Adrienne Roberts

“..insofar as the rise of increasingly harsh laws, invasive surveillance practices, and militant policing tactics and the concomitant spectacular rise in incarceration rates are part of the attempt of the state to contain the social insecurities generated by neoliberalism, these insecurities – and the policies that are intended to address them – are deeply gendered. While certain gender gaps have narrowed under neoliberalism, including the gender gap in employment, education and incarceration, this has been accompanied by the rise of particularly gendered (and racialized) forms of precariousness and disadvantage.”
― Adrienne Roberts, Gendered States of Punishment and Welfare

“.. while there is some truth to the claims (..) that the prison plays an important function in containing the contradictions that have emerged in the contemporary phase of capitalist development, this should not be viewed simply as a response to growing social cleavages. Rather, as part of the gendered social ontology of capitalism, the law is itself constitutive of historically specific relations of production and social reproduction. Thus, the restructuring of the neoliberal state in ways that limit its ability to regulate the movement of capital across borders, on-going forms of primitive accumulation that enclose and police formerly public spaces and the criminalization and incarceration of particular sectors of the poor and working-class population are all manifestations of the neoliberal project”
― Adrienne Roberts, Gendered States of Punishment and Welfare