Regimes of Accumulation and the Carceral State in England and Wales

This project examines the forms of expropriation and accumulation which are generated and circulated through an expansive carceral state in England and Wales (E&W). This expansion is clear: pledges to increase the prison population by 20,000 people by the mid-2020s have been matched by moves to recruit 20,000 more police officers, strengthen sentencing powers, eradicate some forms of accountability and increase prison capacity. Meanwhile, over the last few decades new forms of confinement, control and surveillance have been fostered through, for example, punitive immigration policies and the war on terror, and many welfare services have been hardened under rubrics of reform and conditionality. However, while notions of carcerality have been deployed as powerful conceptual tools in mobilising against repressive forms of punishment in recent decades, within E&W there has been no substantive study exploring the regimes of accumulation sustained by a carceral state – their roles and functions – bringing these together into a single analytical frame.