18 July 2022, 18:00 p.m., online

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Prisons are central societal institutions. They are constituted by vast infrastructures of material architectures, laws, policies, regulations and constructions of justice, as well as work, employment and labour. They have, therefore, been the focus of extensive, wide-ranging academic and practitioner-led research. Criminology and prison sociology, in particular, have paid significant attention to the development, use of and rationale for prison systems and their relationship with crime and criminal behaviour. In recent decades, geographers have entered this field to interrogate the value of adding a spatial agenda to such discussions. After first introducing carceral geography as an area of the sub-discipline focussed on engagement with spaces, practices and experiences of confinement and coercive control, this presentation introduces two examples around the imprisonment of women and the prison-military complex to explore understandings of carcerality and carceral space. In doing so, the presentation concludes by outlining the potential for carceral geographical approaches to contribute to and collaborate with wider discourses of criminal justice and incarceration.