The DOI matches its Crossref record; 130 of the 130 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
New abolition, criminology and a critical carceral studies
Abstract
Criminology has been slow to open up a conversation about decarceration and abolition in comparison with other disciplines, including history, geography, and gender, race, and critical ethnic studies. Scholars from these areas and actors on the ground—close up to confinement—have done most of the organizing against mass incarceration and theorizing of alternative possibilities. Why those experiences—and the theoretical traditions that inform their work—have been less recognized and developed in criminology is of pivotal concern as more criminologists move forward with the political project of decarceration. The extent to which criminology can sustain an alternative or abolitionist politics remains an open question. Amid growing conversations about decarceration and shifting rhetorics on punishment, we address some of the obstacles that limit criminology as a site from which to engage the abolitionist project, asking where criminologists might turn for interventionist models that move away from imprisonment and the violence of the carceral state. In this article, we advocate for and discuss the contours of critical carceral studies, a growing interdisciplinary movement for engaged scholarly and activist production against the carceral state. We discuss the imperatives for criminological engagement with critical carceral studies and sketch some of the terrain on which the discipline can contribute to the project, including important work to counter criminological discourses and knowledge production that reify and reproduce carceral logics and practices.
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“The ways that political scientists-in particular, settler political scientists-publish and speak to academic and public audiences, teach and mentor new scholars, and advise or inform stakeholders about carceral power can reproduce or counter its logics and legitimacy (Brown and Schept, 2017;Schept, 2015).”
From Decolonizing Research on the Carceral in Canadian Political Science (2023) · cites this paper as Brown and Schept, 2017
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“Penal abolitionists have highlighted the important role language plays in constructing and reproducing the logics and practices of the carceral state, including the legitimation of the prison (Brown and Schept, 2017; Coyle, 2018; Davis, 2003; Scott, 2018).”
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Self-citationReentry as a gendered carceral continuum: Surveillance, neglect, and the extension of punishment
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“…to create new ways of safeguarding that understand safety holistically as encompassing physical safety and community safety, and do not just protect people from the violence of criminal offending but from all violence – individ- ual-, collective-, and state-based (Brown & Schept, 2017; Kaba, 2021).”
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Self-citationIntroduction to special issue: Punishment beyond the prison and justice beyond punishment
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Metadata
- Authors
- Brown, M., & Schept, J.
- Affiliations
- University of Tennessee at Knoxville (US)
- Eastern Kentucky University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Brown, Michelle
- ORCID
- Brown, Michelle
- Venue
- Punishment & Society
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2016-09-07
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 440-462
- ISSN
- 1462-4745 (ISSN-L)
- 1741-3095
- OpenAlex
- W2513877875
- Cited by
- 181
- References
- 124
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 29 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 48 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 4
- FWCI
- 19.54
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Punishment & Society (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis
- Social Sciences › Law › Criminal Justice and Penology
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Torture, Ethics, and Law
- Keywords
- decarceration, abolition, mass incarceration, carceral state, criminology, punishment
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