To function and persist in its current form, the carceral status quo depends on not only the consent of the governed, but also the consent of the punished. Yet, while processes of consent are multi-faceted and integral to contemporary penality, they remain under-theorized in punishment scholarship, particularly in US contexts. We present a typology of consent processes both external and internal to the American prison to advance a Gramscian theory of penal punishment. We highlight how the actions and outlooks of the dominant and dominated—among the incarcerated and the free—coalesce to generate carceral hegemony across multiple levels. We apply this framework in an interpretive revisit of previous ethnographic fieldwork conducted in distinct US prison settings. Reinterpreting prior empirical evidence through a Gramscian lens reveals how acquiescence to punitive excess unfolds at macro, meso, and micro levels. Particular attention is paid to ground-level penal labor practices in this process.
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