The Virtual Reality of Imprisonment: the Impact of Social Media on Prisoner Agency and Prison Structure in Russian prisons

Prison agencies around the world are reporting a rise in the use of illicit communication devices in prison. Nevertheless, there have been no criminological studies examining prisoners’ online behavior. Using Russia as a case study, this paper reports findings from new research on prisoners’ illicit...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Piacentini, Laura (Author) ; Katz, Elena M. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2018
In: Oñati Socio-Legal Series
Year: 2018, Volume: 8, Issue: 2, Pages: 183-204
Online Access: Volltext (Resolving-System)
Volltext (kostenfrei)
Rights Information:CC BY 4.0
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Keywords:
Rusia
Russia
absentism
Agencia
Agency
ausencia
estructura
Prisoners
reclusos
redes sociales
Social Media
Structure
Description
Summary:Prison agencies around the world are reporting a rise in the use of illicit communication devices in prison. Nevertheless, there have been no criminological studies examining prisoners’ online behavior. Using Russia as a case study, this paper reports findings from new research on prisoners’ illicit internet use and the effects on prisoner agency and prison structure. Our main finding is that Russian penality sits at the nexus of two processes. First, penality is de-institutionalised whereby the prison, discursively speaking, is no longer fixed to a built form. Second, penality is reflexively re-territorialised by placing prisoner agency onto a third space. The paper presents a new conceptual framework of prisoners as absent, which reveals Russian penality as culturally contingent and politically resilient. The interplay between de-institutionalisation and re-territorialisation has produced a new penal imaginary - a carceral motif for the twenty first century - in the form of a virtual world.
Con Rusia como estudio de caso, este artículo informa acerca de los hallazgos de nuevas investigaciones sobre el uso ilícito de Internet por parte de los reclusos, y de los efectos sobre la agencia de los reclusos y sobre la estructura de la prisión. Nuestro principal hallazgo es que las prisiones de Rusia son el punto de encuentro de dos procesos: primero, la vida en prisión se desinstitucionaliza, de modo que la prisión, en sentido discursivo, ya no está vinculada a una edificación; segundo, la existencia carcelaria se reterritorializa de forma reflexiva, a través de la traslación de la agencia del prisionero a un tercer espacio. El artículo presenta un marco conceptual nuevo de prisioneros en ausencia, que revela que la vida carcelaria de Rusia es culturalmente contingente y políticamente resiliente. La interrelación entre desinstitucionalización y reterritorialización ha producido un nuevo imaginario - un motivo carcelario para el siglo XXI - en forma de mundo virtual.
Item Description:Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 200-204
ISSN:2079-5971
DOI:10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-0933