Insecurity and Fragility: The Perpetual Duo of Precarity for ‘Convict Criminologists’ in a Risk Averse Academy

• In Event: Identity, Vulnerability, and Resistance

Abstract

Risk management in the criminal justice system reflects a wider societal risk consciousness. Emphasis on risk in society exposes people with criminal records to constant and explicit forms of governance. For those who have also been imprisoned, these forms of governance are even more acute, extending long after release into their day-to-day life, especially the workplace; once released, individuals often remain captives in society (Gunder and Kavish 2022). This process of “extending punishment into an indefinite future after release from prison... [and] making unbearable the lives of former offenders” (O’Malley 2010: 3) is regularly the subject of criminological analysis. Less common are accounts that combine abstract theorisation and direct personal experience of this phenomenon. Arguably, criminological understanding of such experiences can be enhanced by those who are directly embedded within them, and ‘Convict Criminology’ (CC) is the name given to this potential (Earle 2018). Despite the recent interest in embedding lived experience in academic practice, for Convict Criminologists, the collateral and informal pains of imprisonment follow them into university and underpin their precarity, leading to an ingrained ‘Status Fragility’ (Tietjen and Kavish 2021). This presentation draws upon an auto-ethnographic approach, using two pivotal junctures in the author’s journey, from prison to university and identifying as a Convict Criminologist. It considers how risk aversion and (mis)management are operationalised in a university to extend the experience of punishment after release from prison.

Author

• Edwin Schreeche-Powell, The University of Greenwich