Postscript

Abstract

In this article, I reflect on the articles in this issue and on my own experiences of doing qualitative prisons research differently. Two of the most serious challenges faced by researchers “at the deep end” are the emotional demands and the threats to integrity encountered when methods or findings are regarded as “suspect.” These challenges are worth the struggle. The collective aim of prison scholarship is to make the prison world “intelligible,” to make “moral blindness” less likely or possible. Rich description is akin to actual experience and as such amplifies life, and enlarges sympathies, in ways that can “reshape human consciousness and with it the structure of society.” Research is reform, or it can be, as we strive to reconceptualize, or articulate, the strange and painful world that is the prison.