This talk will examine the intersection of mass incarceration and mass child support enforcement in the contemporary U.S. Based on material from my new book, Prisons of Debt, I analyze how these state systems work together to create complex entanglements for formerly- incarcerated fathers--entanglements that lead to cycles of debt and punishment. Drawing on observations in child support courts across the country and interviews with 145 indebted fathers, I show how these cycles too often undermine familial wellbeing and relations of care and reciprocity. The talk also connects the criminalization of child support to conceptualizations of state hybridity, unraveling the cross-system linkages and legal interlacing that create prisons of debt.
Lynne Haney is a Professor of Sociology at New York University, where she also directs the Law and Society Undergraduate Program. She is a sociologist, feminist scholar, and ethnographer of the state. In her research, she has ventured inside state institutions across time and place: from the socialist welfare system in Hungary to prisons for mothers in California to child support courts throughout the U.S. Her work is driven by an interest in how state policies and practices shape gender relations and identities, often in unintended and unexpected ways. And she focuses all of her work on the effects of state institutions on the lives and livelihoods of people from marginalized communities-- and on how welfare and criminal justice policies can be transformed to improve their lives in meaningful, sustainable ways.
Have questions? Please reach out to the Colloquium Committee: Dr. Bryan Sykes (blsykes@uci.edu), Dr. Tony Cheng (tony.cheng@uci.edu), Dr. Nicole Itturiaga (n.iturriaga@uci.edu), and Shanice “Aaliyah” Hyler (shyler@uci.edu).
