Queer investments in punishment are practices that not only symbolically feed punitive logics, but also provide material resources to sustain social and institutional structures of punishment. To invest in something is to give it resources or power in order that it might be sustained, strengthened or expanded usually with the aim of generating a direct benefit to the investor. The concept of investment recognizes both the institutional structures of punishment and the role of individuals and groups in upholding, maintaining and strengthening such institutions. Imprisonment itself instantiates the conditions of social, political and civil death, and also includes particularly when considering the health conditions within prison and the premature death rates of prisoner and ex-prisoner populations biological death. The language of investment also highlights parallels between social investments in punishment and financial investments in carceral capitalism. Capital punishment is certainly not equivalent to imprisonment, the implication that a life-sentence is a more humane alternative to death ought to be questioned.