The purloined prisoner

This article argues, in the form of demonstration, for the necessity of disciplinary openness in punishment and society scholarship. Theories about the political culture of punishment and sentimental accounts of the toll mass incarceration takes on the personal lives of millions are insufficient for developing a critical knowledge of the relationship between race, law and gender. Approaching the object of the letter unfettered by traditional disciplinary methods, the article traces the centrality of the prisoner’s letter in the lifeworld of punishment. The letter is analyzed as both itself a paper-trail, and the subject of various other forms of paper-trails, including prisoners’ First Amendment rights jurisprudence, official political rhetoric, and cinematic production.