The Community as a Liminal Correctional Space

Abstract

Throughout the Anglophone advanced liberal democracies, punishment is increasingly creeping past the limits of traditional finite sentences and moving beyond the walls of the prison. “Regulatory” mechanisms enforcing limitations on releasees’ use of space beyond the prison walls have increased, and net widening due to technological advancement has resulted in sentenced individuals being punished within the community. At the same time, increasing numbers of released individuals are unable to be reintegrated into the community due to long-term regulatory limitations on their movement in both public and private space. Elements of the architecture of punishment continue to be reshaped and expanded by postsentence regulation, and this article explores the particular experience of released sex offenders being regulated within the community in two examples of “sex offender enclaves.” Drawing upon the experience of the community of Miracle Village (Florida, United States), as well as qualitative interviews conducted in the community of Ōtāhuhu (Auckland, New Zealand), this article begins to map the spread of the correctional apparatus beyond the prison walls and examines the way that risks are concentrated and delegated to certain communities, while the state simultaneously attempts to purge those thought to constitute the gravest risks from other communities.