From 12-14 October 2022, a conference was held in Giessen, Germany, entitled "Prisons Beyond Punishment: Exploring Political Technologies of Confinement,” and organized by Professor Andreas Langenohl of the University of Giessen and the collaborative research center Dynamics of Security, and Dr. Mina Ibrahim of the MENA Prison Forum and the Center for Conflict Studies at the University of Marburg.

The conference brought together researchers and academics working on carceral dynamics and legacies in both the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and Eastern Europe. The connections between these two regions on the topic of prisons, detention, torture, and surveillance allowed for information and practice exchange between participants, highlighted by the recent dynamics resulting from the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The conference was divided into six panels that allowed presenters to share their individual work and projects while facilitating collective discussion of the dynamics addressed. The first panel focused on sites of incarceration, ranging from those in operation, those abandoned, and those demolished. The second panel addressed social techniques of violence, while the third engaged with the role of agency and its limits regarding carceral conditions and dynamics. Panels four and five engaged with cultural and artistic representations of prison through the respective panels on visualizations of prisons and representations of prison in literature, music, and heritage fields of study. The last panel encouraged consideration of dynamics of incarceration that are not relegated solely to the physical spaces of “prison,” and instead considered additional or related forms of confinement inside and outside of these locations.

The discussion sessions fostered active and lively discussions, notably around topics such as the limits of articulation of certain difficult-to-express or ephemeral dynamics of prison experiences, the ethics and positionality of researchers working on these issues, the value of reading trans-regional prison experiences, and the role of religion and faith in carceral environments.