It’s a Revolving Door’: Rethinking the Borders of Carceral Spaces
Start Date
30-10-2016 10:30 AM
End Date
30-10-2016 12:00 PM
Description
This paper explores the use of digital scholarship to understand the porous boundaries of the prison. I argue that the boundaries of a carceral landscape must be expanded to include the neighborhoods of incarceration. The consequences of an ever expanding prison industrial complex, including its perpetuation of racism and the “warehousing” of a surplus population are not distributed evenly across people and places. Rather, the experience of the prison industrial complex is uneven, impacting some communities much more than others. Yet, little work on the human experience of incarceration has considered the carceral experiences of the places that supply prisoners in the US. Specifically, this paper shows how neighborhoods like Grays Ferry, where most of the population is poor, African-American and under correctional supervision, are part of carceral space. Grays Ferry is one of many neighborhoods where the places and practices of incarceration extend beyond the prison walls to affect everyday life. This paper builds on scholarship that exposes the expanding importance of the incarceration-business within a wider national and international context of militarization and prison-industrialization. My work builds upon this literature to show how incarceration works into the daily life and community spaces in inner city Philadelphia. In so doing, the paper draws on my ongoing use of digital scholarship tools to study the expansion of carceral spaces beyond bounded institutions and demonstrates how these spaces materialize through daily practice within the communities most affected by the criminalization and policing of the informal economy.
Type
Presentation
Session
#s5a: Negotiating Social Justice through Digital Engagement, moderator Karen M. Morin
Language
eng
Location
Elaine Langone Center, Walls Lounge
It’s a Revolving Door’: Rethinking the Borders of Carceral Spaces
Elaine Langone Center, Walls Lounge
This paper explores the use of digital scholarship to understand the porous boundaries of the prison. I argue that the boundaries of a carceral landscape must be expanded to include the neighborhoods of incarceration. The consequences of an ever expanding prison industrial complex, including its perpetuation of racism and the “warehousing” of a surplus population are not distributed evenly across people and places. Rather, the experience of the prison industrial complex is uneven, impacting some communities much more than others. Yet, little work on the human experience of incarceration has considered the carceral experiences of the places that supply prisoners in the US. Specifically, this paper shows how neighborhoods like Grays Ferry, where most of the population is poor, African-American and under correctional supervision, are part of carceral space. Grays Ferry is one of many neighborhoods where the places and practices of incarceration extend beyond the prison walls to affect everyday life. This paper builds on scholarship that exposes the expanding importance of the incarceration-business within a wider national and international context of militarization and prison-industrialization. My work builds upon this literature to show how incarceration works into the daily life and community spaces in inner city Philadelphia. In so doing, the paper draws on my ongoing use of digital scholarship tools to study the expansion of carceral spaces beyond bounded institutions and demonstrates how these spaces materialize through daily practice within the communities most affected by the criminalization and policing of the informal economy.