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Histories
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Expressions of Carceral Violence: The Use and Abuse of the...
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Expressions of Carceral Violence: The Use and Abuse of the Penalized Subject

A special issue of Histories (ISSN 2409-9252). This special issue belongs to the section "Political, Institutional, and Economy History".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 December 2025 | Viewed by 996

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Karol Lucken

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Community Innovation and Education, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA
Interests: history and philosophy of punishment; offender reentry; collateral sanctions; correctional policy trends
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue addresses the ways in which those who are incarcerated experience various forms of violence. Of particular interest are the less publicized dimensions of violence, such as labor exploitation and medical neglect within the context of punishment, historically or contemporarily. Ideally, contemporary analyses would be approached using what Foucault (1977) refers to as a “history of the present” or rather the “historico-critical” task of locating “traces of the past and their continuing operation today” (Garland, 2014:375). That said, submissions that generally cover the following suggested topics, using any preferred methodology (e.g., small sample, individual case studies, statistical/quantitative analysis, document/archival analysis, narrative analysis), are welcome:

  • Violence within penal institutions;
  • Theoretical or philosophical perspectives on prison violence;
  • Labor policy and practices in adult or juvenile prisons;
  • Theoretical perspectives on penal labor;
  • Medical malfeasance in adult or juvenile prisons;
  • Theoretical perspectives on medical malfeasance in prison institutions.

Dr. Karol Lucken
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Histories is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • prison labor
  • prisoner health
  • punishment history
  • prison health statistics
  • prison medical malfeasance
  • prisoner mortality
  • penal servitude

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 264 KB  
Article
Penal Philosophy and Practice from a Historical and Theological Perspective
by Andrew Skotnicki and Karol Lucken
Histories 2025, 5(4), 52; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories5040052 - 14 Oct 2025
Viewed by 394
Abstract
This article critiques penal philosophy and practice in contemporary society through the lens of historical–ecclesial tradition. The article opens with a discussion of the penitential rituals in the first Christian monasteries and the eventual adoption of some of these rituals in the earliest [...] Read more.
This article critiques penal philosophy and practice in contemporary society through the lens of historical–ecclesial tradition. The article opens with a discussion of the penitential rituals in the first Christian monasteries and the eventual adoption of some of these rituals in the earliest state penitentiaries in the U.S. It is argued that a nonviolent and coherent penal ideology was advocated from the inception of Christian monasticism and subsequently maintained over the centuries due to three paradigmatic values and commitments. These values and commitments, which form the basis of the critique, are a theological metanarrative, a moral ontology, and a belief in sin as an existential fact. These tenets are used to interrogate the traditional justifications of punishment that have guided government policy throughout modern history, in the U.S. and abroad. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Expressions of Carceral Violence: The Use and Abuse of the Penalized Subject)
15 pages, 249 KB  
Article
The Moral Economy of the Penal Crowd: The Microhistory of a Pre-War Prison Strike
by Alex Tepperman
Histories 2025, 5(4), 51; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories5040051 - 14 Oct 2025
Viewed by 396
Abstract
Historical discussions regarding labour organizing within American prisons tend to focus on the period stretching from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, framing those years as both the origin and apex of nationalized and organized inmate-led strikes behind bars. This focus is [...] Read more.
Historical discussions regarding labour organizing within American prisons tend to focus on the period stretching from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, framing those years as both the origin and apex of nationalized and organized inmate-led strikes behind bars. This focus is partly due to a counter-historical assumption that the rebellions of previous eras were primarily focused on “good housekeeping” and were not political in nature. This article challenges ongoing scholarly assumptions that incarcerated Americans were ever pre-political, providing a microhistorical account of the first significant labour unrest at New York’s Attica State Prison in 1932. Through an analysis of the strike’s leadership structure, this paper claims that there is no reason to believe that incarcerated Americans lacked political identities prior to their contact with conscientious objectors, Marxist revolutionaries, and other educated ideologues. Rather, this article contends that the Depression-era Jewish and Italian inmates who led the 1932 Attica strike carried into the prison their own form of political pragmatism, drawn from their experiences operating within interwar-era organized crime syndicates. While this was not a universal experience among incarcerated people, it is indicative of the notion that interwar-era strikes throughout the country surely drew from their own local, informal political norms. This paper concludes that it is unlikely any penal rebellion could exist outside of politics and that historians of prison rebellions must be more willing to look for indirect indicators of political identities that naturally emerge from the struggles of everyday life. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Expressions of Carceral Violence: The Use and Abuse of the Penalized Subject)
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