The Pelican Bay Hunger Strike: Resistance within the Structural Constraints of a US Supermax Prison
About: This article is published in South Atlantic Quarterly.The article was published on 2014-07-01. It has received 63 citations till now.
Citations
More filters
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors develop a conceptual framework centered around the who, what, and how of criminal governance, organizing extant research and proposing a novel dimension: charismatic versus rational-bureaucratic forms of criminal authority.
Abstract: In informal urban areas throughout the developing world, and even in some US and UK neighborhoods, tens if not hundreds of millions of people live under some form of criminal governance. For them, states’ claims of a monopoly on the use of force ring hollow; for many issues, a local criminal organization is the relevant authority. Yet the state is far from absent: residents may pay taxes, vote, and even inform on gangs as punishment for abusive behavior. Criminal governance flourishes in pockets of low state presence, but ones that states can generally enter at will, if not always without violence. It thus differs from state, corporate, and rebel governance because it is embedded within larger domains of state power. I develop a conceptual framework centered around the who, what, and how of criminal governance, organizing extant research and proposing a novel dimension: charismatic versus rational-bureaucratic forms of criminal authority. I then delineate the logics that may drive criminal organizations to provide governance for non-members, establishing building blocks for future theory-building and -testing. Finally, I explore how criminal governance intersects with the state, refining the concept of crime–state “symbiosis” and distinguishing it from neighboring concepts in organized-crime and drug-violence scholarship.
69 citations
Cites background from "The Pelican Bay Hunger Strike: Resi..."
...American prison gangs have also effectively organized hunger strikes to protest overcrowding and solitary confinement (Reiter 2014)....
[...]
TL;DR: The authors argue that scholars have overused the term "resistance" to describe prisoner behaviors, creating both analytical and normative consequences, and suggest the concept of "friction" more accurately describes the reactive behaviors that occur when people find themselves in highly controlled environments.
Abstract: Scholars examining prisoners’ “secondary adjustments” have often emphasized prisoners’ “resistance” to the prison regime, particularly their agentic acts that frustrate the prison’s rules, goals, or functions. While these agency-centered accounts offer an important corrective to the understanding of prisons as totalizing institutions, they may go too far. I argue that scholars have overused (and misused) the term “resistance” to describe certain prisoner behaviors, creating both analytical and normative consequences. Instead, I suggest the concept of “friction” more accurately describes the reactive behaviors that occur when people find themselves in highly controlled environments.
57 citations
Cites background from "The Pelican Bay Hunger Strike: Resi..."
...Additionally, scholars have compensated by interviewing prisoners after their confinement (Reiter, 2014) or “exmates” (Hemmens and Marquart, 1999)....
[...]
Book•
29 Aug 2019TL;DR: In this article, Pyrooz and Decker explore how gangs organize and govern, who joins gangs and how they get out, the dark side of gang activities including misconduct and violence, the ways in which gang membership spills onto the street, and the direct and indirect links between the street and prison gangs.
Abstract: Pyrooz and Decker pull apart the bars on prison gangs to uncover how they compete for control. While there is much speculation about these gangs, there is little solid research. This book draws on interviews with 802 inmates - half of whom were gang members - in two Texas prisons; one of the largest samples of its kind. Using this data, the authors explore how gangs organize and govern, who joins gangs and how they get out, the dark side of gang activities including misconduct and violence, the ways in which gang membership spills onto the street, and the direct and indirect links between the street and prison gangs. Competing for Control captures the nature of gangs in a time of transition, as prison gangs become more horizontal and their power is diffused across groups. There is no study like this one.
50 citations
47 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine individual experiences in two different legal contexts: deportation regimes and supermax prisons, identifying common legal processes of punishment experiences across both contexts, and argue that a new kind of subject is revealed: a disintegrating subject whose exclusion reinforces the power of the state.
Abstract: This paper draws on in-depth, qualitative interviews that examine individual experiences in two different legal contexts: deportation regimes and supermax prisons. Through putting these contexts and experiences into dialogue, we identify common legal processes of punishment experiences across both contexts. Specifically, the U.S. legal system re-labels immigrants (as deportable noncitizens) and supermax prisoners (as dangerous gang offenders). This re-labeling begins a process of othering, which ends in categorical exclusions for both immigrants and supermax prisoners. As individuals experience this categorical exclusion, they cross multiple borders and boundaries—often against their will—moving from prison to detention center to other countries beyond the U.S. border, and from isolation to prison to “free” society. In both cases, the state action that subjects experience as punishment is civil and, therefore, nominally not punitive. Ultimately, excluded individuals find themselves in a space of legal nonexistence. By examining these common processes and experiences, we argue that a new kind of subject is revealed: a disintegrating subject (as opposed to a juridical or disciplinary subject) whose exclusion reinforces the power of the state.
42 citations
References
More filters
19,485 citations
Book•
18 Apr 2012
TL;DR: Foucault shows the development of the Western system of prisons, police organizations, administrative and legal hierarchies for social control and the growth of disciplinary society as a whole as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In the Middle Ages there were gaols and dungeons, but punishment was for the most part a spectacle. The economic changes and growing popular dissent of the 18th century made necessary a more systematic control over the individual members of society, and this in effect meant a change from punishment, which chastised the body, to reform, which touched the soul. Foucault shows the development of the Western system of prisons, police organizations, administrative and legal hierarchies for social control - and the growth of disciplinary society as a whole. He also reveals that between school, factories, barracks and hospitals all share a common organization, in which it is possible to control the use of an individual's time and space hour by hour.
11,379 citations
TL;DR: The first public declaration of the hidden transcript was made by as discussed by the authors, who argued that behind the official story domination, acting and fantasy the public transcript as a respectable performance false-consciousness or laying it on thick making social space for a dissident subculture voice under domination.
Abstract: Behind the official story domination, acting and fantasy the public transcript as a respectable performance false-consciousness or laying it on thick making social space for a dissident subculture voice under domination - the arts of political disguise the infrapolitics of subordinate groups a saturnalia of power - the first public declaration of the hidden transcript.
4,015 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1990TL;DR: This paper found that people obey the law if they believe it's legitimate, not because they fear punishment, which is the conclusion of Tom Tyler's classic study, "People obey law primarily because they believe in respecting legitimate authority".
Abstract: People obey the law if they believe it's legitimate, not because they fear punishment--this is the startling conclusion of Tom Tyler's classic study. Tyler suggests that lawmakers and law enforcers would do much better to make legal systems worthy of respect than to try to instill fear of punishment. He finds that people obey law primarily because they believe in respecting legitimate authority. In his fascinating new afterword, Tyler brings his book up to date by reporting on new research into the relative importance of legal legitimacy and deterrence, and reflects on changes in his own thinking since his book was first published.
3,783 citations
Book•
29 Mar 2001
TL;DR: A history of modern criminal justice and the Penal-Welfare state can be found in this paper, with a focus on the culture of high crime and the New Culture of Crime Control.
Abstract: 1. A History of the Present 2. Modern Criminal Justice and the Penal-Welfare State 3. The Crisis of Penal Modernism 4. Social Change and Social Order in Late Modernity 5. Policy Predicament: Adaptation, Denial and Acting Out 6. Crime Complex: The Culture of High Crime Societies 7. The New Culture of Crime Control 8. Crime Control and Social Order Bibliography Index
3,609 citations