Pains, problems and the texture of imprisonment: Building on the emprical and theoretical contributions of The Society of Captives

• In Event: PWG - Revisiting ‘the pains of imprisonment’

Abstract

As Haggerty & Bucerius (2020: 1) have recently stated, “‘The ‘pains of imprisonment’’ is one of the most prominent concepts in the social study of incarceration”, indeed, perhaps in criminology more broadly. In this paper, however, I suggest that an emphasis among prison scholars on the pains and deprivations of imprisonment may have inhibited understanding of the experience of imprisonment, and impeded the kind of theory-building that Sykes promoted. Drawing on data regarding the ‘problems of imprisonment’, ranked according to their reported severity, I show that these problems are relatively consistent in substance across different prisoner groups, but do not correspond with Sykes’s categorisation of the ‘pains’ of confinement, and vary considerably in their intensity. Such findings indicate that prisoners may be more concerned with relational and existential issues ‘beyond’ the prison than with their immediate institutional treatment. Drawing on data from men’s and women’s establishments, I suggest that, to adequately describe and compare prisoners’ experiences, it is more fruitful to examine the ‘texture’ of imprisonment than the ‘pains’ or ‘problems’ specifically. I conclude by outlining how this focus helps us to both understand and de-centre prisoner social life as an object of analysis.

Author

• Ben Crewe, University of Cambridge