Longstanding work by Turner (2014, 2016) has considered the role of the ‘boundary’ as essential to the understanding crime and carcerality. For example, individuals – on committing and being convicted of crime – are often removed from society through the act of bordering, of placing people within a boundary, behind bars. Yet as Turner shows, boundaries are far more porous than many imagine. This research builds on an interest in boundaries to push the very boundaries of what we understand spaces of incarceration, bounding, containment and confinement to be. Spaces other than the prison, the workhouse or the youth justice estate also have ‘carceral’ qualities of control, exclusion and confinement. By thinking of other spaces through a conceptual lens of ‘carcerality’ we may be able to better understand lived experiences, modes of governance, and the politics of control – historically and today.

This research explores offshore spaces as ones of crime and carcerality. Work considers the politics of containment of people at sea (on the prison ship) as well the bordering practices that characterise modern marine governance (in the shape of boundary making spatial management tools such as Marine Protected Areas). Dr Jennifer Turner collaborates with Prof. Kimberley Peters  and Dr Paula Satizábal at the The Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB).

Associated publications:

Peters, K. and Turner, J. (Under contract) Ocean Governance (Beyond) Borders. London: Palgrave Macmillan

Peters, K. and Turner, J. (forthcoming) Carceral seas: An agenda for carceral geography beyond boundaries. Political Geography

Satizábal, P., Le Billon, P., Belhabib, D., Saavedra‐Díaz, L. M., Figueroa, I., Noriega, G. and Bennett, N. J. (2021) Ethical considerations for research on small‐scale fisheries and blue crimes. Fish and Fisheries 22(6) 1160-1166

Saavedra-Díaz, L.M., Figueroa, I., Cordero Díaz, G.P., Satizábal, P., Leyva Tafur, W.A. and Noriega Narváez, G. (2020) Waiting for justice: Fishing ban contestation and the fight for reparation in the Tayrona National Natural Park, Colombia. In: Kerezi, V., Pietruszka, D.K. and Chuenpagdee, R. (Eds.) Blue Justice For Small-Scale Fisheries: A Global Scan. St. John's, NL, Canada: TBTI Global Publication Series

Turner, J. and Peters, K. (2017) Rethinking mobility in criminology: Beyond horizontal mobilities of prisoner transportation. Punishment & Society 19(1) 96-114

Peters, K. and Turner, J. (2015) Between crime and colony: Interrogating (im)mobilities aboard the convict ship. Social and Cultural Geography 16(7) 844-862