Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology

This book gathers the very best academic research to date on prison regimes in Latin America and the Caribbean. Grounded in solid ethnographic work, each chapter explores the informal dynamics of prisons in diverse territories and countries of the region –  Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic – while theorizing how day-to-day life for the incarcerated has been forged in tandem between prison facilities and the outside world. The editors and contributors to this volume ask: how have fastest-rising incarceration rates in the world affected civilians’ lives in different national contexts?  How do groups of prisoners form broader and more integrated ‘carceral communities’ across day-to-day relations of exchange and reciprocity with guards, lawyers, family, associates, and assorted neighbors? What differences exist between carceral communities from one national context to another? Last but not least, how do carceral communities, contrary to popular opinion, necessarily become a productive force for the good and welfare of incarcerated subjects, in addition to being a potential source of troubling violence and insecurity?  This edited collection represents the most rigorous scholarship to date on the prison regimes of Latin America and the Caribbean, exploring the methodological value of ethnographic reflexivity inside prisons and theorizing how daily life for the incarcerated challenges preconceptions of prisoner subjectivity, so-called prison gangs, and bio-political order.

Sacha Darke is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at University of Westminster, UK, Visiting Lecturer in Law at University of São Paulo, Brazil, and Affiliate of King’s Brazil Institute, King’s College London, UK.

Chris Garces is Research Professor of Anthropology at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador, and Visiting Lecturer in Law at Universidad Andina Simón Bolivar, Ecuador.

Luis Duno-Gottberg is Professor at Rice University, USA. He specializes in Caribbean culture, with emphasis on race and ethnicity, politics, violence, and visual culture.

Andrés Antillano is Professor in Criminology at Universidad Central de Venezuela, Venezuala.

This handbook brings together the knowledge on juvenile imprisonment to develop a global, synthesized view of the impact of imprisonment on children and young people. There are a growing number of scholars around the world who have conducted in-depth, qualitative research inside of youth prisons, and about young people incarcerated in adult prisons, and yet this research has never been synthesized or compiled. This book is organized around several core themes including: conditions of confinement, relationships in confinement, gender/sexuality and identity, perspectives on juvenile facility staff, reentry from youth prisons, young people’s experiences in adult prisons, and new models and perspectives on juvenile imprisonment. This handbook seeks to educate students, scholars, and policymakers about the role of incarceration in young people’s lives, from an empirically-informed, critical, and global perspective.

This two-volume, edited collection lays the groundwork for an international exploration of incarceration and generation, cover a range of geographic, judicial and administrative contexts of incarceration from contributors across a range of subjects. Volume I explores an array of experiences, dynamics, cultures, interventions and impacts of incarceration in specific generations: childhood, youth and emerging adulthood, adulthood and older age. It covers topics such as: the expansion of the penal landscape; deprivation of liberty regarding children, the problem of unaccompanied migrant children; the incarceration of young adults and adults, exploring its impacts within and beyond incarceration and the consequences of imprisoning older populations. Volume II examines intergenerational relations issues within different contexts of incarceration. This collection discusses public policies and the role of the state and the citizen deprived of liberty. It speaks to academics in criminology, sociology, psychology, and law, and to practitioners and policymakers interested in incarceration.

This two-volume, edited collection lays the groundwork for an international exploration of incarceration and generation, covering a range of geographic, judicial and administrative contexts of incarceration from contributors across a range of subjects. Volume II examines intergenerational relations issues within contexts of incarceration. It focuses on the intergenerational continuities in imprisonment; intergenerational justice and citizenship; the impacts of incarceration on multiple generations and within families; and media representations of the intergenerationality of incarceration. Volume I explores an array of experiences, dynamics, cultures, interventions, and impacts of incarceration in different generations. This collection speaks to academics in criminology, sociology, psychology, and law, and to practitioners and policymakers interested in incarceration.

Given the over-involvement of young men in crime and young men’s disproportionally high rates of reoffending, it is surprising that more research has not explored young men’s experiences of prison. This book is based on the findings of a nine-month ethnographic case study of Hydebank Wood College, a young men’s prison in Northern Ireland. It seeks to explore the complexity of gender construction and masculine performance during young adulthood, while also exposing and dissecting the turbulent social life of a young men’s prison.

In examining these themes, the book takes account of the unique social, economic, and political factors that impact young men in communities in Northern Ireland, paying particular attention to their feelings of powerlessness, marginalisation, and vulnerability, and the construction of identity in cultures defined by territorialism, violence, masculine stoicism, and an anti-authority code of ‘honour’. The book follows the formation of masculinities through the prison gate and considers how the penal environment contributes to the continual shaping young men’s identities. The book also adopts Gambetta’s concept of ‘signalling’ to examine how young men use different practices, such as language and embodiment, to communicate masculinity to their wider social audience. At the same time, it also considers the reluctance of young men to communicate about their sources of vulnerability.