Punishment & Society
Community Corrections | Corrections/Penology | Criminology & Criminal Justice (General)
Punishment & Society is an international peer-reviewed journal that publishes the highest quality original research and scholarship dealing with punishment, penal institutions and penal control, broadly conceived. The journal's interdisciplinary focus intersects critical scholarship on the penal field with historical and contemporary analyses of race, class, gender, and ethnicity; while its international scope serves to make it relevant to readers and contributors from all parts of the world.
Punishment & Society includes theoretical and empirical contributions from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and methodological approaches, including criminology and penology; sociology of punishment; law & society; penal history; penal theory and philosophy of punishment; postcolonial studies; feminist theory; critical race theory; political economy, border criminologies, and carceral geography.
Each issue includes a lively Book Review section, reviewing the most important new books and publications. It features review essays, symposia and debates as well as shorter reviews, ensuring readers are kept up-to-date on what has been published in this expanding field.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Electronic access:
Punishment & Society is available online.
Punishment & Society is an international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal that publishes the highest quality original research and scholarship dealing with punishment, penal institutions and penal control.
| Alessandro De Giorgi | San José State University, USA |
| Vanessa Barker | Stockholm University, Sweden |
| Zelia Gallo | King’s College London, UK |
| Michael Walker | University of Minnesota,USA |
| Katherine Beckett | University of Washington, USA |
| Malcolm M Feeley | University of California, Berkeley, USA |
| Katja Franko Aas | University of Oslo, Norway |
| David Garland | New York University, USA |
| Marie Gottschalk | University of Pennsylvania, USA |
| Professor Kelly Hannah-Moffat | University of Toronto, Canada |
| Alison Liebling | University of Cambridge, UK |
| Professor Mona Lynch | University of California, Irvine, USA |
| Shadd Maruna | Queens University Belfast, UK |
| Dario Melossi | University of Bologna, Italy |
| Ashley Rubin | University of Hawaii, USA |
| Joachim Savelsberg | University of Minnesota, USA |
| Jonathan Simon | University of California, Berkeley, USA |
| Sonja Snacken | Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium |
| Maximo Sozzo | National University of Litoral, Argentina |
| Richard Sparks | University of Edinburgh, UK |
| Dirk van Zyl Smit | University of Nottingham, UK |
| Ericka Adams | San Jose State University |
| Ana Aliverti | University of Warwick |
| Lynsey Black | Maynooth University, Ireland |
| Mary Francesca Bosworth | University of Oxford, UK |
| Anthony Bottoms | University of Cambridge, UK |
| Louise Brangan | University of Strathclyde, UK |
| Michelle Brown | University of Tennessee, USA |
| Leonidas K. Cheliotis | London School of Economics, UK |
| Jennifer E. Cobbina | Michigan State University, USA |
| Megan Comfort | RTI International |
| Ben Crewe | University of Cambridge, UK |
| John Eason | University of Wisconsin, Madison |
| Anna Eriksson | Monash University |
| Benjamin D Fleury-Steiner | University of Delaware, USA |
| Jerry Flores | University of Toronto |
| David Fonseca | Universidad Federal Soul Bahia |
| Arie Freiberg | Monash University, Australia |
| Zelia Gallo | King’s College London, UK |
| Loraine Gelsthorpe | University of Cambridge, UK |
| Phil Goodman | University of Toronto, Canada |
| David Greenberg | New York University, USA |
| Susila Gurusami | University of Illinois-Chicago |
| Yvonne Jewkes | University of Bath, UK |
| Jize Jiang | Tongji University, China |
| David T. Johnson | University of Hawaii, USA |
| Aaron C. Kupchik | University of Delaware, USA |
| Nicola Lacey | London School of Economics, UK |
| Karen Laidler | University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong |
| Elena Larrauri Pijoan | Pompeu Fabra University, Spain |
| Amy Lerman | University of California, Berkeley |
| Jill A. McCorkel | Villanova University, USA |
| Fergus McNeil | University of Glasgow, UK |
| Reuben Jonathan Miller | University of Michigan, USA |
| Naomi Murakawa | Princeton University |
| David Nelken | University of Macerata, Italy |
| Joshua Page | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, USA |
| Michelle Phelps | University of Minnesota, USA |
| Laura Piacentini | University of Strathclyde, UK |
| John Pratt | University of Wellington, New Zealand |
| Keramet Reiter | University of California, USA |
| Heather Schoenfeld | Northwestern University, USA |
| Joe Sim | Liverpool John Moore's University, UK |
| Gail Super | University of Toronto |
| Thomas Ugelvik | University of Oslo, Norway |
| René Van Swaaningen | Erasmus University, Netherlands |
| Anjuli Verma | University of California, Santa Cruz |
| Lucia Zedner | University of Oxford, UK |
Manuscript Submission Guidelines: Punishment & Society
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics
Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pun to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Punishment & Society will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.
- What do we publish?
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper - Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests - Publishing policies
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving - Preparing your manuscript
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplementary material
4.4 Reference style
4.5 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article - Further information
Before submitting your manuscript to Punishment & Society, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
Punishment & Society includes theoretical and empirical contributions from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives including criminology and penology; the sociology of punishment and penal institutions; penal history; penal law; sentencing theory and the philosophy of punishment.
It also includes a lively book review section, reviewing the most important new books and publications. It features review essays, symposia and debates as well as shorter reviews, ensuring readers are kept up-to-date on what has been published in this expanding field.
The maximum length for articles is 8,000 words, including tables, references, and notes.
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
When writing up your paper, think about how you can make it discoverable. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article through search engines such as Google. For information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords, have a look at this page on the Gateway: How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
Sage does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web-based submission system or other communication. Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:
• The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors
• The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper
• The author has recommended the reviewer
• The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g. Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department and institution).
All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
2.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:
- Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
- Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
- Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.
Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.
Punishment & Society requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
Punishment & Society encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.
3.1.1 Plagiarism
Punishment & Society and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
3.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Author Gateway.
3.3 Open access and author archiving
Punishment & Society offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines
Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files.
Punishment & Society adheres to the Sage Harvard reference style. View the Sage Harvard guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Harvard EndNote output file.
4.5 English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
Punishment & Society is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pun to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
All papers must be submitted via the online system, this includes book review submissions. If you are submitting a book review please include the name of the Book Review Editor who has been working with you in the relevant section of the submission site. If you would like to submit an unsolicited book review please contact the Book Review Editors, as follows:
Dr Ashley Rubin atrubin@hawaii.edu
Dr Harry Annison H.Annison@soton.ac.uk
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.
The collection of ORCID iDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID iD you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.
6. On acceptance and publication
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author and should be returned promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Punishment & Society editorial office as follows: