This assignment asks that you analyze the role of policing, criminal legal procedure, carceral logics or culture, or imprisonment in everyday life. How does the carceral state/carceral culture shape your encounters with the built environment, symbolic or literal representations, official discourses, soundscapes, visual representation, geography/transportation, experience of academic work and paid work, applications for positions/fellowships, etc.
How does the carceral state and carceral culture shape the infrastructure, relationships, policies, practices, or possibilities that you and those around you encounter?
You do you think about the relationships between the carceral landscapes that you encounter and the experiences, barriers, and opportunities people encounter in other contexts? Think broadly about what might count as carceral culture, surveillance, policing, etc., but be able to defend your analysis with evidence from your observations and existing scholarship (the primary and secondary sources).
This is a persuasive essay that should have a thesis that is supported by primary evidence, which in this case is the description of observations of daily life and secondary sources, two scholarly articles or books that provide interpretive and analytical frameworks or historical context. Select secondary sources that provide broad frameworks (carceral geographies, Black geographies, gendered geographies, etc.) or a way of understanding Columbia’s history or the history of the place you are discussing, or a critical theory developed on a related topic.
