Henrique Carvalho and Anastasia Chamberlen's forthcoming publication on the motivation to punish in Punishment and Society is now available online at: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1462474517699814

The argument advanced in this paper is that the motivation to punish relies on punishment producing a kind of solidarity that allows individuals to pursue emotional release together with a sense of belonging, without having to question or address why it is that they felt alienated and insecure in the first place. This raises the possibility that the reason why we believe punishment to be useful, and why we are motivated to punish, is because we derive pleasure from the utility of punishment. Simply stated, punishment pleases. It then analyses the relationship between punishment and solidarity to investigate why and how punishment pleases. We argue that the pleasure of punishment is directly linked to the specific kind of solidarity that punishment produces, which we call hostile solidarity. The paper explores the links between punishment and identity in order to examine the allure of hostile solidarity and then draws implications from this perspective and sets out an agenda for future research.

CJC member Anastasia Chamberlen wrote a short piece for The Conversation on prisoner wellbeing last week. Anastasia's article is entitled 'The real prison crisis is the damage the system does to its prisoners' and refers to her own ongoing research with women prisoners.

It will also be published in the Inside Time newspaper (prisoners’ national newspaper) in January.