Imprisonment In England Research Articles

Institutionalised violence and child imprisonment in England and Wales: a case for abolition

This article focuses on youth custody and the imprisonment of children. It applies an abolitionist, anti-carceral lens to exploring this injustice. In doing so the article critically explores the imprisonment of children and young people in England and Wales and the institutionalised violence to which these children are subject. It presents a case study of the youth secure estate, using document analysis focused on two recent reports of Werrington Young Offenders Institution, undertaken by the HM Inspectorate of Prisons in 2022. These reports are drawn upon to support the key critical arguments, concerning the imprisonment of children, presented within this article. Such arguments are centred on the failure of the state to afford legitimate safety and protection to children imprisoned in these institutions, and the deplorable role of the state in directly causing and perpetuating a range of harms against children, including ‘cultural, physical and institutionally structured violence’ (Scott, 2020: 58). Finally, the article will present a framework for abolitionist alternatives to the imprisonment of children which will ultimately serve to ensure their safety and protection.

Being a Woman and a Mother in English Prisons

A sizeable proportion of women prisoners (66%) in England and Wales is a single parent to a child under 16 and a recent estimate places the yearly number of children separated from their mothers due to the latter’s imprisonment to 17,500. Pregnancy and motherhood are key milestones in a woman’s life that impact both the mother and her offspring as early as from the time the baby is in the womb. This is a recognition that does not seem to persuasively extend to female prisoners who are pregnant or mothers at the time of their sentencing to prison and during their imprisonment in England and Wales. This warrants attention not just from those responsible for female imprisonment but from other policy spheres, considering that the children of female prisoners are much more likely to not be in education, in training or employment compared to the children afflicted by paternal imprisonment. Against this background, this mini review offers a snapshot of the treatment of female prisoners who are pregnant and/or mothers and reflects on the implications of failing to protect pregnancy and motherhood in prison with reference to the female prisoner’s social reintegration prospects and her child’s potential in life.

Not “proper” foreign national prisoners: Irish ex-prisoner reflections on imprisonment in England and Wales

Irish prisoners are one of the oldest minority groups and one of the most represented foreign national groups in the prison system, yet little is known about their experiences of imprisonment in England and Wales. This article presents findings from 29 semi-structured interviews with Irish ex-prisoners who were asked to reflect on their time in prison in England and Wales. It utilises Ugelvik and Damsa’s findings on foreign national prisoner experiences in Norway as related to discrimination, long-distance relationships, and deportability as a point of analysis. This paper shows that Irish prisoners suffer the pains of discrimination through racism, bullying, and discrimination from prisoners and prison officers, and there are concerns over mistreatment by prison officers who are ex-military. There are also difficulties associated with family contact. As Irish prisoners are not subject to deportation, except in the most exceptional circumstances, and since there is no language barrier, this paper suggests that Irish prisoners might not seen as “proper” foreign nationals in the prison system. This may result in Irish prisoners being somewhat invisible in the prison system in England and Wales and in some cases having their nationality and national identity denied.

Reproductive rights on the inside: A rapid evidence assessment of women’s experiences of reproductive healthcare and rights while in prison in England and Wales

Despite academic, policy and charity commissioned research giving considerable attention to the health of imprisoned women, significantly less research has considered the reproductive health and rights of this group. This shortfall is noteworthy since women who are imprisoned are often in very vulnerable positions, and so their ongoing healthcare in relation to gynaecology, obstetrics and sexual health and wellbeing, as well as access to such rights, should be a priority. These issues are exacerbated for the high number of women who are repeatedly imprisoned for short sentences. Presenting findings of a rapid evidence assessment, this article highlights the lack of attention to this aspect of imprisoned women’s health and rights, using the limited information available. The article argues that suitable reproductive healthcare needs to be seen as an essential aspect of women’s rights. Furthermore, the current nature of imprisonment in England and Wales results in multiple and frequent rights violations.

Loneliness in prison

At first glance, contemporary prisons are environments defined by an ‘enforced collective’ (Goffman, [1961] 1991) and prisoners are, if anything, plagued by ‘life en masse’ (Sykes, 1958), yet the depth and weight of loneliness in prison can be intense. Prisons are often associated with metaphors of loneliness, disruption and empty time, and, as Armstrong (2018) highlights, imprisonment is an exemplary symbol for being stuck in space and time. Based on empirical data from a study of imprisonment in England & Wales and Norway, in this article we analyse several forms of loneliness found in prisons and beyond, from the visceral, immediate sense of being physically alone and separated from loved ones to the ethical or existential experience of abandonment and hopelessness. We conclude by pointing to the fact that the two otherwise very different penal contexts yield similar findings when it comes to the experiences of loneliness. This implies that the sense of not fitting in, of being ‘ethically alone’ (Stauffer, 2015) and essentially misrecognized (Lister in Fraser and Bourdieu, 2007), goes beyond specific prisons and jurisdictions. We also note that, as well as evoking feelings of loneliness, in some circumstances imprisonment can provide some respite from it.

'Bad for the Health of the Body, Worse for the Health of the Mind': Female Responses to Imprisonment in England, 1853-1869.

Upon committal to one of the newly established female convict prisons in the mid-nineteenth century, women entered a system intended to regulate them in body and in mind for the ends of reform. This article interrogates how women’s health needs were identified and contested by the prison officials and doctors tasked with their custody and care. It highlights the importance of broader temporal gender beliefs in dictating their treatment in this carceral space and explores how the women themselves exercised agency over the terms of their imprisonment. In addition, it reveals the previously underexplored transference of women between the institutions that made up the female convict estate that was prompted by concerns about the impact of a rigorous prison system on their physical and mental health.

White Collar Criminals’ Experience of Imprisonment in England and Wales: Revisiting the ‘special Sensitivity’ Debate

ABSTRACT This article explores white collar criminals’ experience of imprisonment in England and Wales. Based upon interviews with 13 convicted offenders after they had completed their imprisonment, it is the first study to date of this kind in England and Wales (all others have been based in prison). It offers a unique impartial insight of prisoners’ experience, beyond the influence of the prison walls. The paper explores the experience around the largely American ‘special sensitivity’ debate, over whether such offenders are more sensitive to prison. The research uncovers both positive experiences, labelled ‘good’, but also negative, labelled ‘bad’ (non-violent experiences) and ‘ugly’ (violent experiences). Overall the findings reveal it is difficult to apply the special sensitivity hypothesis universally to this group of offenders.

Turning Points or Dead Ends? Identity, desistance and the experience of imprisonment

Desistance research has pushed criminologists to develop a nuanced conceptual account of criminal identity and human agency. However, these tools have mostly not been used to consider identity changes among long-sentenced prisoners, despite the growing preponderance of long-term imprisonment in England and Wales. As a result of this, desistance theory has not been used to evaluate the administration of indeterminate sentences, meaning that practitioners may be missing out on some of the insights that it can generate. This qualitative study begins to fill that gap, using a phenomenological analysis of eighteen in-depth semi-structured interviews with life- sentenced prisoners at a single prison in England, all of whom had been convicted of murder. It argues that most eventually attempt conscious projects of personal change during imprisonment; second, that many frame change in terms which are not consistent with the official discourses of risk reduction (which govern their progression through the sentence); and third, that how they themselves conceive and pursue personal change is affected by their position in the sentence and the life course, and also by the specific nature and circumstances of their index offences. The analysis classifies four different styles of agency found in the sample: ‘defensive’ and ‘fractured’ agents were unwilling or unable to accept responsibility for the offence, and were consequently in penal ‘dead ends’; while ‘corrective’ and ‘redemptive’ agents had encountered ‘turning points’, in that they accepted responsibility, albeit in different ways. The analysis describes each group’s characteristic ways of describing the offence and their part in it. It also describes their attitudes to prison social life in general, and to rehabilitative intervention in particular. The study as a whole suggests that much of the personal change which lifers themselves frame as significant happens outside rehabilitative interventions, and may be invisible to key prison staff. This raises important questions about whether prisons and prisoners think about rehabilitation in the same way, with consequences for the legitimacy of penal power.

Rondeau

Rondeau Elizaveta Strakhov (bio) Geoffrey Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls details a dream vision in which Chaucer observes a group of birds, in a mock parliament, arguing over choosing mates for themselves on Valentine's Day. The birds conclude their assembly by singing a rondeau.1 This short lyric, originating in Francophone Europe, traditionally ranges in length between just eight and seventeen lines. It opens with a one- to two-line refrain that is repeated in the middle of the work and again at the end to create the circular structure suggested by its name. Chaucer points to the overseas roots of this form by having his dreamer note that the lyric's music "imauked was in Fraunce" (394, line 677).2 However, extant manuscripts of the Parliament of Fowls do not record anything that would actually resemble a French rondeau: three manuscripts omit the insertion entirely; three replace it with the popular French proverb "Qui bien aime a tarde oublie" [He who loves deeply is loath to forget], which also functions as a popular refrain in French lyric; and three do contain a short lyric text, but it does not actually feature the triple refrain structure.3 As an actual French rondeau, then, the birds' song is a manifest failure. In its failure, though, the moment signifies in other ways. It gestures aspirationally to the prestige of French poetry from across the Channel. The choice to offer the rondeau as birdsong heightens the rumination on translation here: the birds sing in this French mode, even if the song is not being transmitted, so that this scribal confusion is mapped onto an interspecies communication breakdown. In the three manuscripts that replace the rondeau with the proverb, this moment of interlingual rupture is only further intensified. Eclipsing lyric form and stifling bird-song, the French proverb-cum-refrain invades the English text, offering jarring code-switching as a broken replacement for translation. Chaucer's small untransmissible rondeau thus affords a wide-ranging meditation on Anglo-French literary exchange, translation loss, and translation failure, all revolving around the theme of Valentine's Day.4 One generation later these ideas, and the form for their expression, emerged in the poetry of the bilingual Anglo-French poet Charles d'Orléans. Charles d'Orléans composed two Valentine's Day ballades, [End Page 467] one in French and one in English, during his long imprisonment in England from 1415–40, during which he learned English and composed a lengthy cycle of English poetry full of Chaucerian echoes.5 After his release back to France, when he returned to composing solely in French, he produced, among other things, a set of Valentine's Day rondeaux. Amplifying Chaucer's far-reaching discussion of translation, interlingual disjuncture, and the breakdown of communication, Charles's rondeaux showcase the profound cultural force of the humble short-form lyric in the later Middle Ages. Charles's debt to Chaucer's treatment of Valentine's Day is especially apparent in Ballade 72, in which the speaker is woken up on Valentine's Day by the cries of birds choosing their mates. This moment is a clear allusion to the avian setting of the Parliament of Fowls: Charles's birds wish to "wrappe" their mates "in wingis softe" (FS 224, line 2467), while Chaucer's wrap wings around each other's necks (C 394, lines 670–71).6 The Chaucerian resonance is further strengthened by Charles's opening lines—"Whan fresshe Phebus, day of Seynt Valentine, / Had whirlid vp his golden chare aloft" (FS 224, lines 2455–56)—which echo the Squire's Tale's "Appollo whirleth up his char so hye" (C 177, line 671). In a further connection to Chaucer, Charles's birds sing in "ther latyne" (FS 224, line 2465), while again in the Squire's Tale, a falcon speaks in "ledene" (C 175, line 478), that is to say, in Latin. Charles's and Chaucer's odd mutual detail that birds speak Latin itself goes back to a commonplace of troubadour poetry, found in work by poets such as Marcabru and Arnaut Daniel and later Chrétien de Troyes and Guido Cavalcanti.7 As...

Turning points or dead ends? Identity, desistance and the experience of imprisonment

Desistance research has pushed criminologists to develop a nuanced conceptual account of criminal identity and human agency. However, these tools have mostly not been used to consider identity changes among long-sentenced prisoners, despite the growing preponderance of long-term imprisonment in England and Wales. As a result of this, desistance theory has not been used to evaluate the administration of indeterminate sentences, meaning that practitioners may be missing out on some of the insights that it can generate. This qualitative study begins to fill that gap, using a phenomenological analysis of eighteen in-depth semi-structured interviews with life- sentenced prisoners at a single prison in England, all of whom had been convicted of murder. It argues that most eventually attempt conscious projects of personal change during imprisonment; second, that many frame change in terms which are not consistent with the official discourses of risk reduction (which govern their progression through the sentence); and third, that how they themselves conceive and pursue personal change is affected by their position in the sentence and the life course, and also by the specific nature and circumstances of their index offences. The analysis classifies four different styles of agency found in the sample: ‘defensive’ and ‘fractured’ agents were unwilling or unable to accept responsibility for the offence, and were consequently in penal ‘dead ends’; while ‘corrective’ and ‘redemptive’ agents had encountered ‘turning points’, in that they accepted responsibility, albeit in different ways. The analysis describes each group’s characteristic ways of describing the offence and their part in it. It also describes their attitudes to prison social life in general, and to rehabilitative intervention in particular. The study as a whole suggests that much of the personal change which lifers themselves frame as significant happens outside rehabilitative interventions, and may be invisible to key prison staff. This raises important questions about whether prisons and prisoners think about rehabilitation in the same way, with consequences for the legitimacy of penal power.

From practice to theory to practice: William Penn from prison to the founding of Pennsylvania

ABSTRACTRecent scholarship on religious toleration has been marked by a keen interest in the relationship between theory and practice. This essay takes up the genesis of William Penn’s theorizing about toleration in his experience of imprisonment, focusing on four particular episodes during his early years as a Quaker (between 1667 and 1671). These years were formative for Penn as a young man as well as for the increasingly sophisticated movement for toleration in Restoration England. The broader political theory that Penn articulated in England and attempted to realize in Pennsylvania contained economic, political, social, legal, and religious components, worked out in drafts of founding documents over the course of many months. But the foundation of that theory – its unshakeable commitment to liberty of conscience, its faith in juries as a potential restraint on the arbitrary exercise of power by civil governors, its unsteady mix of principled and pragmatic underpinnings – was laid in Penn’s early years as a Quaker, intertwined with his experiences of imprisonment in England and Ireland. In a very real sense, then, the road to Pennsylvania, for Penn, began in the Cork prison 15 years before he set foot in America.

American politics, British policy: whole of life imprisonment and transatlantic influence

ABSTRACTSince the abolition of the death penalty, life imprisonment in England and Wales has had a literal meaning with exceptional rarity. Now though, in the rejection of perceived interference by the European Court of Human Rights in domestic sentencing, the politics of whole of life imprisonment have become exposed, specifically, in the widening applicability of the tariff to those who kill police officers or prison guards. Borrowing from the politics of capital punishment in the United States, in both “acting out” after a particular crime, and the prioritising of victim groups, the most severe penalty in England and Wales is increasingly beginning to mirror how the most severe punishment across the Atlantic is used, represented, and politicised.

No Place for Children: A Case for the Abolition of Child Imprisonment in England and Wales

This paper provides an argument for the abolition of child imprisonment in England and Wales. England and Wales is not Ireland, but the cultural and social similarities suggest that children face a great deal of the same pressures, difficulties, trials and tribulations regardless of which side of the Irish Sea they live on. Therefore, it may provide a useful analogy for Irish policy makers. The paper argues that the incarceration of children has a wide range of negative effects on children and is provided at an excessive cost to the exchequer. Restorative justice is put forward as a viable alternative which is highly cost effective and has yielded positive results in terms of recidivism.

Gendered Prison Work: Female Prison Officers in the Local Prison System, 1877–1939

AbstractThis article examines the working lives of female prison officers between 1877 and 1939. It documents a relatively under‐researched, but important, period in the history of women's imprisonment in England. In doing so it aims to uncover the working lives of female officers, the role and daily duties of officers, the development of training schools for female staff and to understand the ambiguous role of officers in the ‘reform’ of prisoners during these decades. The research contextualises the work of the female officer within the changing female prison estate and declining female prison population in this period and examines the ways in which gender and class combined in prison work.

Who Pulled the Plug? Towards an Explanation of the Fall in Child Imprisonment in England and Wales

This article offers an analysis of the recent fall in youth custody in England and Wales. It argues that parallels can be drawn between the present period and the decline in child imprisonment during Margaret Thatcher’s premiership in the 1980s. In particular, increased diversion and a depoliticization of youth crime have contributed to a more tolerant decision making within the court arena. Some remarks on the implications for an understanding of the punitive turn are offered and an assessment of the prospect for future trends is provided in the light of the riots of August 2011.

Prisoners holding their own medications during imprisonment in England and Wales: A survey and qualitative exploration of staff and prisoners' views

Traditionally, medication in prison has been administered in single, supervised doses. Prisons in England and Wales, however, have now been encouraged to allow prisoners to hold and manage their own medication themselves as 'in-possession' medication, in line with community practices. We aimed to examine the range of policies and practices used to manage in-possession medication in prisons, and to explore staff and patient perspectives. A mixed methods design was selected. Questionnaires were sent to all prisons throughout England and Wales in 2008, and follow-up interviews were completed with 68 staff and 24 patients at 12 prisons. In-possession medication was permitted to some degree within all prisons. Interviewees identified its principal benefit in terms of empowerment, whilst acknowledging the need to minimise health and security risks. Structured methods of risk assessment were used in 93% of establishments, although content and structure varied widely. There is still some way to go before in-possession medication policies are fully embraced in prisons. Staff and patients recognise its benefits, but some remain uneasy around the perceived risks. Risk management processes in some establishments may still require development. Prisoners and staff generally find it acceptable for prisoners to have their own medication in their possession, to manage themselves, unless individual risk assessment indicates otherwise. Achievement of the optimum balance between security, safety and empowering patients is difficult in practice. Robust, specific methods of risk management in relation to in-possession medication may help prisons move from being 'risk averse' to 'risk aware'.

Structuration Theory and Wrongful Imprisonment: From ‘Victimhood’ to ‘Survivorship’?

Building on existing research from a zemiological approach, this article seeks to contribute to a more ontological understanding of the production and reproduction of harms associated with wrongful imprisonment in England and Wales. Drawing from Anthony Giddens’s theory of structuration, it is argued that whilst the harms of wrongful imprisonment are both complex and devastating, victims need not be perceived as entirely passive. Rather, victims of wrongful imprisonment can be viewed as knowledgeable agents with the intrinsic capacity and agency to strategically cope with and even survive the harms that they experience. The article concludes with personal accounts by victims of wrongful imprisonment that form an identifiable ‘survivor’ discourse to highlight some of the key critical factors that are vital in helping victims of wrongful imprisonment to re-structure their lives after release.

Assisted suicide and the law.

The subject of assisted suicide has been high on the news agenda over the summer. In July the RCN's ruling council voted to adopt a neutral stance on assisted suicide ( page 7 ). This means that it will neither oppose nor support a change in the law. Under the Suicide Act 1961 assisting a suicide is a crime punishable by up to 14 years' imprisonment in England and Wales, although to date no one has been prosecuted. Later in July Debbie Purdy, who has multiple sclerosis, won a landmark case in the House of Lords. The Law Lords ruled that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) must set out in writing the circumstances under which a person may be prosecuted for accompanying a loved one to commit suicide abroad.

The reduction of women’s imprisonment in England and Wales

The Government published a separate strategy for women offenders and established the Women’s Offending Reduction Programme to co-ordinate cross-government initiatives that target women’s offending and the criminogenic factors that underpin it. In order for preventive strategies to be taken forward the reduction of women’s imprisonment has been identified as a priority. Yet the Government has presided over a period of unprecedented growth in the female prison population and its criminal justice policies convey contradictory messages about the use of custody for women. The future capacity of the female estate has been expanded by the commissioning of two new women’s prisons and the sentencing reforms contained in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 fail to apply a brake on the courts’ increasing use of imprisonment. This article examines the ways in which the new legislation fails the test of ‘joined-up’ government by undermining its own strategy for female offenders and exposing larger numbers of women to the risk of imprisonment.

Amnesia for criminal offences: a study of life sentence prisoners

Amnesia for criminal offences has long been recognized as a common phenomenon although there have been few large-scale studies examining factors associated with amnesia and even fewer which have examined follow-up information. This study was based on a retrospective investigation of case-notes of all those sentenced to life imprisonment in England and Wales in 1994. Data were available for 89% (N = 207). The aims were (1) to determine the rate of amnesia for serious offences in this sample, (2) to identify any features of the offender, the offence, or the victim associated with amnesia, and (3) to determine the frequency with which memory recovers over a 3-year period. There were 29% of the total sample that claimed amnesia for their offence. Such a claim was associated particularly with a history of alcohol abuse, previous blackouts, previous psychiatric disorder and crimes of passion. Amnesia had significant associations at trial, those claiming amnesia being more likely to undergo thorough psychiatric assessment pre-trial and to use different defences. At 3 years post conviction, only 33% of the amnesic sample were reported to have complete recovery of their memories, 26% had partial return of memories, and 41% had no return of memories.