Bree Carlton

Associate Professor Bree Carlton is Associate Professor in Criminology in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Her research is focused on two key areas: histories of prisons, punishment, and women's imprisonment. She applies penal abolition theory to analyze carceral violence, feminist abolitionist critiques, resistance in prisons, and the heritage of carceral sites. Carlton's work addresses gendered inequalities in criminal justice, post-prison trajectories, and the weaponisation of reform discourses within penal policy.

Key publications include her monograph Imprisoning Resistance: Life and Death in an Australian Supermax Prison (Federation Press, 2007), which reconstructs resistance and mortality in Pentridge Prison's high-security units. She co-authored Resisting Carceral Violence: Women’s Imprisonment and the Politics of Abolition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) with Emma K. Russell, examining anti-carceral feminist campaigns. Carlton edited Women Exiting Prison: Critical Essays on Gender, Post-Release Support and Survival (Routledge, 2013) with Marie Segrave. Recent articles feature 'The weaponisation of “trauma-informed” discourse in prison policy: An abolition feminist critique' (Incarceration, 2023, with Emma K. Russell), 'Heritage, resistance and dissonance: reconstructing Pentridge in a prison tourism theme park' (International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2023), and 'Counter-carceral acoustemologies: sound, permeability and feminist protest at the prison boundary' (2022). Other notable works include 'Pathways, race and gender responsive reform: Through an abolitionist lens' (Theoretical Criminology, 2013, with E. Russell) and ''It’s a gendered issue, 100 per cent': How tough bail laws entrench gender and racial inequality' (2021). With 1,353 citations on Google Scholar, her scholarship influences abolitionist criminology and penal reform debates.

Professional Email: bcarlton@unimelb.edu.au