Punishment, citizenship and identity: An Introduction

This collection of articles addresses the interconnections between punishment, citizenship andidentity. As immigration and crime control measures have intersected, prisons in a number ofcountries have ended up housing a growing population of foreign-national offenders and immigrationdetainees. It is somewhat surprising that criminologists have traditionally spent so little timeexploring the relationship between the prison and national identity. With notable exceptions,scholars almost universally treat the prison as an institution bounded by and within the nationstate.This special issue seeks to disrupt that convention of prison studies and criminology morebroadly. Focusing on the incarceration of foreign-nationals in diverse contexts, the contributionsto this issue collectively argue that the prison is a projection of national sovereignty and anexpression of state power. It is also a concrete space where global inequalities play out. Whenconsidered through the lens of citizenship, our understanding of imprisonment shifts to includeother geographical sites both within the nation-state and elsewhere, the prison’s intersectionswith other legal frameworks, and enduring matters of race, gender and class. The contributionscapture these dimensions by weaving together policy analysis and first-hand narratives fromaround the world