Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail

Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail
ISBN-10
0190072865
ISBN-13
9780190072865
Category
Social Science
Pages
289
Language
English
Published
2022
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Author
Michael L. Walker

Description

"Indefinite is the first major ethnographic study of American jails since the advent of racialized mass incarceration. The author was confined in a southern California county jail system during which time, he conducted what he calls an organic ethnography of jail life. The resulting study is an investigation of the vagaries of jail living, the relationship between custodial deputies and penal residents, the endurance strategies residents employed to protect their emotional selves from being overwhelmed by the nature of jail punishment, and consequences of extremes of vulnerability, uncertainty, and penal time. Indefinite toggles between what is peculiar to jail time and what is familiar in broader social life to develop general concepts, sensitizing schemes, and theories about social life that expand beyond the specifics of jail without reducing jail to a mere case study"--

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