The Australian and New Zealand Critical Criminology Conference
Mark HalseyAssociate Professor, School of Law, Flinders University. ‘Prisoner Futures: Sensing the Signs of Generativity’In recent years, a small but critically informed literature has emerged which points to the link between opportunities to engage in generative acts and desistance from crime. This paper outlines the nature and limits of generative moments (conceived as the philosophy or practice of caring in non-violent and durable ways for self, other and future) with regard to the incarceration of a group of young males interviewed since 2003. Specifically, it poses the question of who or what it has been possible for these young men to care about within and beyond custody and explores the relationship between generative intentions or statements as against generative outcomes. In concluding, the paper examines some of the likely custodial and political implications were generative issues to be taken seriously in the context of imprisonment and release.Mark teaches criminal justice in the School of Law at Flinders University. He has conducted research across three main areas: the social and legal construction of environmental damage; the subjective and political dimensions of graffiti; and, more recently, the factors underpinning the repeat incarceration of young males. Solely or jointly Mark has worked on a number of local and state government consultancies - the largest being a three year evaluation of the Neighbourhood Justice Centre based in Collingwood, Victoria. He is the recipient of two successive ARC Discovery grants which have permitted him to conduct a longitudinal study of social connection and exclusion in the lives if young incarcerated males interviewed since late 2003. Examples of his work on this and other topics appear in such journals as Punishment and Society, Theoretical Criminology, The British Journal of Criminology and Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, and in the edited collections Imaginary Penalities (Willan, 2008), The Critical Criminology Companion (Federation, 2008) and Deleuze/Guattari and Ecology (Palgrave, 2009). |
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