Pretrial processing and the making of incipient carceral citizens

Abstract

Researchers thus far have focused on how carceral citizenship—the unique form of political and social membership generated by criminal-legal contact—emerges at the point of conviction. In this article, we draw on in-depth interviews with 73 pretrial defendants to explore the making of people we call “incipient” carceral citizens: individuals with pending charges who are already “translated” as criminal in the eyes of the state and community. Related to (but distinct from) post-conviction carceral citizenship, incipient carceral citizenship is defined by the uncertainty of pending charges and constriction—the gradual but steady narrowing of pretrial defendants’ social and legal landscape. We show how the instability associated with having pending charges pushed pretrial defendants into the margins of society, where they grappled with their status as incipient carceral citizens whose social worlds and legal options were a shadow of what they once were. Taken together, our findings highlight how pretrial defendants were slowly subsumed into carceral citizenship even before the point of conviction.