Prison Industrial Complex

Global governance operates through carceral logics and practices.This paper explores the International Criminal Court (ICC) and theRegional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI)through abolitionist literature to show how these ostensibly unrelated modes of global governance converge through carcerality. Using a reflective methodological approach informed by abolition feminism, we advance three interrelated arguments.First, that the carceral, and penal logics of the ICC and RAMSI, construct colonial histories as distant and forgotten. This results in the refashioning of violent and oppressive colonial practices. Next, we argue that, both the ICC and RAMSI demarcate these practices as common sense. They naturalise punishment and discipline, equating (colonial, Western) law with ‘order’ which further proliferates carceral logics and solidifies carceral practices. Finally, our exploration of history and ‘order’ shows how these modes of global governance are entangled with the (racist and colonial)systems of neoliberalism and capitalism. Our exploration of history and ‘order’ shows how these modes of global governance are entangled with the (racist and colonial) systems of neoliberalism and capitalism. We contend that global governance is constituted by, and constitutive of, carcerality within both domestic and international systems. By uncovering these interrelated arguments, and their implications for state-building and ‘justice’, we reiterate the importance of mapping carcerality throughout global governance, using collective reflection to do so.

Connecting penology and theology, this paper aims to explore how universal prisoners’ legal rights are vernacularised and localised within a specific cultural context. Building on qualitative interviews from Israeli prison officers, we argue that despite being subject to a modern prisoners’ rights paradigm, prison officers vernacularise prisoners’ dignity and humanity through the theological lens of the ‘Image of God’ discourse (in a direct or hybridised way) to (1) re-enchant carceral humanity and (2) humanise carceral legality. The findings illuminate the potential contributions and limitations of vernacularisation work in the carceral context for theorising prison officers’ professional ethics and identity, and the cultural dimensions of the making of prisoners’ rights.

In the aftermath of austerity measures and in the wake of a right-wing populist wave across the globe, the growing inequalities and diminishing rights endured by women and queer people call for a closer investigation of gender and gender-based violence. The spatial articulation of cities as a materialization of hetero-patriarchal power relations has become an essential place for the struggle against gender-based violence. It, thus, becomes crucial to investigate the challenge posed by feminist groups against these structures by unravelling power structures in public space and shaping solutions to gender-based violence. One crucial yet overlooked aspect is the development of transformative justice perspectives within feminist struggles to create inclusive and non-violent public spaces. Originating from prison abolitionist movements, this concept develops a communitybased approach to justice, understanding the role of structural oppressions in the enactment of violence. Lying at the intersection between feminist geography, abolitionist thought, and social movement studies, this article advances a theoretical contribution to the understanding of collective action. With a comprehensive literature review considering these three strands, this article further investigates the interplay between social movements and justice, arguing for the advantages of incorporating a transformative justice perspective when looking at feminist practices to challenge gender-based violence. The argument is strengthened by exemplary cases of feminist groups adopting abolitionist perspectives and transformative practices. This theoretical work explores the potential of transformative justice in envisioning radical societal changes, as well as showing how this perspective complements feminist visions and repertoires of action. Burchietti

What is ghastly and really almost hopeless in our racial situation now is that the crimes we have committed are so great and so unspeakable that the acceptance of this knowledge would lead, literally, to madness. The human being, then, in order to protect himself, closes his eyes, compulsively repeats his crimes, and enters a spiritual darkness which no one can describe.-James Baldwin

The Institute of Caribbean Studies and the Department of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus are both delighted to be co-sponsoring the international conference "Camps, Belonging, and Abolition Democracy" with the Center of Inter-American Studies at the University of Graz. The conference will take place from June 4-7, 2026 in Graz, Austria.  We have about 125 participants from more than 25 countries and territories, including Gaza, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Special guests include former Guantánamo Bay prisoners who emerged as writers and advocates for human rights and social justice following their incarceration; among them are Mansoor Adayfi, Moazzam Begg, Lakhdar Boumedienne, and Mohamedou Ould Salahi Houbeini. Keynote speakers include Elithet Silva Martínez of the Graduate School in Social Work at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus; Rinaldo Walcott of the Department of Africana and American Studies at the University at Buffalo, SUNY; and Diana Coleman of the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies at Northern Arizona University. Other prominent scholars, activists, and community organizers will also contribute to panels and discussions at this event. Note that the Open Ceremony and the evening event on Saturday are open to the public. Like the first two conferences in this series, which were held in 2022 and 2024, this one will position academic discussion alongside time for music, poetry, and the sharing of stories. Attached please find our program.

This paper examines U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) targeting of migrant day labourers as an intentional, systemic, and inherently discriminatory violation of international human rights. Drawing from ongoing ICE raids since 2025, this paper argues that immigration enforcement functions not only as abusive detention, but also as a tool for exploiting and controlling cheap migrant labour. Situating ICE within post 9/11
tough-on-crime counterterrorism policy trends, the paper first demonstrates how expanded enforcement powers have enabled racial profiling, arbitrary arrest, denial of due process, and inhumane detention conditions, particularly under the second term of President Donald J. Trump. These forces reveal a system that relies on migrant labour, while systematically dehumanizing the workers who sustain it in direct violation of foundational human rights principles at the core of the American Dream the United States has championed.

The extant state crime literature does not theorize the legalized production of police impunity within the contemporary carceral state. Building on policing scholarship that has considered the role of law in enabling police impunity, I contend that police are structurally protected by legal provisions. Laws that immunize officers (e.g. qualified immunity) effectively neutralize legalized accountability mechanisms (e.g. civil lawsuits). Thus, this legalized impunity infrastructure produces what I term legalized police impunity. To illustrate this, I develop a theoretical framework using Weber's legal typology to explain why and how police enjoy near absolute impunity. Implications of the legalized production of police impunity are discussed, and future research directions proposed.

Discipline within the school system is something that has always been under great scrutiny, whether it be from civil rights activists, lawmakers, or the general public. As education has grown more standardized, things like zero tolerance policies have taken hold, targeting students across a wide spectrum of behaviors. These policies lead to the school to prison pipeline, a system upheld by overly punitive discipline policies, implicit bias among teachers and administrators, structural inequities, and reliance on law enforcement in schools.

This article examines the emergence of the Auburn system and argues that it provided the institutional and intellectual foundation for the development of southern carceral regimes. Rather than interpreting Auburn as a humanitarian reform, the study situates it within a longer history of confinement practices that linked discipline to labor and social control. By consolidating surveillance, enforced silence, and collective labor into a single administrative structure, the Auburn system reorganized punitive violence into a continuous and regulated condition, privileging order, productivity, and institutional authority over meaningful rehabilitation. The analysis traces the diffusion of this model into the American South, demonstrating how states such as Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi adapted its principles to regional conditions shaped by agrarian economies and entrenched racial hierarchies.

In Georgia, early penitentiary systems organized incarceration around regimented labor, supervision, and time discipline, embedding work as the central mechanism of control. In Louisiana, this framework intensified as plantation landscapes were reconfigured into penal institutions, where agricultural labor, spatial isolation, and racial hierarchy structured daily life.

These developments reveal that southern adaptations did not depart from Auburn’s foundational logic but extended and deepened its core principles.
By foregrounding the relationship between discipline and economic extraction, this study argues that the Auburn system endured not because of its reformist claims but because of its flexibility and scalability. Its capacity to integrate with existing systems of domination enabled its expansion across diverse regional contexts, shaping a distinctly southern carceral order. The paper reinterprets the evolution of American penal institutions as a process driven less by reform than by the institutionalization of organized control.

The main objective of this research was to explore and analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on practices in law enforcement and jails, with a specific focus on sheriff departments serving in small, rural counties in the state of Indiana. This study identified and analyzed various issues and trends pertaining to COVID-19's effect upon jail and offender management, patrol and criminal investigation, personnel and offender safety, public service and expectations, courthouse trial and case management, and community trust in sheriff departments. Semi-structured interviews were employed with current sheriffs working in four different counties in Indiana in this qualitative research. The results showed that COVID-19 has brought to the forefront two major themes: (a) precautions taken by sheriff departments against COVID-19 and (b) changes in the way the criminal justice system works. Findings were further grouped into three categories according to each sheriff's sentiments: negative (e.g., increase in expenses, loss of workforce, and mental health), positive (e.g., decrease in the workload and decrease in jail population), and mixed (e.g., precautions against COVID-19, changing crime patterns, and trust). The study concluded that COVID-19 caused a wave of change that sent ripples through these communities, the criminal justice system, and sheriff departments in particular.

Building on "Defending Self-Defense (DSD)," the 2022 community-based report published by Survived & Punished, this essay illuminates a key insight made evident by survivors who contributed to the report: “self-defense” is not only a single act of refusal to a violent event but can also be conceptualized as a critical feminist abolitionist politics and a way of being. It includes a brief political history of survivor self-defense, introduces a framework to examine the political economy of self-defense, and explores the legacy of ‘self-defense’ as a legal concept and a social-political framework. It also proposes nine principles of survivor self-defense developed from findings from DSD.

The sense of smell in the spatial arrangements of colonial prisons, and within broader colonialism generally functioning as a prison of colonialist legalism through ideals of reform, provides a clear pathway to understanding the ravages of imperial banality in an ephemeral, atmospheric, and situated manner.

Leon Benson spent nearly 25 years falsely incarcerated, 10 of which were spent in solitary confinement—globally recognized as a human rights violation—for a murder he did not commit. Then, on March 9, 2023, Benson was liberated from the notorious Pendleton prison in Indiana. Released exactly one year after his liberation, Letters of Gratitude is centered around nine profound, punctual, and expansive dispatches Benson wrote from behind prison bars when his exoneration seemed increasingly likely and imminent. Each letter overflows with the reality of Ubuntu, an African philosophy based on collectivity rather than isolated individuality—and that guided African liberation struggles from Zimbabwe to Tanzania—that Benson came across during his in-depth studies of wide-ranging topics.

Esta publicación, cuyo proceso de creación inicia en el año 2019, hemos decidido inspirarnos en las ediciones Cara/Cruz, que fueron características de los años 90 en Colombia, en las que cada una de las tapas del libro marcaba el inicio de una obra diferente. En nuestro caso, consideramos que el libro tiene unidad, pues presenta algunos de los hallazgos del proyecto de investigación en dos lenguajes distintos (uno de corte más “tradicionalmente académico” y el otro en un estilo narrativo periodístico). Las crónicas que componen la obra Florecitas de patio y los leones, que son la Cara de este libro, se derivan fundamentalmente de las historias de vida reconstituidas a partir de las entrevistas individuales a profundidad, aunque recogen también algunos elementos que emergieron en las conversaciones que tuvieron lugar en el desarrollo de los grupos focales y los encuentros reflexivos.

Por su parte, la obra A las maricas se nos respeta. Identidad, género y sexualidad en la reclusión”, que representa el lado Cruz, desarrolla, a través de los nueve capítulos que la componen, una serie de ideas que contribuyen a la producción de conocimiento a propósito de un terreno que ha sido poco explorado, como el de la identidad de género y la sexualidad en los contextos carcelarios. En conjunto, intenta responder a la pregunta de investigación, desarrollando reflexiones, en clave de un análisis de las diferentes tecnologías de saber/poder operando sobre la subjetividad generizada de las personas en la reclusión.

La textualidad de este libro, pues, recoge en ambos sentidos el encuentro con el otro recluido, excluido, pero vigoroso como sujeto político en el intento por reivindicaciones de los derechos; reúne las miradas teórica  sobre las intervenciones en sistemas humanos, y además, recoge en la prosa lo traducible de la experiencia de estas personas  privados de la libertad. Es el resultado de miradas profesionales en la producción del saber, pero también la figuración de la vida a través de  lo literario. 

A lo largo del libro, tanto en la portada como entre los intersticios  de la prosa, se alterna con la imagen de los protagonistas de este libro. Debemos a Luciano Aníbal López Torres la mirada desde la imagen de estas vidas, que con su lenguaje narra otras historias.



Los autores
Bogotá, 03 de junio de 2020
En el tiempo de la pandemia

This essay was commissioned and published by MOVEMENTS Journal (Brown Arts Institute) for the inaugural issue, “Dissonance.”

The perceived unreality of the carceral system—and by extension, our inability to move toward or imagine a world beyond it—is in many ways tied to the conscious repression of the incarcerated person, the living breathing human body that moves within prison walls. Mindful of this blind spot, one might ask how we envision prisons apart from the media, apart from cheat shots in television shows and movies that distort our perspective of their spatial constrictions. This essay works through the tension between the perceived and repressed realities of the prison system through a focus on artists with performance and movement-based practices. It examines instances in which movement can be used to draw our attention to the physicality of confinement, and, moreover, the felt experience of carceral infrastructures. To consider an aesthetic of abolition, the essay considers how spaces of confinement are built to both respond to and countervail an individual’s movement—how the imposition of physical and psychological limitations can be identified and rethought, and how abolition might be embodied through a multiplicity of experiences.

The geography of incarceration in the USA has shifted over the past 20 years. While the USA remains atop the world in per capita incarceration rates and numbers of people inside, the locus of this system has been moving downscale over the past two decades. Local jail incarceration rates have been rising in rural counties and declining in many big cities; there are now more people overall incarcerated in rural jails than in urban jails. We explore this shift in Smith County, a small, mostly white rural county in Eastern Kentucky. Interview participants spoke of frequent jail stints, police harassment, unstable employment, punitive drug treatment, and unreliable housing. Relying on ethnographic research as well as insights from scholarship on racial capitalism and carceral geographies, we argue that the local state relies on racialised criminalisation as a way to manage class conflict in a rural geography characterised by organised abandonment.

As reflexões que apresento neste artigo se inserem no contexto mais amplo da minha pesquisa de doutorado, intitulada "A População LGBT Privada de Liberdade: sujeitos, políticas e 1 direitos em disputa" . Meu objetivo é, em linhas gerais, analisar a construção da chamada 2 população LGBT privada de liberdade como um sujeito de direitos através de um determinado conjunto de tecnologias de poder, como a promoção de levantamentos demográficos, normativas institucionais e políticas públicas específicas. Em outras palavras, quero entender o que acontece quando um conjunto muito diversificado de sujeitos historicamente marginalizados no interior das prisões é interpelado pela lógica dos direitos humanos enquanto parte de uma população específica. O que o trabalho de campo realizado em um Centro de Detenção Provisória masculino na Região Metropolitana de São Paulo sugere é que