Carceral churn: A sensorial ethnography of the bail and remand court
| Author | Emma K Russell,Bree Carlton and,Danielle Tyson |
| Date | 01 April 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474520967566 |
| Published date | 01 April 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Carceral churn:
A sensorial ethnography
of the bail and
remand court
Emma K Russell
La Trobe University, Australia
Bree Carlton and Danielle Tyson
Deakin University, Australia
Abstract
This article discusses findings from an ethnographic study of a bail and remand court in
Victoria, Australia. Through a focus on the sensory dimensions of forced movements
within and through the bail court, the article contributes to the burgeoning sub-field of
sensory criminology and develops the concept of ‘carceral churn’. The article argues
that the bail court’s churn reproduces criminal and carceral subjects and is implicated in
a project of carceral buildup. The churn of the bail court involves forms of mobility and
exchange via the inter- and intra-carceral spaces that variously dull, distort, deprive or
assault the senses with oppressive effects. This includes both ‘new’ and ‘old’ penal
technologies such as holding cells, the custody dock, AV links and court-prison trans-
port. The analysis of sensory violence challenges the notion that court ‘efficiency’ can
improve justice experiences and outcomes and instead calls for increased attention to
the harms and lethality that flow from carceral churn left un-checked.
Keywords
carceral mobilities, ethnography, magistrates’ court, sensory criminology
Corresponding author:
Emma K Russell, La Trobe University, Plenty Road & Kingsbury Drive, Melbourne, Victoria 3086, Australia.
Email: e.russell@latrobe.edu.au
Punishment & Society
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474520967566
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2022, Vol. 24(2) 151–169
The bail and remand court is a space of carceral-judicial power that authorises the
transfer of people from the streets to the prison. In so doing, it transforms crim-
inalised subjects into prisoners. The bail court is a crucial node within a
system that we characterise as ‘carceral churn’. The process of bail and remand
demands carceral mobilities: it churns out un-sentenced prisoners and others sub-
ject to conditional unfreedom in the community via curfews, reporting, and var-
ious other forms of surveillance and governance. Conventionally, to churn is to
‘move or cause to move about vigorously’, such as waves in a wild sea, while ‘to
churn out’ is ‘to produce mechanically’, as in writing or art when large volumes of
work are produced (Oxford Dictionary of English, 2015). For our purposes, ‘car-
ceral churn’ refers to the production of carceral subjects via the disciplined move-
ment of people through the carceral circuits involved in the bail and remand
process: police stations, court cells, enclosed transport vehicles, prisons, and so
on. This process, we argue, maps criminality onto bodies and feeds into a
larger political project that funnels public funds towards police and prison
build-up.
To develop our analysis, this article draws on data gathered during ethnograph-
ic fieldwork conducted in an Australian bail and remand court. Through observing
the bail court in action and conducting interviews with criminal defense and duty
lawyers working within it, we found that carceral churn is both logistic and sensory
in nature. While we studied this particular court in a specific context of significant
carceral growth, much of which is attributed to increased remands, the notion of
churn cannot be reduced to a reductionist and quantitative account of bail hear-
ings and remands (i.e. the numbers of people ‘processed’ through the bail court
each day, week, month, etc.), but through the visual, auditory and sensory cues
that position subjects unequally within circuits of power. Our ethnographic
approach to this research focuses on the ‘micro-politics’ (Travers, 2017) and
day-to-day machinations of the bail court to highlight how carceral churn compels
movement and subject reformation through institutionally violent spaces that var-
iously dull, distort, deprive and assault the senses.
Our analysis affirms the centrality of mobilities to carceral systems (Moran
et al., 2013; Turner and Peters, 2016) and extends this literature by developing a
conception of carceral churn in and through the bail court – an integral ‘node in an
expansive prison network’ (Follis, 2015: 945). While the idea that movement can be
used for punitive ends in carceral environments is well established (Gill, 2013;
Moran et al., 2012), we build on this idea by highlighting the transformative effects
of carceral mobilities in the specific context of the bail and remand court.
Through attunement to the sensory dimensions of churn through the bail court,
the article further contributes to emergent discussions of the importance of the
senses in advancing critical and cultural criminological inquiry (Brown and
Carrabine, 2019; McClanahan and South, 2019; Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2016).
Beyond sight, the other senses of sound, touch, smell and taste have received
limited criminological attention (although, this is gradually changing, especially
in relation to sound (Garc
ıa Ruiz and South, 2018; Russell and Carlton, 2020;
152 Punishment & Society 24(2)
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