The Carceral Geographies Working Group and Advisory Board are pleased to announce the winner of our 2022 Undergraduate Dissertation Prize:
Flora Farthing, Durham University: “Re-entry as ‘Punishment’s twin’: An exploration of the contemporary post-release carceral environment.”
We wish to congratulate all nominees for producing excellent dissertations under very challenging circumstances. The selection panel was impressed by the depth and care with which these students treated their research, their engagement with carceral geography literatures, and the insights they drew from their rich empirical research. These dissertations presented us with the best of undergraduate research and the decision was a difficult one.
The review panel was especially impressed with Flora’s methodology and, especially, the richly detailed analysis of people’s experiences of re-entry. Combined with her engagement with multiple facets of carceral geographies literature, Flora’s analysis generated original insights about the diffusion of carcerality beyond prisons. The review committee felt that these insights have the potential to contribute to emerging work exploring carcerality beyond detention and show the ability to engage in cutting-edge research. Congratulations, Flora.
Dissertation abstract:
Abstract: Situated within the prevailing environment UK of high rates of incarceration, this dissertation explores the re-entry experiences of former offenders. Highlighting the extent to which the carceral is continuously felt and re-enforced, through various institutional and societal practises and spaces, despite their release from prison. Whilst also illuminating the relationship between the pervasive nature of the carceral within society and the carceral ‘churn’ which is prevalent within the contemporary UK environment; encapsulating the revolving nature of incarceration. This dissertation presents the potential of penal voluntary organisations as a ‘glimmer’ of hope within the bleak re-entry landscape, supporting former offenders and subsequently aiding in their disentanglement from the pervasive carceral webs that emanate from institutional and societal means of control.