Detention Centers als vernetzte Räume des Einschlusses? Eine gouvernementalitätstheoretische Perspektiverweiterung am Beispiel Lesvos

The article examines the strategic role of detention in the Reception and Identification Center on Lesvos, Greece. Basing on works on detention in carceral geography, I will additionally use the theoretical framework of governmentality. It becomes clear that the detention center on Lesvos serves as a spatial configuration of localization and circulation of asylum seekers framed as belonging to countries with low recognition rate. This is mainly enhanced through confinement, forced or controlled mobilisation as well as the control of flows of assistance and information through containment. In conclusion, certain modes of circulation and mobilization through enclosure can be identified through combination and mutual fertilisation of carceral geography and governmentality.

Peripheral recovery: ‘Keeping safe’ and ‘keep progressing’ as contradictory modes of ordering in a forensic psychiatric unit

Sitting between the psychiatric and criminal justice systems, and yet fully located in neither, forensic psychiatric units are complex spaces. Both a therapeutic landscape and a carceral space, forensic services must try to balance the demands of therapy and security, or recovery and risk, within the confines of a strictly controlled institutional space. This article draws on qualitative material collected in a large forensic psychiatric unit in the UK, comprising 20 staff interviews and 20 photo production interviews with patients. We use John Law’s ‘modes of ordering’ to explore how the materials, relations and spaces are mobilised in everyday processes of living and working on the unit. We identify two ‘modes of ordering’: ‘keeping safe’, which we argue tends towards empty, stultified and static spaces; and ‘keep progressing’ which instead requires filling, enriching and ingraining spaces. We discuss ways in which tensions between these modes of ordering are resolved in the unit, noting a spatial hierarchy which prioritises ‘keeping safe’, thus limiting the institutional capacity for engendering progress and change. The empirical material is discussed in relation to the institutional and carceral geography literatures with a particular focus on mobilities.

Social work in confinement: the spatiality of social work in carceral settings

Social work in prisons not only works with and for people who are confined; it also constitutes a form of social work that is carried out under conditions of confinement. This article draws on carceral geography to understand the corporeal and spatial aspects of social work in prison settings. Based on insights from two prisons in Switzerland, we argue that understanding carceral social work as a spatial and materially situated practice helps to gain deep insight into the intricate layers of meaning and powerful modes of functioning of prisons and of the people involved. In particular, it shows how the way social work is carried out in prison is supported and strongly structured by the spatiality of the prison itself, allowing for counselling, desk-type social work, rather than for social work that actively initiates and creates spaces for encounters or activities.

The Carceral City: Confinement and Order in Hong Kong’s Forbidden Enclave

Once feted, Hong Kong has recently become a centre of civil unrest. In this paper, we situate these emergent politics through a case study of corruption and everyday life in Kowloon Walled City, a mainland Chinese enclave in British Hong Kong, which developed notoriety as a freestanding grey economy. Drawing from oral testimonies of police officers, triad members and local residents, we excavate the lived experience of confinement within this contested space. These accounts reconstruct the Walled City as a ‘quasi-carceral’ site of enclosure, a zone of colonial exceptionalism and a hybrid cultural space. Through this case study, we historicize current debates in carceral geography, humanize recent interventions in urban scholarship and analyse the shifting politics at the frontier of Chinese expansionism.

Transcarceral lawscapes enacted in moments of Aboriginalisation: a case-study of an Indigenous woman released on urban parole

The field of carceral geography was lately developed by critical human geographers grappling with the spatiotemporal modes of social control and coercion particular to institutions of incarceration (Moran et al., 2018; Moran and Schliehe, 2017). This has included – in keeping with Michel Foucault's (1991) genealogy of the carceral as an art of disciplinary power – studying the disparate ways in which carceral techniques proliferate from and beyond the built site of the prison, becoming incorporated into other spatial formations. Carceral geographers have characterised this extension as transcarceral (Moran, 2014) or heterotopic (Gill et al., 2018; Moran and Keinänen, 2012). However, despite frequent references to law and legal institutions, carceral geographers generally do not theorise about law. Through a case-study involving an Indigenous woman paroled in Toronto, the author theorises about how carceral spaces are expressed through legal forms and techniques, affecting how paroled individuals, particularly those Aboriginalised, are emplaced within urban space.

Carceral Geography: a propósito del giro espacial y las ciencias sociales Autor: Bossio Gaston

El presente texto reflexiona sobre el libro publicado en el 2015 por Dominique Moran, cuyo propósito es sentar las bases para una nueva sub-disciplina al interior de la Geografía Humana. Se trata de Carceral Geography. Spaces and Practices of incarceration, donde se presentan las principales posiciones y puntos de vista de la flamante geografía carcelaria, describiendo los principales autores de los que se ha nutrido y sugiriendo futuros campos y líneas de investigación que potencien esta nueva área de estudios. Esta recensión revisa también aquéllos trabajos de Moran que de alguna forma precedieron y anunciaron la pretensión de fundar la geografía carcelaria, para finalmente adoptar sobre su obra en general una perspectiva crítica. Dada la importancia que tiene la noción de espacio para la geografía carcelaria, se presentan una breve serie de debates en torno a dicha cuestión.

Sport and Incarceration: Theoretical Considerations for Sport for Development Research

Despite a rapid expansion in research on Sport for Development (SfD), there remain numerous untapped veins of exploration. This article makes a novel argument for increasing the theoretical and substantive depth of SfD research by linking it to the relatively small, yet developing, body of literature on sport and incarceration. Drawing from the emergent field of carceral geography and the literature on prison sport, this article provides critical theoretical considerations for SfD programs that occur in ‘compact’ sites of confinement, such as prisons or refugee camps, or are enmeshed in ‘diffuse’ manifestations of carcerality. Given the structures of inequality that have led to the confinement of more than 13 million people in prisons, refugee camps, and migrant detention centres across the globe, as well as the multitude of ways that groups and individuals are criminalized and stigmatized in community settings, there are compelling reasons for SfD research to more deeply engage with concerns of space and carcerality as they relate to sport. As such, this article provides an important foundation for future analyses of SfD and carcerality, and signposts some potential ways forward for a deepening of theoretical perspectives in SfD research.

“And you will wait …”: Carceral transportation in electronic monitoring as part of the punishment process

Electronic monitoring, often accompanied with house arrest, is used extensively across the United States as a means of pretrial supervision and as a condition of probation and parole. In this article, we bridge the literatures of procedural punishment and carceral geography to detail how this previously understudied process of transport from jail to electronic monitoring serves not just as a necessary bureaucratic process, but as a key moment of punishment and power. Utilizing in-depth interviews with 60 people who were currently or recently on EM in Cook County, IL, we argue that this moment of transport is itself a punitive experience. We find that sheriff’s officers involved in the transport process punish individuals through the manipulation of time and space, verbal threats, and infantilization. This punishment in transport instills a subjugated status that sets the tone for the EM experience, aiding in reinforcing the home as the new carceral space.