Deaths in sites of state confinement: a continuum of routine violence and terror

With the exception of a few studies and collections (Moore & Scraton, 2014; Scraton and McCulloch, 2006; Scraton and McCulloch, 2009), there is a marked absence of critical, academic research which examines and provides a theoretical and political framework for analysing deaths in sites of state confinement. This critical work has directly challenged the positivist discourses which have dominated state policies, expert definitions and liberal scholarship in this area, whose primary and enduring focus around deaths in police custody, prisons and in other sites of state confinement has been largely on the pathological deficiencies of the deceased, the poor practices and attitudes of individual state servants and the failure to adhere to broader, preventative policies such as risk assessment and management. However, its reliance on generalised concepts related to the violence of incarceration (see Scraton and McCulloch, 2006, 2009) and the violence of neglect (Cunneen, 2006) needs development in order to capture the nuanced mechanics of how institutional environments produce harm, death and trauma.