Emotion Regulation in Prison

• In Event: Gender and Incarceration Experiences: Social Constructions and in Their Own Words

Abstract

Regulating emotion is a fundamental part of everyday functioning. Previous accounts of prison life have acknowledged the importance of emotion control, but have not considered insights from psychological literature that allow us to get more specific about how emotion is actually expressed and regulated in prison. I introduce my research on emotion regulation using data from a medium security men's prison and a closed category women’s prison to show how we can develop our understanding of prisoner emotion. This can help us to go beyond dramaturgical metaphors of prison life and may have something to say about increasing the 'emotional survivability' of prisons.

Author

• Ben Laws, University of Cambridge