Foreigners in a Carceral Age: Immigration and Imprisonment in the US
27 Pages Posted: 27 May 2011
Date Written: May 2011
Abstract
More than a decade ago, Jonathan Simon warned of an expanding interest in locking up refugees. According to Simon, asylum seekers were to provide a new population for mass incarceration. The border was to become the new criminal justice frontier. In 2010, Simon‘s view appears to have been borne out, though perhaps not entirely as he predicted. While the imprisonment of immigrants has indeed boomed in recent years, it is not refugees but a rather more varied population of non-citizens — undocumented workers, "criminal aliens," and, "enemy combatants," which has filled American penal institutions. This article considers these foreigners behind bars.
Keywords: immigration, imprisonment, detention, borders
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