Carceral Cultures in Contemporary India

Abstract

Abstract chapter discusses the potential for a decolonial criminology by focusing on the contemporary carceral culture in India. It contends that criminological knowledge and the challenges of comprehending criminality, violence, and imprisonment in India are addressed with hegemonic Western concepts and theories. How does one manoeuvre and negotiate the established requirements and infrastructure of a state science? Is the solution to transcend the restrictive limitations of crime prevention and embrace different, culturally sensitive perspectives to develop an understanding of social harm in numerous public and private spaces? In this context, the chapter deconstructs an inherently chaotic carceral culture manifested in prisons and outside through carceral spillovers. It then investigates how conceptions of chaotic sites and everyday lives, as well as the decentring of research questions from their obvious presence and occurrence, can contribute to the study of crime, violence, and incarceration in contemporary India.