“The Violence and Violations of Imprisonment”
Time: 6.00 pm
Date: Thursday, 5 March, 2009
Venue: Old Council Chambers, Trades Hall
Cost: $4 (waged) or gold coin donation (unwaged)
Phil Scraton is a Professor of Criminology in the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, School of Law, Queen’s University, Belfast where he is Director of the Childhood, Transition and Social Justice Initiative. Widely published, his recent books include: Childhood in Crisis?; Hillsborough: The Truth; Beyond September 11; Power, Conflict and Criminalisation.
The lecture will reflect on the recently published collection, The Violence of Incarceration (co-edited with Jude McCulloch). Phil Scraton proposes that physical and emotional violence are central elements in the incarceration of men, women and children in advanced democratic societies. As prison populations and those held in secure accommodation have expanded well beyond official projections, carceral institutions have produced ever-harsher regimes of containment. In exploring the dynamics of interpersonal violence, institutionalised abuses and incarceration Phil Scraton theorises custodial violence as a continuum. He connects routine, punitive responses, undermining prisoners’ self-esteem and mental health to the directly brutal and brutalising manifestations of formal and informal punishments. Moreover he considers the culture of impunity that enables harsh regimes to persist and institutionalised human rights violations to be rationalised.
wish i could make it. This topic will never get the airplay and/or rational argument it deserves…I wish i kept a diary; i remember a couple of years ago when some idiot NSW politician made remarks about someone going to gaol, saying he hoped he was put in a cell with big bubba…Nothing was said in the media at the time about the appropriateness of such a comment. ‘s fucken outrageous that there’s this tacit understanding in the community that if you go to gaol, you get raped.
I’ve no real idea about the prevalence of rape in prison, but im sure all can agree that the subject is a well-known cliche. On a personal level, I confess that it’s the threat of rape and violence that has deterred me from some criminal action, not incarceration.
down with the government.
this is a pretty piss-poor rant for my first post on slackbastard, my apollylogies.
Your apollylogies are graciously accepted. (And your comment ain’t that bad.)
slightly off topic – I swear Dr. Karl’s segment on jjj today was being trolled by fascists – multiple clueless (it was clear the people asking did not understand what evolution or the concept of fitness is) questions about whether our genetic pool is being ‘ruined’ by allowing the ‘unfit’ to breed.
Yeah, you could be John Drew.
Aegis; i think that was a comment made on the footy show about one of the chaser’s stunts, when they sold fake weapons outside a dogs game.