Civil and social death: criminal background and the loss of the self

In this chapter I offer an alternative perspective to the themes of ‘dying’, ‘loss’ and bereavement’ within criminal justice and explore the relationships which exist between social practices of punishment and the status or positioning of former lawbreakers who have been punished . First, I provide...

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Main Author: Henley, Andrew
Other Authors: Read, Sue
Format: Book Section
Language:English
Published: Routledge 2018
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53658/
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author Henley, Andrew
author2 Read, Sue
author_facet Read, Sue
Henley, Andrew
author_sort Henley, Andrew
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description In this chapter I offer an alternative perspective to the themes of ‘dying’, ‘loss’ and bereavement’ within criminal justice and explore the relationships which exist between social practices of punishment and the status or positioning of former lawbreakers who have been punished . First, I provide a brief history of punishments in England whose object was to bring about not only the literal death of the condemned person but also their ‘civil death’. Second, I connect these historical practices of juridical ‘othering’ to the ‘pains of criminalisation’ which exist in the present. These, I argue, are manifestations of ‘social death’ which are experienced by people with convictions due to the stigma of having a criminal record. Drawing on Erving Goffman, I then suggest that this ‘mortification of the self’ disrupts pre-and post-conviction social identity in ways which require us to develop wider conceptions of ‘loss’ and ‘bereavement’ in criminal justice research.
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spelling nottingham-536582019-09-22T04:30:11Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53658/ Civil and social death: criminal background and the loss of the self Henley, Andrew In this chapter I offer an alternative perspective to the themes of ‘dying’, ‘loss’ and bereavement’ within criminal justice and explore the relationships which exist between social practices of punishment and the status or positioning of former lawbreakers who have been punished . First, I provide a brief history of punishments in England whose object was to bring about not only the literal death of the condemned person but also their ‘civil death’. Second, I connect these historical practices of juridical ‘othering’ to the ‘pains of criminalisation’ which exist in the present. These, I argue, are manifestations of ‘social death’ which are experienced by people with convictions due to the stigma of having a criminal record. Drawing on Erving Goffman, I then suggest that this ‘mortification of the self’ disrupts pre-and post-conviction social identity in ways which require us to develop wider conceptions of ‘loss’ and ‘bereavement’ in criminal justice research. Routledge Read, Sue Santatzoglou, Sotirios Wrigley, Anthony 2018-03-22 Book Section PeerReviewed application/pdf en https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53658/1/Henley%202018%20Civilandsocialdeath-Reviewed%20Update.pdf Henley, Andrew (2018) Civil and social death: criminal background and the loss of the self. In: Loss, dying and bereavement in the criminal justice system. Routledge key themes in health and society . Routledge, Abingdon, pp. 76-84. ISBN 9781138283572 https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351981255/chapters/10.4324%2F9781315270166-13
spellingShingle Henley, Andrew
Civil and social death: criminal background and the loss of the self
title Civil and social death: criminal background and the loss of the self
title_full Civil and social death: criminal background and the loss of the self
title_fullStr Civil and social death: criminal background and the loss of the self
title_full_unstemmed Civil and social death: criminal background and the loss of the self
title_short Civil and social death: criminal background and the loss of the self
title_sort civil and social death: criminal background and the loss of the self
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53658/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53658/