Suchergebnisse

In 2006, the British government began to transform its prison system. Under pressure to find and deport 'foreigners', the Prison Service started to isolate non-citizens in special prisons, and to detain people well beyond their criminal sentences. These developments reflect a broader trend in punishment. In an era of mass mobility, prisons produce and police the edges of the nation. This book offers an empirical account of the prison's purpose

Criminologists have spent the past decade writing about the border. Sociologists have documented the growing convergence of punishment and migration control, while legal theorists have critiqued the concepts of sovereignty and citizenship. Over time, these inquiries have cohered into what Katja Aas and Mary Bosworth call the 'criminology of mobility'. One central premise of this new criminology, perhaps even its motivating concern, is that globalization has altered the relationship between punishment and identity. This article expands on that theoretical claim. What do we mean when we say that punishment and identity are intertwined? How have mass mobility and waning sovereignty affected the practice of punishment? With these questions in mind, this article examines the relationship between three aspects of identity – gender, sexuality, and nationality – in one space of punishment, the British prison. Drawing on interviews with foreign national prisoners in five men's prisons, I argue that sexism and homophobia work as resources for prisoners who seek to establish themselves as members of the British polity. In the contemporary prison, asserting gender conformity is one way to lay claim to a British national identity.

ABSTRACTIn the summer of 2009, the British government introduced a new policy for managing foreign nationals imprisoned in England and Wales. Dubbed hubs and spokes, that policy reorganises the penal estate, concentrating non‐citizens in select prisons 'embedded' with full‐time immigration staff. The policy also requires prison staff to identify foreign nationals to immigration authorities and obliges prisons to detain prisoners facing deportation beyond the length of their criminal sentences. This paper explores the effects of such an approach to foreign national prisoners. In particular, I examine how the effort to find the 'foreigners' in British penal institutions has affected the meaning of race behind bars. Drawing on a year of ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that the process of identifying foreign nationals is more piecemeal and political than it can seem from outside prison walls. In practice, the effort to find 'foreigners' depends on racialised assumptions about foreignness and British national belonging. These assumptions contrast with the fluid and highly personalised articulations of race and nation that circulate within the prison. I examine this contrast, asserting that the hubs and spokes policy remakes and racialises the concept of British citizenship. I also consider the new policy in the historical context of British colonialism. Ultimately, I assert that the government's approach to foreign national prisoners perpetuates amnesia about the politics of imprisoning 'foreigners'. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.