The insightful chapters in this volume reveal the multiple and multifaceted intersections between mass incarceration and neoliberal precarity. Both mass incarceration and the criminal justice system are profoundly implicated in the production and reproduction of the low-wage “exploitable” precariat, both within and beyond prison walls. The carceral state is a regime of labor discipline—and a growing one—that extends far beyond its own inmate labor. This regime not only molds inmates into compliant workers willing and expected to accept any “bad” job upon release but also compels many Americans to work in such jobs under threat of incarceration, all the while bolstering their “exploitability” and socioeconomic marginality.
Contributors include Anne Bonds, Philip Goodman, Amanda Bell Hughett, Caroline M. Parker, Gretchen Purser, Jacqueline Stevens, and Noah D. Zatz.
Erin Hatton is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University at Buffalo in New York. She is the author of Coerced.
"Well written and full of informative nuggets."—Jeff Manza, Department of Sociology, New York University
“This is a novel approach to understanding the carceral state and fills an important gap in this literature. The work that Erin Hatton is doing in this area stands to make an enormous contribution. We already know the carceral state is growing, and we know about the ways in which it is subsidized by private industry. The real value of Labor and Punishment is that it will highlight not just these connections but how they have implications for the way work is done in the modern era.”—Adia Harvey Wingfield, Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis
282 pp.6 x 9
9780520305342$29.95|£25.00Paper
May 2021