Prision, Penitentiary Studies and Human Rights

Last decades had been dedicated to comprehend how shifts on punishments, security and safety policies produced consequences to incarceration, inequalities and new dunamics inside penitentiary system.

Mass and hyper encarceration has been important concepts to prision studies on contemporary societies and its centrally in punishment policies. Some studies have pointed out how encarcerating poor has a role at neutralazing conflicts emerged by neoliberal shifts. Other helped incarceration role on political sphere , increasing suñport for right wing parties and candidates. Cultural approaches have movilized shifts on legal professions and penitentiary knowledge, exploring fights among spacialists and production of a new penalty or criminology, redefining theory and practice of prision and impriosionment.

Recent approches pointed to racism as important to mass imprisionment. Gender, religious conflict and identities has been incorporated to prision studies to relieve such selectivity or such dynamics of incarcerated lives. Youth studies has been also important to understand functions and limits of incarceration.

This session is open to contributions on prision studies regarding to incarceration politics, social polocies and incarceration rates, prison population composition and inequalities, dynamics related to life on prison. Studies focusing on class, race, gender, youth, religion and other identities are welcome to give intersectionality to rhe debate. Such as studies about criminal dynamics, relations between inside and outside, the engagment if inmate's familiy and community, pruson gangs, penitentiary professions in different countried and subnational contexts.