rights: A dialectic of theory and criminal justice reform

2021 ◽  
pp. 136248062110159
Author(s):  
Mugambi Jouet
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
Penal Reform ◽  
Foucauldian Theory ◽  
Prison Abolition ◽  
Abolition Movement

Michel Foucault’s advocacy toward penal reform in France differed from his theories. Although Foucault is associated with the prison abolition movement, he also proposed more humane prisons. The article reframes Foucauldian theory through a dialectic with the theories of Marc Ancel, a prominent figure in the emergence of liberal sentencing norms in France. Ancel and Foucault were contemporaries whose legacies are intertwined. Ancel defended more benevolent prisons where experts would rehabilitate offenders. This evokes exactly what Discipline and Punish cast as an insidious strategy of social control. In reality, Foucault and Ancel converged in intriguing ways. The dialectic offers another perspective on Foucault, whose theories have fostered skepticism about the possibility of progress. While mass incarceration’s rise in the United States may evoke a Foucauldian dystopia, the relative development of human rights and dignity in European punishment reflects aspirations that Foucault embraced as an activist concerned about fatalistic interpretations of his theories.

scholarly journals The Relevance of the Social Control Theory in Explaining Crime among African American Families

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Ayodeji Daramola ◽  
Gbolahan S Osho
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Control Theory ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Justice System ◽  
African American Families ◽  
Social Control Theory ◽  
The Church

Today, criminologists, especially, Black criminologists, are thoroughly perplexed by the same problem of disproportionate minority confinement (DMC) most especially of Blacks in both the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Are African Americans more criminally minded than other races or ethnic groups? Do African Americans actually commit more crimes than others? These are the questions that the different deviant theories have tried to answer. The concept of social bonding arose from social control theory, which suggests that attachment to family and school, commitment to conventional pathways of achievements and beliefs in the legitimacy of social order are primary and important elements of establishing a social bond (Hirschi, 1969). In expounding his social control theory, Hirschi listed the elements of the bond as attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief. Does it mean that African Americans commit more crimes than other racial and ethnic groups? Or are African Americans genetically wired to be criminogenic? Is the society or the environment to blame for the perceived higher rate of crime among African Americans? Or are the criminal justice system, the judicial system, and the juvenile justice system, all together racially biased against Blacks, especially, Black males? Even though Hirschi (1969) did not mention attachment to religious beliefs as part of social control, but for the African American families, the church could play a significant role in helping to cement the bond of adolescents to their families. Any study of the African American family is not complete without the church. According to Work (1900), in all social study of the Negro, the church must be considered, for it is one of the greatest factors in his social life.

Life after Life Imprisonment

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marieke Liem
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Intimate Relationships ◽  
Informal Social Control ◽  
Life Imprisonment ◽  
Criminal Background Checks ◽  
Background Checks ◽  
Criminal Background ◽  
Widespread Availability

Chapter seven explores the initial impacts of re-entering a world these lifers left many years ago. The chapter highlights specific roadblocks to re-entry. These include the ‘felon label’, the implications stigma, labeling, and the widespread availability of criminal background checks. These factors prevent lifers from obtaining housing and employment. The chapter discusses how interviewees managed the stigma of being an ex-offender. Deriving indicators from life-course theories, the chapter further details how relationships with family, intimate partners and children influenced the interviewees over the years. By being in prison for decades, these lifers have been removed from structures that favor maturation and provide sources of informal social control, such as employment, intimate relationships, family relationships and parenthood. Prison, in this view, has disrupted their journey of going straight.

27. Critical perspectives on crime and punishment

Criminology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Case ◽  
Phil Johnson ◽  
David Manlow ◽  
Roger Smith ◽  
Kate Williams
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Transformative Justice ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
Community Justice ◽  
Critical Perspectives ◽  
Control Theories

This chapter examines a range of perspectives which question the assumptions underlying the concept of ‘punishment’. It first explains what is meant by the idea of critical perspectives on punishment before discussing a number of critical perspectives on the justice system including abolitionism, social control theories, community justice, and transformative justice. It then explores unjust punishment and problems for criminal justice of discrimination and inequality, focusing on the disparities in treatment between white, BME, and other sectors of the population in the criminal justice system. It also considers how ‘crimes of the privileged’ and state crimes can remain unseen or unpunished and concludes with an evaluation of the limitations of critical analyses of crime and punishment.

8. How do we prevent crime?

2018 ◽  
pp. 97-116
Author(s):  
Tim Newburn
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Crime Prevention ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Situational Crime Prevention ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Informal Social Control ◽  
Prevention Techniques

It is often assumed that the criminal justice system is crucial in determining crime levels, but the available evidence does not bear this out. In fact, it is the processes of socialization underpinned and reinforced by informal social control that play a vital role in controlling crime. ‘How do we prevent crime?’ considers the various crime prevention techniques that have contributed substantially to recent apparent reductions in crime. It describes the distinction between social crime prevention, which tends to focus on fairly broad and deep issues, and situational crime prevention, which is narrower in focus, is pre-emptive, and seeks, through a variety of means, to reduce the opportunities for crime.

7. How do we control crime?

2018 ◽  
pp. 83-96
Author(s):  
Tim Newburn
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Prison System ◽  
Informal Social Control ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Norms And Values ◽  
Recent Trends

‘How do we control crime?’ discusses the formal and less formal means thought to control crime. The formal means refer to the use of the criminal justice system: the police, courts, and prison system. Arising from what we know to be the limitations of organized criminal justice in relation to crime control, the less formal means to control crime are considered as the processes of socialization, whereby social norms and values are learned, reinforced by what is often referred to as informal social control. Recent trends in the use of punishment, from incarceration in prisons to the use of non-custodial, community-based penalties are also discussed.

Predictions of Violence

2018 ◽  
pp. 143-157
Author(s):  
John Monahan
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
Violence Risk ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
Violence Risk Assessment ◽  
Comprehensive Review ◽  
Psychology And Law ◽  
Criminal Justice Systems

This chapter presents an historical account of the emergence of violence risk assessment as a central issue in what were portrayed as reforms of the mental health and criminal justice systems in the 1970s. The author traces his own involvement in the nascent field of psychology and law to his writing the first comprehensive review of research on the validity of violence risk assessment. The chapter then details the major theoretical, empirical, and policy strides that characterized violence risk assessment as it matured over the next several decades. The author concludes by reflecting on several issues whose resolution has proved elusive.

Residual Stress Distributions and Guidelines for Crack Inspection in Pipe Bends

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Metin Yetisir ◽  
Zane Walker
Keyword(s):  
Residual Stress ◽  
Power Plant ◽  
Nuclear Power Plant ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Stress Distributions ◽  
Pipe Bend ◽  
Comprehensive Review ◽  
Stress Measurements ◽  
Root Cause

Root cause investigations of feeder pipe cracks detected in one CANDU™ nuclear power plant indicated that the residual stress had a significant role in these failures. As a result, numerous residual stress measurements of pipe bends were obtained and models for predicting the residual stress distributions associated with various bending processes were developed. This paper provides a comprehensive review of pipe bend residual stress data and provides guidelines for identifying the most susceptible locations for targeted crack inspections. Residual stress data, generated since 1997 as part of the CANDU feeder cracking investigation, was compiled and presented for the quick dissemination of information. This information is summarized in quick lookup tables where likely crack locations are identified for pipe bends manufactured using various fabrication techniques.

Arab Threat and Social Control: An Exploration of the Relationship Between Ethnic Attitudes and Punitiveness Among Israeli Jews

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (5) ◽  
pp. 498-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christi Metcalfe ◽  
Deanna Cann
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
Punitive Attitudes ◽  
Ethnic Attitudes ◽  
Israeli Arabs ◽  
The Relationship

Numerous studies in the United States, as well as a smaller number of studies in other Westernized countries, have linked racial and ethnic attitudes to support for more punitive forms of crime control. The current study explores this relationship in Israel by assessing whether the degree to which Israeli Jews typify crime as an Israeli Arab phenomenon and/or resent Israeli Arabs is related to support for punitive criminal justice policies. The findings suggest that ethnic typification and resentment are related to general punitive attitudes, whereas ethnic apathy and resentment are related to greater support for the death penalty. Also, the relationship between ethnic typification and punitiveness is stronger among those who are less resentful.

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