Conference of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control - Call for papers

CONFLICTS, PENAL POLICIES AND PRISON SYSTEMS

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

4th September - 7th September 2008
Padua, Italy

In collaboration with Department of Sociology, University of Padua

CALL FOR PAPERS

The relation between the welfare state crisis and the growth of the
prison system appears to assume a very central position in the field of
the socio-criminological analysis. The deficit of legitimacy suffered by
the political institutions is contrasted, at a symbolic level, through
the systematic reproduction of security oriented rhetoric and through
the implementation of laws with an evident restrictive impact in key
sectors as the ones of immigration policy, of citizenship, of a
neo-liberal regulation of the workforce. With reference to the criminal
justice system, the repressive trends and the congruent addresses on the operative fields of criminal policy and institutional control heighten
the structural crisis of the penal institutions. The overcrowded prison
appears to be a common phenomenon for European countries and asks for interventions that can derive from contrasting strategies. From the one hand, therefore, it is necessary to understand if the prison system's expansion has already met the paradox according to which more the built prison, more the ones full and overcrowded (in the comprehensive logic of mass incarceration). The answers oriented to the alternative measures, on the other hand, need to be considered with reference to their appropriateness in reducing the number of convicts, challenging the hypothesis of a parallel growth of probation provisions and of the number of detained persons. This call for paper is therefore directed especially to contributes which reflect on the relation between penal policies, assets of the prison systems and different strategies to front the problem of overcrowded structures of detention.

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

-        Theories of Space, Power and State Control
-        Prison studies
-        Law and Criminal Justice
-        Institutional Control and Authoritarianism
-        Immigration Policies and Criminalization of Immigrants
-        New Systems of Surveillance
-        Gender and Violence in the "New Europe"
-        Methodology in criminological research


Abstracts submitted by 30 June 2008 to
Alvise Sbraccia: alvise.sbraccia@unipd.it