Van Swearingen

Bio: Van Swearingen is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Solitary confinement & Prison reform. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 39 citations.

Mass Incarceration and the Paradox of Prison Conditions Litigation

Abstract: In this article I examine how prison conditions litigation in the 1970s, as an outgrowth of the civil rights movement, inadvertently contributed to the rise of mass incarceration in the United States. Using Florida as a case study, I detail how prison conditions litigation that aimed to reduce incarceration was translated in the political arena as a court order to build prisons. Drawing on insights from historical institutionalist scholarship, I argue that this paradox can be explained by considering the different historical and political contexts of the initial legal framing and the final compliance with the court order. In addition, I demonstrate how the choices made by policy makers around court compliance created policy feedback effects that further expanded the coercive capacity of the state and transformed political calculations around crime control. The findings suggest how "successful" court challenges for institutional change can have long‐term outcomes that are contrary to social justice goals. The paradox of prison litigation is especially compelling because inmates' lawyers were specifically concerned about racial injustice, yet mass incarceration is arguably the greatest obstacle to racial equality in the twenty‐first century.

Confronting Confinement: A Report of The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons

Abstract: This article was originally published by the Vera Institute of Justice in June 2006. What happens inside jails and prisons does not stay inside jails and prisons: It comes home with prisoners after they are released and with corrections officers at the end of each shift. When people live and work in facilities that are unsafe, unhealthy, unproductive, or inhumane, they carry the effects into the community with them. We all bear responsibility for creating correctional institutions that are safe, humane, and productive. With so much at stake for U.S. citizens9 health and safety, with so many people directly affected by the conditions in U.S. prisons and jails, this is the moment to confront confinement in the United States.

Imprisonment and internment: Comparing penal institutions North and South

Abstract: Recent references to the ‘warehouse prison’ in the United States and the prision-deposito in Latin America seem to indicate that penal confinement in the western hemisphere has converged on a similar model. However, this article suggests otherwise. It contrasts penal facilities in North America and Latin America in terms of six interrelated aspects: regimentation; surveillance; isolation; supervision; accountability; and formalization. Quantitatively, control in North American penal facilities is assiduous (unceasing, persistent and intrusive), while in Latin America it is perfunctory (sporadic, indifferent and cursory). Qualitatively, North American penal facilities produce imprisonment (which enacts penal intervention through confinement), while in Latin America they produce internment (which enacts penal intervention through release). Closely entwined with this qualitative difference are distinct practices of judicial involvement in sentencing and penal supervision. Those practices, and the cultural and political factors that underpin them, represent an interesting starting point for the explanation of the contrasting nature of imprisonment and internment.