Citation

Burkhardt BC, Connor BT. Sociol. Compass 2021; 15(5): e12874.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/soc4.12874

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Privatized punishment--in which nonstate actors carry out state-mandated criminal punishments--has developed into a common practice since its rise in the 1980s. Many disciplines, including criminology, political science, public administration, and economics, have examined its use over the past four decades. However, privatized punishment has not garnered much attention in sociology. This is surprising, as privatized punishment touches on the key themes in sociology, and in the political sociology in particular. In this paper, we attempt to insert privatized punishment into classic and contemporary discussions in political sociology. Below, we offer an overview of privatized punishment and provide a high-level review of how other social scientific disciplines have studied the phenomenon. Then we argue that political sociology provides a useful, if underutilized, lens for studying privatized punishment. In particular, we highlight three political sociological themes--contestation, state structures, and stratification--that can be fruitfully applied to the study of privatized punishment, and we sketch multiple lines of future research informed by these themes.

Language: en

Keywords

political sociology; private prisons; privatization; privatized punishment; punishment; social movements; state theory