Sensory Penalities
Exploring the Senses in Spaces of Punishment and Social Control
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Sensory Penalities reflects an explosion in explorations of the sensory and disrupts conventional expectations of both form and focus by expanding anthropological practices and craft into the field of criminology and criminological research.
In providing accounts of physical/sensorial experiences within sites of surveillance and control, the authors in this edited collection bring elements of research experiences (often absent from existing work) to the fore; the impressions and sensual experiences which remain forever in field notes. In so doing they carve out spaces to consider these places and the ways in which they are theorised anew.
The book aims to explore what sensory aspects of experience mean to those engaged in such research, and how they can shape our criminological thinking. What are the sensory textures of these experiences? What do they tell us? How do we communicate them? Finally, what does consideration of these elements tell us about penality?
This timely volume challenges and remakes assumptions about what criminology is and should be; more accurately reflecting the post-disciplinary nature of the field.
This series has been renamed to “Emerald Studies in Culture, Crime, Criminal Justice and the Arts” effective for 2025 publications onward.
Foreword; Alison Liebling Introduction: Welcome to the Sensorium; Kate Herrity, Bethany E. Schmidt, and Jason Warr Part 1. Making Sense of the Sensory Chapter 1. Hearing Order in Flesh and Blood: Sensemaking and Attunement in the Pub and the Prison; Kate Herrity Chapter 2. Fire! Fire! The Prison Cell and the Thick Sensuality of Trappedness; Jason Warr Chapter 3. Sensing Supervision through Stories and Songs; Jo Collinson Scott and Fergus McNeill Chapter 4. Touching Life, Death and Dis/connection in a State Prison Infirmary; Daina Stanley Part 2. Sensing the Field Chapter 5. Sensing Transition: Exploring Prison Life in Post-Revolution Tunisia; Bethany E. Schmidt and Andrew M. Jefferson Chapter 6. Sensing Secrecy: Power, Violence and Its Concealment in Nicaraguan Prisons; Julienne Weegels Chapter 7. The Embedded Researcher: Experiencing Life in a Probation Approved Premises; Carla Reeves Chapter 8. Space, Surveillance, and Sound in Pre- and Post-Reform Prisons in the Dominican Republic; Jennifer Peirce Part 3. Subverting the Senses Chapter 9. Sensing and Unease in Immigration Confinement: An Abolitionist's Perspective; Victoria Canning Chapter 10. Rumbling Stomachs and Silent Crying: Mapping and Reflecting Emotion in the Sensory Landscape of the Courthouse; Lisa Flower Part 4. Sensory Reflections Chapter 11. Sensory Reflections on a Japanese Prison; Yvonne Jewkes and Alison Young Chapter 12. The Everything Else; Amy B. Smoyer Chapter 13. Ethiopian Notes; Ian O’Donnell Chapter 14. The Street as an Affective Atmosphere; Alistair Fraser Afterword: Sensing Carceral Worlds; Eamonn Carrabine
This fascinating collection fully illuminates the sensory experience bounded by state-sponsored suffering. In witnessing and documenting this suffering in new ways, these scholars compel us to recognize the humanity of those enmeshed in wide-ranging punishment structures around the globe. I invite all scholars of the human experience to expand their own perceptions of punishment in embracing the insights and analyses conveyed in this startlingly original volume.
Every few years, a new ‘next big thing’ emerges, promising to reinvent criminology as we know it. Yet, to draw on a very sensory truism, “the proof of the pudding is in the tasting”, and too often the actual studies fail to live up to the hype. After sampling the chapters in this powerful, new collection, it is safe to say that sensory criminology tastes fantastic with fully embodied analyses characterised by their poignancy, insight and, above all, humanity. This really should become the next big thing.
Written as an exploration into the senses in spaces of punishment and social control, Sensory Penalties reads like an explosion of personal impressions and reflections that disrupt conventional ways of researching punishment and incarceration as a numb and unfeeling body of facts. This is what makes it an exceptional piece of scholarship, a riveting read, and an invitation to come to our senses about their role in how we think, research and design justice.
Kate Herrity is a Junior Research Fellow at Kings College, Cambridge, interested in working at the boundaries and meeting places between fields and disciplines, particularly those relating to sensory experience.
Bethany E. Schmidt is a Research Associate in the Prisons Research Centre, University of Cambridge. Her work explores the moral quality of prison life, with a particular interest in transitioning contexts.
Jason Warr is a Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice at De Montfort University with research interests in emotions in criminology, penology, sociology of power, and the philosophy of science.