Abstract
This paper advances carceral geographies by situating water in relation to the nexus of care and control in the carceral setting. Critical for both hygiene and health, but also requiring control and management, consideration of water offers an analytical lens to uncover everyday, intimate and embodied institutional spaces of care and control mediated by water both in its elemental form, and via water infrastructures. Drawing on extensive qualitative data generated with serving prisoners in the UK, the paper considers carceral relationships with water as variously and simultaneously unruly, restrictive, health‐enabling and therapeutic.
Highlights
Recent work in Geography has addressed the significance of carceral space, which loosely encompasses the prison (Moran, 2015), as well as detention centres (e.g., Hiemstra, 2013; Mountz et al, 2013), halfway houses (e.g., Allspach, 2010) or secure holding facilities for children and young people (Schliehe, 2015), but may extend to sites beyond the traditional conceptualisation of incarceration or confinement (Moran et al, 2017)
We have drawn on data collected as part of a wider research project focusing on the architecture, design and technology of new-build prisons to consider the particular significance of infrastructures of water at the nexus of care and control in the landscape of incarceration
We highlight the potentiality of watery infrastructures in fulfilling a “caring” role in the lived experience of carceral space, which could be further enhanced to the benefit of residents in such spaces
Summary
Funding information Economic and Social Research Council, Grant/Award Number: ES/K011081/1. This paper advances carceral geographies by situating water in relation to the nexus of care and control in the carceral setting. Critical for both hygiene and health, and requiring control and management, consideration of water offers an analytical lens to uncover everyday, intimate and embodied institutional spaces of care and control mediated by water both in its elemental form, and via water infrastructures. Drawing on extensive qualitative data generated with serving prisoners in the UK, the paper considers carceral relationships with water as variously and simultaneously unruly, restrictive, health-enabling and therapeutic. KEYWORDS architecture, carceral geography, health, infrastructure, prison, water
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