Conference Europe Social Control

CONFLICT, PENAL POLICIES AND PRISON SYSTEMS

36th Annual Conference of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control

4th - 7th September 2008
Padua, Italy

in collaboration with Department of Sociology, University of Padua

CALL FOR PAPERS

Exploring and explaining the relationship between crises in welfarism and the growth of prison systems is central to contemporary socio-criminological analysis. The deficit in legitimacy now experienced by political institutions contrasts with the systematic reproduction of security-oriented rhetoric and the increase in authoritarian laws. This is evident, for example, in hardening immigration policies, restrictions on citizenship and the neo-liberal regulation of the workforce. In criminal justice systems marginalization and criminalization dominate institutional policies and practices heightening the structural crisis of prisons and other forms of detention. The overcrowded prison has become a common phenomenon throughout Europe countries demanding a critical response through new alternative initiatives and penal abolition. It is a paradox that new prisons built to meet the problems of overcrowding and to replace old prisons soon become full and overcrowded. This is the logic of mass incarceration. If prisons are built they will be filled. Alternatives to prison must be considered in terms of their potential to reduce the prison population. This returns the debate to the politics of abolition.

Papers are invited on any aspect of the theme, including;

- Theories of Space, Power and State Control

- Prison Research and Empirical Studies

- The Rule of Law, Criminal Justice and Incarceration

- Institutional Control and Authoritarianism

- Immigration Policies and Criminalization of Immigrants

- New Systems of Surveillance

- Detention without Trial in the ‘War on Terror’

- The Imprisonment of Children and Young People

- The Rise and Consolidation of Supermax Prisons

- Gender, Violence and Punishment

- Methodologies in Penal Research

Abstracts submitted by 30 June 2008 to

Alvise Sbraccia: alvise.sbraccia@unipd.it