Spaces of confinement in the institutions of care and control in Finland

The aging population and the recent reports of mistreatment in psychiatric hospitals and retirement homes indicate a need for a more diverse study on the institutions of care. Leaning on the conceptual framework of carceral geographies and critical legal geographies, the main theoretical objective is to find new conceptual tools for understanding the processes of care and control in institutions.

The research project asks, firstly, how are the Finnish institutions of care and control constituted in laws, rules, norms, regulations and discourses? Secondly, how are the overlapping norms actualized in the institutions of care and control, and what kinds of carceral mechanisms, practices and coping strategies can be identified? And thirdly, by which means can alternatives for confinement be produced, and how do they change the spatial characters of care and control?