'Tactics', Agency and Power in Women's Prisons (original) (raw)
Related papers
International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2016
Addressing the dynamics of interpersonal violence, institutionalised abuses and prisoner isolation, this article consolidates critical analyses as challenges to the essentially liberal constructions and interpretations of prisoner agency and penal reformism. Grounded in long-term research with women in prison in the North of Ireland, it connects embedded, punitive responses that undermine women prisoners’ self-esteem and mental health to the brutalising manifestations of formal and informal punishments, including lockdowns and isolation. It argues that critical social research into penal policy and prison regimes has a moral duty, an ethical obligation and a political responsibility to investigate abuses of power, seek out the ‘view from below’. Challenging the revisionism implicit within the ‘healthy prison’ discourse, it argues for alternatives to prison as the foundation of decarceration and abolition.
Embodying Punishment: Emotions, Identities, and Lived Experiences in Women's Prisons
2018
Prison's 'pains' are the pains of the body. (p.187) Embodying Punishment, winner of the British Society of Criminology 2019 book prize, is a rich and fully-theorised account of women's bodily experience of imprisonment within England and Wales, adopting a refreshingly forthright commitment to an explicitly feminist exploration of punishment at the hands of the (inherently patriarchal) State. Throughout this volume, Dr Anastasia Chamberlen explores with sensitivity and passion the ways in which women's experiences of carceral placement and treatment are embodied, paying close attention to the subjective ways in which penal power is inflicted on, felt through, and inscribed upon, the body. This phenomenological study, which privileges women's subjective experiences of prison life, is grounded in data primarily generated through face-to-face interviews with former prisoners, supplemented with 'long-answer questionnaires' from women incarcerated at HMP Bronzefield. The methodological details of the study, based on Chamberlen's experiences as a doctoral researcher, should prove instructive for postgraduate or novice prison researchers, particularly in terms of the challenges of gaining access (or not) and realising an explicitly feminist and phenomenological research design. In fact, these methodological considerations and experiences are so valuable that it seems a shame to have consigned them to the book's appendices. The opening chapters of Embodying Punishment (Introduction and Chapter 1) seek to theoretically frame and historically contextualise the empirical research and findings detailed by Chamberlen across the central matter of the book. Through a historical reflection on the punishment-body relation, Chapter 1 explores the ways in which the criminal justice system has long functioned as a site of regulation, oppression, and resistance for troublesome bodies, making a clear case for the value of embodiment as a critical lens within carceral studies. Indeed, the contents of Chapter 1 serve as a timely reminder (were one needed) that 21st-Century 'justice' systems are rooted in deeply oppressive and colonial methods of dominating others. Here, Chamberlen lays bare the ways in which 'civilised' society has long sought to identify, brand, enslave, and remove-both temporarily and irrevocably-gendered, racialised, and otherwise criminalised bodies. The remainder of the book (Chapters 2 to 6) seeks to locate and extend these ideas through exploring the lived experiences of women in prison. In doing so, Chamberlen constructs a powerful and legitimate challenge to persisting post-Sykesian claims that contemporary penal punishment is directed more towards the mind and soul than the body. Indeed, the bulk of Embodying Punishment acts to systematically dismantle the 'mindbody dualism' which has plagued much penological research (including, on reflection, some of my own), which tends to overlook the role of corporeality in creating the 'pains of imprisonment'. Adopting the lens of embodiment makes space for Chamberlen to construct a uniquely somatic insight into women's embodied perceptions of imprisonment.
The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 2020
Prison's 'pains' are the pains of the body. (p.187) Embodying Punishment, winner of the British Society of Criminology 2019 book prize, is a rich and fully-theorised account of women's bodily experience of imprisonment within England and Wales, adopting a refreshingly forthright commitment to an explicitly feminist exploration of punishment at the hands of the (inherently patriarchal) State. Throughout this volume, Dr Anastasia Chamberlen explores with sensitivity and passion the ways in which women's experiences of carceral placement and treatment are embodied, paying close attention to the subjective ways in which penal power is inflicted on, felt through, and inscribed upon, the body. This phenomenological study, which privileges women's subjective experiences of prison life, is grounded in data primarily generated through face-to-face interviews with former prisoners, supplemented with 'long-answer questionnaires' from women incarcerated at HMP Bronzefield. The methodological details of the study, based on Chamberlen's experiences as a doctoral researcher, should prove instructive for postgraduate or novice prison researchers, particularly in terms of the challenges of gaining access (or not) and realising an explicitly feminist and phenomenological research design. In fact, these methodological considerations and experiences are so valuable that it seems a shame to have consigned them to the book's appendices. The opening chapters of Embodying Punishment (Introduction and Chapter 1) seek to theoretically frame and historically contextualise the empirical research and findings detailed by Chamberlen across the central matter of the book. Through a historical reflection on the punishment-body relation, Chapter 1 explores the ways in which the criminal justice system has long functioned as a site of regulation, oppression, and resistance for troublesome bodies, making a clear case for the value of embodiment as a critical lens within carceral studies. Indeed, the contents of Chapter 1 serve as a timely reminder (were one needed) that 21st-Century 'justice' systems are rooted in deeply oppressive and colonial methods of dominating others. Here, Chamberlen lays bare the ways in which 'civilised' society has long sought to identify, brand, enslave, and remove-both temporarily and irrevocably-gendered, racialised, and otherwise criminalised bodies. The remainder of the book (Chapters 2 to 6) seeks to locate and extend these ideas through exploring the lived experiences of women in prison. In doing so, Chamberlen constructs a powerful and legitimate challenge to persisting post-Sykesian claims that contemporary penal punishment is directed more towards the mind and soul than the body. Indeed, the bulk of Embodying Punishment acts to systematically dismantle the 'mindbody dualism' which has plagued much penological research (including, on reflection, some of my own), which tends to overlook the role of corporeality in creating the 'pains of imprisonment'. Adopting the lens of embodiment makes space for Chamberlen to construct a uniquely somatic insight into women's embodied perceptions of imprisonment.
Critical Criminology, 2017
At the outset of their book, In Search of Safety: Confronting Inequality in Women's Imprisonment, the authors (Barbara Owen, James Wells and Jocelyn Pollock) correctly point out that, ''When most people think about prison, they think about men'' (p. 1). This is due, in large part, to the fact that men make up the bulk of the world's prison population. Of course, too, with some exception, the popular media focuses primarily on males behind bars, which is another contributing factor. Yet, criminology must also be held partially responsible because most of the scholarly books and journal articles on incarceration produced by our colleagues conspicuously overlook the plight of women behind bars. Thus, Owen, Wells and Pollock's scholarly monograph is a much-needed major contribution to the field. Guided by the concepts of pathways, gender-inequality, intersectionality, community, capital, prison culture, human rights, and state-sponsored suffering, the authors attempt to describe women's prison experiences. Owen and her co-authors devote special attention to documenting how female inmates handle challenges to their safety by developing various forms of prison capital. The authors define capital as: any type of resource, or access to a desired resource, that can keep a woman safe while she does her time. In addition to prison forms of social capital (who you know) and human capital (what you know), other specific expressions of cultural, emotional, and economic capital provide the foundation for the search for safety as women do their time (p. 2). Theoretically and conceptually sophisticated, this book presents important data on searching for safety through prison capital and other issues derived from mixed methods, including prisoner and correctional staff focus groups, staff interviews, content analysis of
A concern with questions of selfhood and identity has been central to penal practices in women’s prisons, and to the sociology of women’s imprisonment. Studies of women’s prisons have remained preoccupied with women prisoners’ social identities, and their apparent tendency to adapt to imprisonment through relationships. This article explores the narratives of women in two English prisons to demonstrate the impor- tance of the self as a site of meaning for prisoners and the central place of identity in micro-level power negotiations in prisons.
Cadernos Pagu, 2019
In this study I propose a theoretical-methodological reflection on prison research from the "outside". I argue that people (mostly women) who visit spouses and sons deprived of their liberty are crucial to shaping prisons outside their walls. The relationships that "women of prisoners" establish with their family members, produced and mediated by the prison, demand that they cross prison boundaries to supply prisoners with food, clothing, care and information. This process involves movements between cities, solidarity networks, trust, suspicion and discussions that take place on the lines to enter the prison and in the rooming houses where women stay during the visiting period. The field research that informs the article took place at one of these lodgings and at the prison gate, contributing to the perspective that analysis of prisons should consider movements on the "outside". Conversations between women, visitors and the anthropologist also indicate gender and sexuality articulations in relation to the ethnographic challenges that involve the many tensions in the field.
Situating the Self in Prison Research: Power, Identity, and Epistemology
Despite the central importance of ethnographic methods to sociological understandings of imprisonment, ethnographies of prison life have tended to evade ideas of “connectedness” between researcher and participant. This arguably underplays the epistemological possibilities of the unique characteristic of participant observation: the presence of the embodied, subjectively perceiving researcher in the field. Using data from English women’s prisons, this article argues that attending to the (inter)subjective dimensions of ethnographic research can bring gains in sociological understanding. The analysis considers moments of disruption in field research, exploring themes of emotion, identity, and power. It focuses particularly on experiences of being positioned and misplaced by prisoners and prison staff, and of negotiating a researcher identity as a gay woman in a field in which sexuality is a pervasive theme. It is suggested that making the self visible in the text offers both substantive insights and a response to some of the dilemmas generated by even marginal participation in a complex field like a prison.
Power, Adaptation and Resistance in a Late-Modern Men's Prison
British Journal of Criminology, 2007
Based on an ethnographic study of a medium-security UK men's training prison, this article has two main aims: to document the nature and experience of power in the late-modern prison, and to detail the ways in which prisoners adapt to these mechanisms of penal power. It is argued that although overt resistance is uncommon and prisoners generally appear highly compliant, this public transcript of consent comprises a range of prisoner orientations, from normative commitment to strategic, backstage resistance. In this respect, the article highlights the heterogeneous effects of penal power, and illustrates how the different components of prison social order are expressed through a range of adaptations to the ends and techniques of contemporary imprisonment.
Book Review: In Search of Safety - Confronting Inequality in Women’s Imprisonment
CEPS Journal, 2019
In Search of Safety takes a close look at the sources of violence and conflicts in women's prisons. As the reader will probably note, the authors distance themselves from the individual pathology approach to explaining interpersonal conflicts and violence, fo-cusing instead on unravelling the structural inequalities that shape conflict contexts in prisons. This approach reflects the authors' sociological perspective, as they tackle the topic by using gender, intersectionality, structural inequalities, life trajectories and capital as central conceptual investigative tools. The book has several overlapping goals. In addition to witnessing and documenting women's experiences with imprisonment, it offers a new analysis of the contemporary prison by reframing the question of trouble and violence as a further expression of broader societal inequalities. The reader should notice the absence of the increasingly present (in criminology, social sciences and public debates, as well) "security" and "dangerous criminal others" discourse. Rather than searching for dangerous prisoners, the book reveals broader violent and unsafe social structures that create interpersonal violence. The authors examine how intersectional inequalities and cumulative disadvantages are the root of prison conflict and violence. Women must negotiate these inequities by developing forms of prison capital (social, human, cultural , emotional and economic) to ensure their safety while inside. The authors also analyse how conflict and subsequent violence result from the gendered context of substandard prison conditions, inequalities of capital among those imprisoned, and relationships with correctional staff.