‘It’s a horrible, horrible feeling’: ghosting and the layered geographies of absent–presence in the prison visiting room

Dominique Moran,Tom Disney

doi:10.1080/14649365.2017.1373303

Abstract

This paper advances geographies of absence by considering the multiscalar, overlapping, ambiguous and reciprocal absences inherent in incarceration, and the compound nature of the experiential and embodied absences characteristic of prison visiting. It progresses extant literatures by considering as absent a group which differs from those previously thus conceptualised, and by postulating absence even when whereabouts are known and co-presence is possible. Drawing on a major RCUK-funded study of the socio-spatial context of prison visitation in the U.K., it brings carceral geographies and geographies of absence into productive dialogue, demonstrating that attention to the felt presence of absence in the context of prison visiting is highly revealing of the poignant and bittersweet nature of family contact during incarceration.

Highlights

On any given day, there are around 85,000 prisoners in the U.K. (Ministry of Justice, 2017), each of whom is absent from someone or somewhere
Whilst previous research into the material geographies of absence has tended to focus on the experiences of the absent, but returned, or those coping with permanent absence, such as bereavement (e.g. Maddrell, 2013), in this paper we study absence from the perspective both of the parties experiencing it, and those whose role is to manage aspects of this absence
By turning attention to absence in the context of prison visitation, we have been able to demonstrate its lived and material complexity, in terms both of absent presence and present absence, and the layered, ambiguous and compound absences which manifest in this situation

Summary

Introduction

There are around 85,000 prisoners in the U.K. (Ministry of Justice, 2017), each of whom is absent from someone or somewhere. Previous geographical engagements with incarceration, under the heading of carceral geography (Moran, 2013a, 2013b, 2015) have examined the lived experience of imprisonment, including the interactions between prisoners and visitors during periods of custody (Moran, 2013a, 2013b) In these studies, there is an implicit understanding that prisoners are absent from somewhere and someone else, it is their presence in carceral spaces, or their co-presence with their visitors, which has tended to form the focus of research As Maddrell (2013) has shown, mourners visit with the dead at graves and employ a variety of practices to sustain their relationship with the absent-present dead, prisoners occupy a different position They can be brought into sight by those who miss them; not just vicariously, through spectral hauntings, keepsakes or memories, but, through the practice of prison visitation, in living flesh and blood. Despite being a co-presence of missing and missed unavailable to other absent groups, is itself, as we will demonstrate, a complex grouping of absences and presences

Methodology

Conclusion