In this paper we explore the potential of literary fiction to cultivate a more robust, rigorous, and creative criminological imagination. In particular, we initiate a dialogue between Tayari Jones’ 2018 novel An American Marriage and recent theoretical developments in ghost criminology to extend scholarly understandings of the impact of imprisonment on romantic relationships. Relying on ghost criminology’s major theoretical tenets—presence/absence, (in)visibility, and disrupted temporalities—we make a case for conceptualizing the novel’s central romantic relationship as haunted by imprisonment. We conclude with some forward-looking considerations of how these findings could inform new empirical research and theorizing at the intersection of incarceration, romantic relationships, and collateral consequences.
AielloBLMcCorkelJA (2018) ‘It will crush you like a bug’: Maternal incarceration, secondary prisonization, and children’s visitation. Punishment & Society20(3): 351–374.
2.
ApelR (2016) The effects of jail and prison confinement on cohabitation and marriage. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science665(1): 103–126.
3.
ApelRBloklandAAJNieuwbeertaP, et al. (2010) The impact of imprisonment on marriage and divorce: A risk set matching approach. Journal of Quantitative Criminology26: 269–300.
4.
AtkinsonCBranganL (2024) ‘There is more than one sort of prison, captain’: A popular criminology of prisons and penal regimes in star wars. Crime, Media, Culture20(4): 370–387.
5.
AtkinsonRRodgersT (2016) Pleasure zones and murder boxes: Online pornography and violent video games as cultural zones of exception. British Journal of Criminology56: 1291–1307.
6.
ArmstrongS (2018) The cell and the corridor: Imprisonment as waiting, and waiting as mobile. Time & Society27(2): 133–154.
7.
BiberK (2022) Destroyed records. In: FiddlerMKindynisTLinnemannT (eds) Ghost Criminology: The Afterlife of Crime and Punishment. New York University Press, pp. 155–179.
8.
BiberKDaltonD (2009) Making art from evidence: Secret sex and police surveillance in the tearoom. Crime, Media, Culture5(3): 243–267.
9.
Blanco delPMPeerenE (2013) The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory. London: Bloomsbury.
10.
BramanD (2004) Doing Time on the Outside: Incarceration and Family Life in Urban America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
11.
BreenJ (2010) Secondary effects of imprisonment: The new direction of prison research. Irish Probation Journal7: 46–64.
12.
BrismanA (2017) On narrative and green cultural criminology. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy6(2): 64–77.
13.
BrownM (2022) The specter of white supremacy. In: FiddlerMKindynisTLinnemannT (eds) Ghost Criminology: The Afterlife of Crime and Punishment. New York University Press, pp. 88–109.
14.
CampbellE (2024) Techno-digital policing and speculative fictions: Towards a criminology of the future. Crime, Media, Culture. OnlineFirst.
15.
CarrNRobinsonG (2022) Time and Punishment: New Contexts and Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
16.
CastleKM (2022) A sisterhood: The collective resilience born in the periphery of prison. Sociological Inquiry93(1): 117–152.
17.
CoddH (2008) In the Shadow of Prison: Families, Imprisonment and Criminal Justice. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.
18.
ColvinS (2015) Why should criminology care about literary fiction? Literature, life narratives and telling untellable stories. Punishment & Society17(2): 211–229.
19.
ComfortM (2008) Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
20.
ComfortM (2019) Developments and next steps in theorizing the secondary prisonization of families. In: HuttonMMoranD (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Prison and the Family. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 65–80.
21.
CondryRMinsonS (2021) Conceptualizing the effects of imprisonment on families: Collateral consequences, secondary punishment, or symbiotic harms?Theoretical Criminology25(4): 540–558.
22.
CondryRScharff SmithP (2018) Prisons, Punishment, and the Family: Towards a New Sociology of Punishment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
23.
CreweBHulleySWrightS (2020) Life Imprisonment from Young Adulthood: Adaptation, Identity and Time. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
24.
DenhamJSpokesM (2019) Thinking outside the ‘murder box’: Virtual violence and pro-social action in video games. British Journal of Criminology59(3): 737–755.
25.
DerridaJ (1994) Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. New York: Routledge.
26.
DeShayRVieraitisLCopesH, et al. (2021) Managing courtesy stigma: Women and relationships with men in prison. Criminal Justice Studies34(10): 1–17.
27.
EllisR (2021) Prisons as porous institutions. Theory and Society50(2): 175–199.
28.
FiddlerMKindynisTLinnemannT (eds) (2022) Ghost Criminology: The Afterlife of Crime and Punishment. New York: New York University Press.
FiddlerMLinnemannTKindynisT (2024) Ghost criminology: A framework for the discipline’s spectral turn. British Journal of Criminology64: 1–16.
31.
FisherM (2014) Ghosts of my Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Winchester: Zero Books.
32.
FisherM (2016) Ghosts of my life: Writings on depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures. Zero Books.
33.
FrauleyJ (2010) Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
34.
FredrikssonT (2023) Hidden depths: A deep dive into what lies beneath, before, and beyond criminological thought. Crime, Media, Culture19(3): 409–411.
35.
GarneauBLehalleS (2021) Carceral experiences and custodial lifeworld of prisoners’ families: The impacts of ion scan technology in Canadian prisons. Incarceration2(2): 1–18.
GordonA (2008) Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
38.
HetheringtonK (2001) Phantasmagoria/Phantasm Agora: Materialities, spatialities and ghosts. Space & Culture11 & 12: 25–41.
39.
HirschiT (1969) Causes of Delinquency. Berkeley: University of California Press.
40.
HoreckT (2014) ‘A film that will rock you to your core’: Emotion and affect in dear Zachary and the real crime documentary. Crime, Media, Culture10(2): 151–167.
41.
HomerP (1976) C. S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought. New York: Harper & Row.
42.
HuttonM (2018) Legally sanctioned stigmatization of prisoners’ families. In: CondryRScharff SmithP (eds) Prisoners, Punishment, and the Family: Towards a New Sociology of Punishment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 230–243.
43.
HuttonMMoranD (eds) (2019) The Palgrave Handbook of Prison and the Family. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
44.
KirkDSWakefieldS (2018) Collateral consequences of punishment: A critical review and path forward. Annual Review of Criminology1: 171–194.
45.
KohmSAGreenhillP (2011) Pedophile crime films as popular criminology: A problem of justice?Theoretical Criminology15(2): 192–215.
46.
KotovaA (2019) ‘Time. . .lost time’: Exploring how partners of long-term prisoners experience the temporal pains of imprisonment. Time & Society28(2): 478–498.
47.
LanskeyCLöselFMarksonL, et al. (2019) Prisoners’ families and the referred pains of imprisonment. In: CondryRScharff SmithP (eds) Prisoners, Punishment, and the Family: Towards a New Sociology of Punishment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 181–195.
48.
LeonCSKilmerAR (2023) “Secondary registrants”: A new conceptualization of the spread of community control. Punishment & Society25(3): 641–664.
49.
LeverentzAM (2006) The love of a good man?: Romantic relationships as a source of support or hindrance for female ex-offenders. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency43(4): 459–488.
50.
LinnemannT (2015) Capote’s ghosts: Violence, media and the spectre of suspicion. British Journal of Criminology55: 514–533.
51.
LittlefieldM (2011) Historicizing csi and its effect(s): The real and the representational in American scientific detective fiction and print news media, 1902–1935. Crime, Media, Culture7(2): 133–148.
52.
LordeA (1984) Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg: Crossing Press.
53.
MarksonLLöselFSouzaKLanskeyC (2015) Male prisoners’ family relationships and resilience in resettlement. Criminology & Criminal Justice15(4): 423–441.
54.
MassogliaMRemsterBKingRD (2010) Stigma or separation? Understanding the incarceration-divorce relationship. Social Forces90(1): 133–155.
55.
MauerMChesney-LindM (eds) (2002) Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment. New York: The New Press.
56.
McGregorR (2022) A Criminology of Narrative Fiction. Bristol: Bristol University Press.
57.
McNeillFCrockett ThomasPCathcart FrodenL, et al. (2022) Time after time: Imprisonment, re-entry and enduring temporariness. In: CarrNRobinsonG (eds) Time and Punishment: New Contexts and Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 171–202.
58.
MonterrosaAE (2023) Imprisoning intimacy: The expanding sites of racialized-gendered carceral violence. Gender & Society37(3): 447–467.
59.
MoranDDisneyT (2019) ‘It’s a horrible, horrible feeling’: Ghosting and the layered geographies of absent-presence in the prison visiting room. Social & Cultural Geography20(5): 692–709.
60.
MowattRAFrenchBHMalebrancheDA (2013) Black/female/body hypervisibility and invisibility: A Black feminist augmentation of feminist Leisure Research. Journal of Leisure Research45(5): 644–660.
61.
MowenTJVisherCA (2016) Changing the ties that bind: How incarceration impacts family relationships. Criminology & Public Policy15(2): 503–528.
62.
NellisM (2009) The aesthetics of redemption: Released prisoners in American film and literature. Theoretical Criminology13(1): 129–146.
63.
O’DonnellI (2014) Prisoners, Solitude and Time. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
64.
PageJGoodmanP (2018) Creative disruption: Edward Bunker, carceral habitus, and the criminological value of fiction. Theoretical Criminology24(2): 222–240.
65.
PagerD (2003) The mark of a criminal record. American Journal of Sociology108(5): 937–975.
66.
PâquetL (2021) Seeking justice elsewhere: Informal and formal justice in the true crime podcasts trace and the teacher’s pet. Crime, Media, Culture17(3): 421–437.
67.
PetermonJD (2014) Hyper(in)visibility: Reading Race and Representation in the Neoliberal Era. PhD Dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara.
68.
QuinnKCanossiniEEvansV (2020) Carceral imaginaries in science fiction: toward a palimpsestic understanding of penality. In: HarmesMHarmesMHarmesB (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 473–485.
69.
RafterNBrownM (2011) Criminology Goes to the Movies: Crime Theory and Popular Culture. New York: New York University Press.
70.
RaymenT (2018) Living in the end times through popular culture: An ultra-realist analysis of the walking dead as popular criminology. Crime, Media, Culture14(3): 429–447.
71.
RuggerioV (2003) Crime in Literature: Sociology of Deviance and Fiction. London: Verso.
72.
Russell-BrownK (1998) The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police Harassment, and Other Microaggressions. New York: New York University Press.
73.
SampsonRLaubJ (1993) Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points through Life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
74.
SealL (2023) Haunted by ghost criminology. Crime, Media, Culture19(3): 402–404.
75.
SealLO’NeillM (2019) Imaginative Criminology: Of Spaces Past, Present and Future. Bristol: Bristol University Press.
76.
SiennickSEStewartEAStaffJ (2014) Explaining the association between incarceration and divorce. Criminology52(3): 371–398.
77.
SpectorH (2016) The cosmopolitan subject and the question of cultural identity: The case of crime and punishment. Crime, Media, Culture13(1): 21–40.
78.
WakemanS (2014) ‘No one wins. One side just loses more slowly’: The Wire and drug policy. Theoretical Criminology18(2): 224–240.
79.
WalkerM (2022) Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
80.
WoodM (2019) Algorithmic tyranny: Psycho-pass, science fiction and the criminological imagination. Crime, Media, Culture15(2): 323–339.
81.
WoodM (2023) Communing with the many shades of ghost criminology. Crime, Media, Culture19(3): 404–409.
82.
WorthSE (2017) In Defense of Reading. Rowman & Littlefield.
