Miles and Bars Between: The Tertiary Prisonization and Layered Liminality of Prison Visitation Transportation Services

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Ahead of Print.
Prison visitation transportation services perform an important yet understudied role in the process of prison visitation for many people with incarcerated loved ones. This article draws on the findings of an ethnographic study of the experiences of loved ones of incarcerated people using a small, Black-owned prison visitation transportation service. Prison visitation transportation services help to mitigate the carceral state’s inherent function to separate people from their incarcerated loved ones, but in turn these services are also subjected to intensive forms of carceral control themselves. As a result, prison visitation transportation services and their staff experience a form of tertiary prisonization. This ultimately results in the drivers of these services experiencing a heightened and enduring state of layered liminality, which becomes attached to them as individuals.