Anti-torture and the politics of carceral fatalism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24230405 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mattia Pinto (0000-0001-7537-3942, University of York) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-14 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Punishment & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1462-4745 • E-ISSN: 1741-3095 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/14624745261498428 |
| OpenAlex | W7221793071 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 32 |
Anti-torture advocates have long confronted the realities of imprisonment and are acutely aware of its limits. Yet they remain caught between a commitment to punitive justice – demanding that perpetrators of torture face incarceration – and a sustained critique of the prison's systemic failures. Although they recognise that penitentiary institutions routinely violate the very human rights they are meant to uphold, advocates continue to rely on imprisonment as the primary mechanism of accountability for torture. This article argues that the way anti-torture advocates engage with the prison reflects and fosters a politics of ‘carceral fatalism’. Drawing on a survey and 18 semi-structured interviews with anti-torture practitioners in Europe, I show how carceral fatalism operates across three dimensions: cognitive (the inability to imagine a world without prisons), affective (an emotional attachment to criminal accountability), and practical (a pragmatic focus on managing the institution). I argue that this politics of carceral fatalism must be scrutinised for the penal-expansionist underside it generates beneath ostensibly liberal aims. Finally, I advance an alternative account inspired by penal abolitionism, reimagining anti-torture activism not as a mechanism for governing the prison, but as a struggle to resist and ultimately dismantle it.
Criminal liability · Human rights · penal abolitionism · prison administration · Prison reform · punitive justice · Torture · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Criminal Justice and Penology · Torture, Ethics, and Law
Politics Out of History
Four human rights myths
The Torture Letters
The Prevention of Torture
Golden Gulag
“The Most We Can Hope For…”
The Paradoxical Relationship between Criminal Law and Human Rights
Punitive turn and justice cascade
Prison abolition
Resisting punitiveness in Europe
The Cruel Optimism of International Prison Regulation
Figuring the Prison
The Prohibition of Torture and Persons Living in Poverty
Penality and the Penal State
Political fatalism and the (im)possibility of social transformation
At Risk of Rights
Why punishment pleases
A Human Right to Reparations
Mass Incarceration and the Paradox of Prison Conditions Litigation
If You Build It, They Will Fill It
A crisis of crisis management
| Highly cited | No |
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