Anthropology of Prisons

[Platysaurus]

Anyone know any anthropologists who do stuff on prisons? I'm applying for Grad school in the US in the next few months and I'm interested (at least for the purposes of a Statement of Purpose) in prison systems particularly in a Latin American (Brazilian and/or Bolivian) context - but in terms of finding a good fit with departments I'm lost because I can find next to nothing about prisons outside of Foucault and Wacquant, and nothing by any anthropologists at any rate. Obviously they're not quite the typical fieldsite and I'm not looking to entirely emulate another academic's work, so I guess I'm asking if anyone knows any good anthro departments in the field of law, justice, punishment etc., especially outside a US context.

I'm Australian so I'm a little lost wading through all these universities aside from the big-name ones.

[coffeeandmilk]

I know the work of Chris Garces in Ecuador. (He is at cornell, which is a great anthro program)

“The cross politics of Ecuador’s penal state” Cultural Anthropology 25(3): 459-496 (2010)

[AKJen]

Lorna Rhodes at University of Washington does work on prisons in the US. She also has a review article that might be helpful, "Toward an Anthropology of Prisons." (2001) Annual Review of Anthropology 30:65-87.

[msafiri]

The name that comes to mind for me is Ruthie Gilmore (author of Golden Gulag), but her focus is on the USA. You might want to try google scholar and regular google searches to help you identify people and programs. There are a bunch of geographers and sociologists studying prisons and the prison-industrial complex these days, if you're open to being in another discipline. Best of luck!

[Platysaurus]

Yeah I've found plenty of sociology work, but the lack of anthropological stuff is annoying and the focus is mainly on supermaximum security prisons and the prison-industrial system, all of which basically work off the US, and a little bit of Europe. There's a few historians working on prisons in Latin America but Google Scholar just keeps throwing Wacquant back at me. But those are all good reading suggestions, any excuse to procrastinate about GRE study is good!