The Trap: Care and Mystification in Carceral Governance

Abstract

ABSTRACT As a component of the broader carceral state, criminal legal probation has become a defacto social safety net. In this essay, I argue that criminal probation mystifies time and space to create a surface relation of care in Philadelphia. A dynamic of capture between judges and probationers transforms into a relation of care. Though the term “trap” is often used in this context to refer to selling drugs and entry-level work, I argue that the mystifying work of the carceral state produces a deeper trap. The robust and coordinated armature of the carceral state far exceeds any welfare state service, rendering the tools of capture and detention often the only immediate source of interruption in escalating cycles of violence, drug use, or mental distress. To enter the relation of care this dynamic of capture and release creates, however, one has to accept the symbolic terms of its mystification. Racialized urban inequality appears as a mythical story of heroes and villains.