Getting in Deep: Affirmative Social Science and Trusting Participants in a High Security Prison

• In Event: Prisons Research beyond the Conventional

Abstract

In 1967 Stan Cohen and Laurie Taylor converted their evening sociology classes with prisoners in Durham’s high security wing into a prisoner-led research project. These discussions led to their classic book, Psychological Survival: The Experience of Long-Term Imprisonment. Their collaborative and phenomenological approach to prisons research was based on mutual trust, intellectual curiosity, and resistance to the limitations and indignities of ‘standard test-driven psychological research’. In 2009 the authors found themselves in a similar position. Unconventional methods evolved organically from our exposure to a complex and apparently impenetrable penal field. In order to provide accurate description, challenge systems of meaning, and stimulate moral dialogue via research, our methods must include being fully human. Intimate exposure to the field poses dangers, but brings rewards

Authors

• Helen Arnold, University Campus Suffolk

• Alison Liebling, Cambridge University