Abstract
The pathways between historical geography and the geographies of institutions are very well-trodden, with scholars examining reformatory, lunatic asylum, detention centre, poor-house and children’s home, to name but a few examples. The spaces of the prison in its various formations have been present – although, arguably, somewhat marginally – in the historical geography literature for some time, but carceral geography’s broader connections with historical geography have only recently been awakened. Indeed, while it is acknowledged that the past has often been woven into carceral geographers’ investigations of contemporary prisons and incarceration systems, it had not – until the publication of this collection – taken centre stage. By unpicking and illuminating the historical geography of a range of ever-becoming carceral landscapes, this book displays a myriad of complex spaces of confinement that prioritise the past and open new doors into imagining, contextualising and conceptualising the future of the prison and its wider geographies.
Throughout this carefully edited collection, acute attention is given to the lived geographies of incarceration, the complex geographies of carceral systems and the often fraught relationships between the carceral system and the state. All of the inventively written and empirically rich chapters weave together an interest in power in its varied manifestations and unravel different spatially inflected layers of the carceral system and its geographies. Stand-out chapters for their innovative insights into past–present prison spaces can be seen through Katie Hemsworth’s piece (Chapter 2) on ‘carceral acoustemologies’ which draws powerful attention to ‘sonic histories’ and their lingering geographies, and Jennifer Turner and Kimberley Peters’ excavation of the prison museum (Chapter 5) that signals to the various uses of uncomfortable carceral pasts and the diverse evolution of carceral estates. Interesting attention is given to penal systems and their affected communities across the globe, with fascinating examples provided by Susana Draper (Chapter 8) in the form of Buen Pastor prison in Argentina, and Brian Jordan Jefferson’s (Chapter 11) consideration of ‘hyperpolicing’ practices in 1980s New York. The examples highlighted in these chapters have an uncomfortable quality that forces a new way of understanding systems and experiences of confinement in an increasingly trans-carceral world.
A key aim of this collection, as stated in Morin and Moran’s opening and closing chapters, is to stress the importance of a ‘critical applied historical geography’ approach which seeks to make the past relevant, purposeful and useful. In emphasising a ‘usable past’, difficult questions arise as to whose past is therefore purposeful to whom and for what gains? What happens to those pasts that fail to make a difference or are inherently difficult to ‘apply’ for such a purpose? What place still exists in such an approach for writing histories of these institutions for their own sake? Such complex questions can only be touched upon in such a book but further attention must be given to the possible implications of the ‘usable past’ which this collection advocates so strongly for. In many ways, this text is a call to arms for both historical and carceral geographers to unite in methodologically innovative and conceptually creative ways and to work together to produce progressive social transformation in this area. While this is an incredibly ambitious aim for one text, to achieve it certainly ignites a curiosity as to what the possibilities may be for a future fusing of historical-carceral geography in an ever-becoming era of confinement.