This interdisciplinary volume reveals the institutional forces sustaining cycles of confinement for queer people—and asks how they might be transformed.

Queer people are disproportionately incarcerated and otherwise affected by the long reach of carceral systems. The normalized and often invisible mechanisms of state control stretch beyond prison walls and into health care, housing, immigration, legal processes, and social norms. Rainbow Captives investigates the conditions that produce and sustain cycles of confinement for 2SLGBTQ+ individuals.

Contributors to this volume draw on a range of disciplines, from criminology to sociology and law, and chapters encompass perspectives from across the Global North and Global South. Some address the specific challenges confronting 2SLGBTQ+ prisoners, such as communal showers or approaches to treatment and care. Others critique systemic failures, such as the implications of transphobia in litigation or the treatment of lesbians on death row. Still others analyze the extension of carceral logic into social services and community spaces.

Through this bold and innovative attempt to “queer” carceral studies, Rainbow Captives invites readers to imagine what it means to transform systems regulating gender, sexuality, and social belonging through carceral mechanisms.