12th November 2020
We are delighted to announce that Reuben Jonathan Miller (University of Chicago) will present the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research’s 2020 Annual Lecture.
PLEASE REGISTER VIA EVENTBRITE https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sccjr-annual-lecture-2020-reuben-jonathan-miller-tickets-125179367859
Title: Halfway Home: Race, Punishment and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration
Abstract: While more people are incarcerated in the United States than in any other nation in the history of the western world, the prison is but one (comparatively) small part of a vast carceral landscape.
The 600,000 people released each year join nearly 5 million people already on probation or parole, 12 million who are processed through a county jail, 19 million U.S. adults estimated to have a felony conviction, and the staggering 79 million Americans with a criminal record. But the size of the U.S. carceral state is second in consequence to its reach. Incarcerated people are greeted by more than 45,000 laws, policies and administrative sanctions upon release that limit their participation in the labor and housing markets, in the culture and civic life of the city, and even within their families.
They are subject to rules other people are not subject to, and shoulder responsibilities other people are not expected to shoulder. They live in a “supervised society,” a hidden social world we’ve produced through our laws, policies and everyday practices, and in fact, occupy an alternate form of political membership—what I call “carceral citizenship.”
This presentation examines the afterlife of mass incarceration, attending to how U.S. criminal justice policy has changed the social life of the city and altered the contours of American Democracy one (most often poor black American) family at a time. Drawing on ethnographic data collected across three iconic American cities—Chicago, Detroit and New York—we will explore what it means to live in a supervised society and how we might find our way out.
Biography: Reuben Jonathan Miller is a sociologist, criminologist and a social worker who teaches at the University of Chicago in the School of Social Service Administration where he studies and writes about race, democracy, and the social life of the city. He has been a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton New Jersey, a fellow at the New America Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, and a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin and Dartmouth College. His book, Halfway Home: Race, Punishment and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration will be published by Little Brown and Company in February of 2021. A native son of Chicago, Professor Miller lives with his wife and children on the city’s Southside.
Format:
Director of SCCJR, Alistair Fraser (University of Glasgow) will welcome participants to our Annual Lecture
Chair: Fergus McNeill (University of Glasgow)
Lecture from Reuben Jonathan Miller (University of Chicago)
Discussant: Marguerite Schinkel (University of Glasgow)
Q&A chaired by Fergus McNeill