The LPE Project is thrilled to be co-sponsoring, “Carceral Political Economy in the Era of Late Mass Incarceration” at the New School for Social Research, March 21-22, with The Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies.
What is the political economy of “late” mass incarceration? How has the globally unparalleled US system of mass imprisonment remained impervious to two decades of critique and a decade of anti-carceral mass-mobilization? The harms of mass incarceration are well documented, and its failure to foster safety in our communities is, in the academy at least, uncontroversial. However, the current levels of government spending are themselves politically uncontroversial, whilst political elites are again timorous about reform as the MAGA movement reinvigorates the debased ‘tough vs. soft on crime’ discourse.
This conference seeks to turn the lens of political economy on this apparent impasse, in the hope that attention to the distribution and contestation of power and resources can help us to understand the resilience of these institutions, and to move past modest declines in aggregate incarceration rates and into an actual post-mass-incarceration future.
This conference is open to anyone invested in understanding or achieving a decarceral transition (academics, organizers, everyone). Please register to attend here.
