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Carceral citizenship in Puerto Rico: Self-help and punishment

Parker, Caroline Mary; (2023) Carceral citizenship in Puerto Rico: Self-help and punishment. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies , 116 pp. 87-104. 10.32992/erlacs.10979. Green open access

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Abstract

The predominant criminological view of ‘carceral citizenship’ takes citizenship as a purely juridical matter, overlooking key social dimensions of citizenship as a human practice. To understand how the carceral turn is reconfiguring citizenship in Puerto Rico, I explore how formerly incarcerated people carve out a place for themselves in Puerto Rican society under the shadow of the prison. Focusing on one couple and their efforts to operate a therapeutic community, I show how self-help supplies a subset of former prisoners with a publicly recognized form of social belonging. Though more stable and encompassing than the stigmatized exile that awaits many people returning from prison, this carceral citizenship invites formerly incarcerated people to assume critical roles in the confinement, punishment, and care of people convicted of drug offences. Overall, this article highlights how self-help and punishment have emerged as intertwined mediums through which formerly incarcerated people assert their citizenship.

Type: Article
Title: Carceral citizenship in Puerto Rico: Self-help and punishment
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.32992/erlacs.10979
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.32992/erlacs.10979
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) (unless stated otherwise) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: Carceral citizenship, Confinement, Colonialism, Self-help, Drug Treatment
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Anthropology
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10184896
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