NCJ Number
152315
Date Published
1994
Length
313 pages
Annotation
This study explores the relationship between the domestic sphere and the legal-penal sphere in Australia as two institutional orders whose intersection constructs specific models of social control.
Abstract
The book is premised on the argument that the social control of corporate capitalist society occurs in its most condensed form in the social space between home and prison. This investigation brings together concepts developed in the three areas of feminist criminology, feminist materialist analyses of caring work, and the radical critique of penality. Individual chapters review the critical literature on the social construction of the two spheres under investigation, the specific literature regarding the population of inmate families and the incorporation of the family into the penal sphere, and the way in which the social sciences have been incorporated into the realm of punishment either as techno-reformist techniques of control or as a basis for criticizing the hidden punishment of families of inmates. Four subsequent chapters recount the experiences of 38 people who cared for imprisoned men in New South Wales and their families. The author concludes that the exploitation and punishment of inmate families is likely to continue and increase under the contemporary structure of corporate consumer capitalism. Consequently, more people will be affected by the widening processes of punishment and control. Chapter references and 2 appendixes