(Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology) Dr. Dominique Moran, Anna K. Schliehe (Eds.) - Carceral Spatiality - Dialogues Between Geography and Criminology-Palgrave Macmillan UK (2017)

Palgrave Studies in Prisons
and Penology
Series Editors
Ben Crewe
Institute of Criminology
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, United Kingdom
Yvonne Jewkes
School of Applied Social Science
University of Brighton
Brighton, United Kingdom
Thomas Ugelvik
Criminology and Sociology of Law
Faculty of Law, University of Oslo
Oslo, Norway
This is a unique and innovative series, the first of its kind dedicated entirely
to prison scholarship. At a historical point in which the prison population
has reached an all-time high, the series seeks to analyse the form, nature
and consequences of incarceration and related forms of punishment.
Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology provides an important forum
for burgeoning prison research across the world. Series Advisory Board:
Anna Eriksson (Monash University), Andrew M. Jefferson (DIGNITY -
Danish Institute Against Torture), Shadd Maruna (Rutgers University),
Jonathon Simon (Berkeley Law, University of California) and Michael
Welch (Rutgers University).
More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14596
Dominique Moran • Anna K. Schliehe
Editors
Carceral Spatiality
Dialogues between Geography and Criminology
Editors
Dominique Moran Anna K. Schliehe
Geography, Earth & Environmental Institute of Criminology
Sciences University of Cambridge
University of Birmingham Cambridge
Birmingham United Kingdom
United Kingdom
Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology

ISBN 978-1-137-56056-8 ISBN 978-1-137-56057-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56057-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940253
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Acknowledgements
This book is one of the outcomes of a series of sessions co-organised by

the editors at the Annual Conference of the Royal Geographical Society
with the Institute of British Geographers, in London in 2014. At that
conference, the sessions, entitled Mapping carceral geography – confine-
ment, closed spaces and affective atmospheres, reflected the theme of the
conference overall – ‘Geographies of Co-production’. The sessions
intended to foster interdisciplinary collaboration, and accordingly wel-
comed contributions on aspects of space and confinement from the
cognate disciplines of criminology and prison sociology, and also from
beyond the academy.
Although the present collection necessarily represents only a selection
of the papers presented on the day, the book project reflects the wide-
ranging conversations that took place both at the conference, and in
subsequent discussion, both stimulated by the paper presenters them-
selves, and by participants in the panel session which followed. (As well
as the authors of the present chapters, these participants additionally
included Pascal Décarpes, Liv S. Gaborit and Marie Hutton.) We are
grateful to all participants for their generous contributions.
In the ‘co-productive’ spirit of both the conference sessions and the
book project, alongside works by carceral geographers such as Bettina van
Hoven and Jennifer Turner, several chapters are the product of new
criminology/geography collaborations such as the essay by David Scheer
v
vi Acknowledgements
and Colin Lorne. We are grateful that chapter contributors, many of

whom are early career scholars writing from their Ph.D. research, were
willing to write across disciplines, drawing on unfamiliar literatures; for
example, Rebecca Foster and Caitlin Gormley wrote from criminology
into geography, and geographer Lorraine van Blerk drew for the first time
on literature from the carceral geography subfield. We are grateful to all of
the contributors for embracing the theme of co-production, for reading
outside of their ‘comfort zones’, and for producing the fascinating and
engaging chapters which now comprise this book.
The editors would additionally like to acknowledge the support of
their respective institutions. Dominique Moran is fortunate to be based
at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the
University of Birmingham, an institution which, through wholehearted
support for carceral geography, has become a key hub for the develop-
ment of this subdiscipline. Anna K. Schliehe would like to acknowledge
the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of
Glasgow, where she undertook her Ph.D. research supervised by Chris
Philo and Hester Parr, and also the Prisons Research Centre, part of the
Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge, where she now
works with criminologist Ben Crewe. It is fitting, perhaps, that the cross-
disciplinary nature of this book is matched by her own career so far.
Contents
1 Introduction: Co-production and Carceral Spatiality 1

Dominique Moran and Anna K. Schliehe
Part I Mapping Beyond Carceral Identities
2 Entangled Identities Inside and Outside: Exploring Cape

Town Street Youth’s Interconnected Lives on the Street
and in Prison 13
Lorraine van Blerk
3 An Extended Social Relational Approach to Learning

Disability Incarcerated 43
Caitlin Gormley
4 Towards a Feminist Carceral Geography? Of Female

Offenders and Prison Spaces 75
Anna K. Schliehe
vii
viii Contents
Part II Moving Beyond Carceral Walls
5 Illusions of Utopia: When Prison Architects

(Reluctantly) Play Tetris 113
David Scheer and Colin Lorne
6 The Artistic ‘Touch’: Moving Beyond Carceral

Boundaries Through Art by Offenders 135
Jennifer Turner
7 Exploring ‘Betwixt and Between’ in a Prison Visitors’

Centre and Beyond 169
Rebecca Foster
Part III Imagining Beyond Carceral Spaces
8 Tracing Memories in Border-Space 201

Clemens Bernardt, Bettina van Hoven and Paulus Huigen
9 Disavowing ‘the’ Prison 237

Sarah Armstrong and Andrew M. Jefferson
10 Conclusion: Reflections on Capturing the Carceral 269

Anna K. Schliehe and Dominique Moran
Index 285
List of Figures
Fig. 6.1 Death in Custody Anon. (HMP Bullingdon), Bronze Award

for Portraits 142
Fig. 6.2 The Visit Anon. (HMP Shepton Mallet), Paul Hamlyn
Foundation Bronze Award for Oil or Acrylic 146
Fig. 6.3 Behind Me (Self Portrait) Anon. (HMP Lowdham Grange),
The Co-operative Chair’s Platinum Award 2011 151
Fig. 6.4 ‘Please do not touch’ sign alongside exhibits at the Art
by Offenders exhibition 158
Fig. 6.5 They Still Wear Suits Like This, Don’t They? Anon. (HMP
Shepton Mallet), Victor Roberts Highly Commended
Award for Portraits 160
Fig. 7.1 Pryha, Visitors’ Centre 182
Fig. 7.2 Pryha, Visit Room 183
Fig. 7.3 Amy, Visit Room 184
Fig. 8.1 An outward view from within semi-confined space
at the gallery of housing block C 205
Fig. 8.2 A space for memory practices view into A COA meeting room 210
Fig. 8.3 Identity stored away in closets and drawers at the counter
of the DCR 220
ix
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Conviction statuses of participants 54

Table 3.2 Participants’ ‘index’ diagnoses 55
xi
1
Introduction: Co-production
and Carceral Spatiality
Dominique Moran and Anna K. Schliehe
Introduction
This book is a hybrid creature. Edited by two human geographers, and
published within a Criminology book series, it draws together essays by
geographers, some (but not all) of whom are carceral geographers, and
criminologists, as well as new collaborations between criminology and
geography. Each author, and each set of collaborating authors, has
worked somewhat outside of their comfort zone, tackling new litera-
tures, thinking of their research from new perspectives, and engaging in
new conversations.
D. Moran (*)
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of
Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
e-mail: d.moran@bham.ac.uk
A.K. Schliehe
Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
e-mail: aks79@cam.ac.uk
© The Author(s) 2017 1

D. Moran, A.K. Schliehe (eds.), Carceral Spatiality, Palgrave Studies
in Prisons and Penology, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56057-5_1
2 D. Moran and A.K. Schliehe
In this way, the book is a product of the event from which it emerges.
In 2014, the editors organised a series of three themed sessions at the
annual international conference of the Royal Geographical Society with
Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG), a conference whose over-
arching theme was the ‘geographies of co-production’. The selection of
this theme, in the words of the conference chair, pushed conference
participants ‘to reflect on the challenges and new opportunities that arise
when geographers reflect what we think we know against the “other”,
those who start from a different entry point and bring different perspec-
tives to the field of knowledge’. It intended to provide opportunities to
examine the challenges of multi-disciplinarity, and to explore the ways in
which different communities might deploy each other’s perspectives to
create new understandings. Collaborative knowledge making of this
kind, she argued, must acknowledge and work constructively with
inevitable differences and tensions.
In the spirit of geographies of co-production, we invited prospective
participants in our sessions to consider the spaces of confinement which
can be found in various settings and institutions, from psychiatric
establishments, centres for migrant detention, to prisons and peniten-
tiary camps. Carceral geography had continued to expand its scope,
adopting a range of different perspectives on custodial spaces, and we
sought, through the sessions, to conceptualise and collect these perspec-
tives in order to think through the theoretical and empirical aspects of
carceral spheres, and to explore the interactions between borders, iden-
tities, the materiality of confinement and the individual. We wanted to
create a space to explore innovative methods of engaging with those in
confinement, and to closely consider the positionalities of researchers
themselves, in these settings. Directly reflecting the notion of co-pro-
duction, we welcomed inputs from cognate disciplines such as crimin-
ology and prison sociology, and work resulting from new
interdisciplinary collaborations.
The papers and sessions, and the book that brought them together
with subsequent contributions, offered much more than we could have
anticipated. The multidisciplinary dialogue of the sessions themselves
triggered new research and writing partnerships. Criminologist David
Scheer, for example, met and discovered common ground with
architectural geographer Colin Lorne, and Andrew Jefferson and Sarah

Armstrong decided to bring their diverse experiences together in a
conceptual essay that challenges both what the prison is and what it
means to do research in and on it. In a way, this book project can be
viewed as a microscale version of a wider set of discipline crossings which
have underpinned the growing interest in carceral spatiality, character-
istic of the ‘spatial turn’ in criminology and carceral studies.
Carceral Geography and the Spatial Turn

in Criminology and Carceral Studies
The recent development of carceral geography is directly related to the
‘spatial turn’ in criminology, and to the spatialisation of carceral studies.
In criminology, pointing to the work of Hayward (2004, 2012) and
Campbell (2012a, b), Kindynis (2014, 232) argued that developments
provoked by the ‘spatial turn’ in social theory ‘have begun to offer a
more sophisticated rendering of the lived experience and socio-cultural
complexities of (urban) space/crime’. Engaging directly with theorisa-
tions of space from cultural geography, notably those arising from
non-representational theory (NRT), Hayward (2012) and Campbell
(2012a, b) offered alternative ways to interpret relationships between
space and crime, in order ‘to challenge contemporary criminologists to
think differently about the role and nature of space within our discipline’
(Hayward 2012, 459). Echoing geographical theorists of space, he
encouraged criminologists to consider alternative ways of interpreting
the relationship between space and crime, critiquing their tendency to
see ‘the environment simply as a geographic site and not as a product of
power relations, cultural and social dynamics, or everyday values and
meanings’ (2012, 441). Instead, he drew on Campbell’s (2012a, 2)
suggestion of the potential resonances between cultural criminology
and cultural geography, in which she stressed the virtues of the ‘sub-
jective, affective, embodied, aesthetic, material, performative, textual,
symbolic and visual relations of space’ in relation to the settings of
crime. And very recently, Hayward (2016) has reflected on the
emergence, over the preceding decade, of spatial criminology, which he

characterises as having a dual focus both on specific types of spaces (such
as borders, rural spaces and mega-security zones) and on spatial models
and theoretical concepts (such as parafunctional space, container space,
dead space and so on).
Criminologists have moved to develop ‘innovative and explicitly
spatial(ising) methodologies with which to generate further empirical
insights’, by better and differently utilising cartography and maps
(Kindynis 2014, 232), and in grounded empirical work, that draws
attention to geographical research involving mapping of various kinds,
such as photo-mapping projects (where photographs are geo-tagged and
overlain onto digital maps) and spatial transcripts, in which audio
recordings are matched with a GPS log of participants’ movements, to
enhance understandings of the relationship between space and (fear or
experience, as well as incidence, of) crime.
The focus of these moves, exemplified by Hayward’s explicit focus
(2016) on the future of criminological research into public space, and
Kindynis’ (2014) concern with crime mapping, the city and public
understandings of crime and security, is on ‘public’ space rather than
closed or confined spaces. Whilst Kindynis (2016) has elsewhere
explored recreational trespass of off-limits or otherwise prohibited spaces
as an embodied spatial practice, the published discourse of the spatial
turn within criminology has yet explicitly to enter spaces of incarcera-
tion. However, the relative lack of discourse of this kind does not mean
that that space has been overlooked entirely. The growing influence of
prison ethnography contributes to a growing concern for spaces of
confinement. As Drake and Earle noted, prison ethnographers have
been ‘getting close to the experiences, feelings and understandings of
prison life’ by accessing spaces of incarceration and observing ‘telling
details’ of prison life which bring into sharp relief the ‘meaning and
essence of prison experiences and offer valuable means for understanding
a little of what it really means to be imprisoned or to work in a prison’
(2013, 12–13). Prison ethnographers are therefore highlighting a long-
standing implicit awareness of the significance of space. In an example of
just this kind of development, Crewe et al. (2014, 56) drew attention to
the ‘emotional world’ of the prison, arguing that rather than constituting
‘environments that are unwaveringly sterile, unfailingly aggressive or

emotionally undifferentiated’, prisons instead have ‘emotion zones’, in
which different emotional registers can be expressed. Crewe et al.’s
(2014) paper is particularly significant in that it draws directly upon
human and carceral geography in considering space and place as ‘deter-
minants of social practice and personal experience, rather than as empty
theatres or neutral backcloths within and against which they occur’ (60).
If the interior spaces of prisons are increasingly being viewed by
criminologists, prison sociologists and prison ethnographers as more
than just containers for the ‘experiences and practices that few other
members of society have the opportunity to see’ (Drake and Earle 2013,
12), then there is also an appreciation that the prison is not the only site
with the ‘social realm’ under the influence of incarceration, or, as Smith
(2013) has put it, that the ‘penal state is operative in sites where we
might not be accustomed to look for it: not only within the prison
interior . . . but also, peculiarly, in cities that have been emptied of their
“troublesome poverty” and transformed into smooth, clean zones for the
enjoyment of “consumers of urban space”’. Reviewing Wacquant’s
(2009) Prisons of Poverty, Smith (2013) was intrigued by his accounts
of public space, especially the space of the metropolitan centre, and the
ways in which the spaces of the prison open out into these urban spaces
of marginality in the context of hyperincarceration. These ‘smooth,
clean zones’ are the results of the exclusion of criminalised underclasses
from the affluent ‘forbidden cities’ described by Davis (1990, 2006), in
which the security infrastructure of the prison seeps into urban space in
complex ways. As Shabazz (2009, 2015a, b) has argued, security infra-
structure, such as barred windows and turnstiles, installed in public
housing, vividly recalls carceral spaces, and thus acclimatises young
men to imprisonment, with ‘hyperpolicing’ converting impoverished
inner-city areas into intensely regulated, ‘prison-like’ spaces. At the
same time, the ‘forbidden’ cities of affluent neighbourhoods are also
protected by security technologies, in this context generating insulated
spaces ‘rich with atmospheres of wellbeing’ (Adey et al. 2013, 301).
In the context of hyperincarceration, with porous carceral boundaries,
and seepage of carceral techniques and technologies into spaces far beyond
the prison, there is untapped potential for the subversive counter-mapping
described by Kindynis (2014) and Gill et al. (2016), of, for example, spaces
of prohibition (of otherwise legal activities, such as drinking alcohol, dog
walking or political protest) in London, and the US carceral estate (through
the curation of a collection of satellite photographs of otherwise hidden
penal architecture). By drawing attention to the carceral spaces and carceral
effects concealed, but operational, within ostensibly public space, these
projects perhaps hint at the potential for critical spatial criminology and
cartography, to explore carceral spaces in ways which resonate with
approaches within carceral geography.
Structure
Building upon both the development of carceral geography and the
spatialisation of studies of confinement, this interdisciplinary book
seeks to move both on, through study of international research sites,
and through exploring spaces beyond the prison, both empirically and
conceptually. It seeks to capture the elusive elements of the ‘carceral’
(Moran et al. forthcoming) by looking at various aspects that lie
‘beyond’: from the ‘internal bars’ of memory tracing for asylum seekers
in the Netherlands, to constructing prison designs in Belgium; from
children’s views of prison visitation, to art work that reaches beyond
prison walls; from barriers to doing and being in relation to learning
disability, to new ways of thinking about representation; and ending by
challenging both the prison as a fixed entity and carceral geography
itself.
The book is in three main parts. In ‘Mapping Beyond Carceral
Identities’, contributors focus on diverse carceral populations, drawing
on rich empirical material to challenge not only the ways in which
individuals’ identity formation is understood in a carceral context, but
also what these studies mean for the identity of carceral studies and
carceral geography more generally. Geographer Lorraine Van Blerk first
scrutinises masculinist identity formation between street and prison in
South Africa. By following street youth’s lifepaths between street and
prison, she provides a rare insight into the lives of young people in Cape
Town. Next, criminologist Caitlin Gormley discusses ableist/disableist

discourse in and beyond prison, and sketches a new empirical field for
carceral geography. In a similar vein, geographer Anna K. Schliehe
explores transgender identity, relationships and motherhood in prison
and in her chapter finds new ways of challenging patterns of representa-
tion by looking at carceral geography via feminist geography and
criminology.
The chapters in the second part, ‘Moving Beyond Carceral Walls’,
both challenge the notion of a binary between what lies inside and what
is outside the prison, and explore the processes that underpin the
physical production of carceral walls themselves. In their chapter, crim-
inologist David Scheer and geographer Colin Lorne discuss the process
of building prisons, outlining the tensions between the creation of
unsettling utopias and the impact of everyday realities of prison archi-
tecture in Belgium. Next, geographer Jennifer Turner explores the ways
in which prisoner artwork reaches beyond prison walls, using concepts of
hapticality to discuss creativity and art in and beyond the prison. Lastly,
criminologist Rebecca Foster engages with notions of liminality in
prison visitation to explore new empirical methods through engaging
artistically/creatively with children visiting prison.
In the last part, ‘Imagining Beyond Carceral Spaces’, contributors
engage in different ways with the carceral imaginary. Geographers
Clemens Bernardt, Bettina van Hoven and Paulus Huigen trace
memory in carceral space, specifically focusing on asylum seekers’
sense of self. Stressing the significance of ‘inner’ bars rather than
more conventional spatial restrictions, they draw on innovative
immersive and visual methodologies, and novel theoretical perspec-
tives. Finally, criminologist and prison ethnographer Sarah
Armstrong and Andrew Jefferson complete the collection with an
experimental, personal and challenging piece which confronts the
idea of prison as a fixed entity.
In the final chapter, ‘Reflections on Capturing the Carceral’, we reflect
on the project of this hybrid book, essentially a dialogue across both
disciplines and carceral spaces and states of mind, demonstrated geogra-
phy’s contribution to carceral studies and the development of important
new directions that emerge from interdisciplinary engagement.
References
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and Nicolas Tixier. 2013. ‘“Pour votre tranquillité”: Ambiance, atmosphere
and surveillance.’ Geoforum 49: 299–309.
Campbell, Elaine. 2012a. ‘Transgression, affect and performance:
Choreographing a politics of urban space.’ British Journal of Criminology
53: 18–40.
Campbell, Elaine. 2012b. ‘Landscapes of performance: Stalking as choreogra-
phy.’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30: 400–417.
Crewe, Ben, Jason Warr, Peter Bennett, and Alan Smith 2014. ‘The emotional
geography of prison life.’ Theoretical Criminology 18(1): 56–74.
Davis, Mike. 1990. City of Quartz; Evacuating the Future in Los Angeles.
London: Verso.
Davis, Mike. 2006. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New
Edition). London: Verso.
Drake, Deborah H., and Rod Earle 2013. ‘On the inside: Prison ethnography
around the globe: Deborah H Drake and Rod Earle introduce the articles in
the themed section.’ Criminal Justice Matters 91(1): 12–13.
Gill, Nick, Deirdre Conlon, Dominique Moran, and Andrew Burridge. 2016.
‘Carceral circuitry: New directions in carceral geography.’ Progress in Human
Geography. doi: 10.1177/0309132516671823.
Hayward, Keith. 2004. ‘Space–the final frontier: Criminology, the city and the
spatial dynamics of exclusion.’ In Cultural Criminology Unleashed, edited by
Jeff Ferrell, Keith Hayward, Wayne Morrison, and Mike Presdee.
Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 155–166.
Hayward, Keith. 2012. ‘Five spaces of cultural criminology.’ British Journal of
Criminology 52: 441–462.
Hayward, Keith. 2016. ‘The future of (spatial) criminology and research about
public space.’ In Order and Conflict in Public Space, edited by Mattias De
Backer, Lucas Melgaço, Georgiana Varna, and Francesca Menichelli.
Kindynis, Theo. 2014. ‘Ripping up the map: Criminology and cartography
reconsidered.’ British Journal of Criminology 54(2): 222–243.
Kindynis, Theo. 2016. ‘Urban exploration: From subterranea to spectacle.’
British Journal of Criminology. Early Online. doi: 10.1093/bjc/azw045.
Moran, Dominique, Jennifer Turner, and Anna Schliehe. (forthcoming).

Conceptualising the carceral in carceral geography. Progress in Human
Geography.
Shabazz, Rashad. 2009. ‘“So high you can’t get over it, so low you can’t get
under it”: Carceral spatiality and black masculinities in the United States
and South Africa.’ Souls 11: 276–294.
Shabazz, Rashad. 2015a. Spatializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and
Black Masculinity in Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Shabazz, Rashad. 2015b. ‘“Sores in the city”: A genealogy of the Almighty
Black P. Stone Rangers.’ In Historical Geographies of Prisons: Unlocking the
Usable Carceral Past, edited by Karen M Morin and Dominique Moran.
Smith, Caleb. 2013. ‘Spaces of punitive violence.’ Criticism 55(1): 161–168.
Wacquant, Loïc. 2009. Prisons of Poverty. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Dominique Moran is Reader in Carceral Geography at the University of

Birmingham, UK. She has held substantial ESRC funding for research into
prison visitation and recidivism, and prison design. Founder of the Carceral
Geography Lab, she is author of Carceral Geography: Spaces and Practices of
Incarceration (2015) and an editor of Historical Geographies of Prisons:
Unlocking the Usable Carceral Past (2015) and Carceral Spaces: Mobility and
Agency in Imprisonment and Migrant Detention (2013). Her work is transdisci-
plinary, informed by and extending theoretical developments in geography,
criminology and prison sociology, but also interfacing with contemporary
debates over hyperincarceration, recidivism and the advance of the punitive
state. She publishes in leading journals including Transactions of the Institute of
British Geographers, Progress in Human Geography and Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space, and Theoretical Criminology.
Anna K. Schliehe is Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the Prisons Research

Centre, part of the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge.
Previously a Doctoral Candidate at the School of Geographical and Earth
Sciences, University of Glasgow, her Ph.D. research traces the nature and
experiences of spaces of confinement for young women in Scotland. She has
published several book chapters and articles in Scottish Geographical Journal and
Geografiska Annaler B: Human Geography.
Part I
Mapping Beyond Carceral Identities
2
Entangled Identities Inside and Outside:
Exploring Cape Town Street Youth’s
Interconnected Lives on the Street
and in Prison
Lorraine van Blerk
Introduction
For some time carceral geographies have been concerned with moving
beyond spaces of confinement. For example, Dirsuweit (1999), through
a focus on sexual identity, illustrated that prisoners’ identities on the
inside can draw on cultural values and codes from the outside, while
home identities have also been noted to become merged with, or
separated from, those expressed in prison. However, much of this
work has tended to focus on understanding expressions of identity inside
while neglecting the implications of the prison experience (or fear of it)
for identities on the outside. Through the exemplar of Cape Town street
youth, this chapter shows that prison identities are not confined to the
inside, but rather, through entangled relational experiences, stretch out
to other spaces, influencing identity practices and lived realities on the
street.
L. van Blerk (*)

Geography, School of Social Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK
e-mail: l.c.vanblerk@dundee.ac.uk

14 L. van Blerk
This chapter draws on in-depth narratives with street youth, aged

between 15 and 28, the majority of whom have been in carceral con-
finement for multiple reasons, and usually several times. The chapter
explores how street youth’s lives are interwoven between the spaces of
street and prison, exploring what this means for understanding their
identities and lives on the street. It discusses how being on the street
shapes their carceral experience, and also how the gang structures they
are exposed to in prison have implications for life on the outside. The
chapter concludes by showing that ‘street’ and ‘prison’ are intricately
entangled, with street youth’s everyday identities influenced and shaped
by relational encounters and cultural strategies of the prison number
gang system.
Over the last 30 years or so, street children and youth have received
significant international attention, yet we are told they are still consis-
tently failed in terms of being able to access their rights (van Blerk 2014;
Poretti et al. 2014). The underlying problems of poverty and inequality
in urban centres have resulted in a move away from attempting to define
and count numbers of street children and youth, to investigating their
lives in more detail (Aptekar and Stoeklin 2013). Research has identified
that young people who are connected to the streets spend much of their
daily life creatively using the city for survival, fluidly working, sleeping
and engaging recreationally in the city. An extensive and diverse litera-
ture now exists across the social sciences, exploring the daily minutiae of
street youth’s lives, including their street lifestyles (Aptekar 1988;
Panter-Brick et al. 1996), reasons for being on the streets (Le Roux
and Smith 1998; Matchinda 1999; Conticini and Hulme 2006), survi-
val strategies (Hecht 1998; Lugalla and Mbwambo 1999) and sub-
cultures and identity (Beazley 2000, 2002, 2003; van Blerk 2005;
Herrera et al. 2009). Therefore, the focus of research on street youth’s
lives has tended to focus on their ‘being in public’ (Jones and Thomas
De Benitez 2010), their engagement with urban places (Beazley 2000;
van Blerk 2013) and their contributions to the informality of the city
(Shand et al. 2016). Yet, this research rarely draws connections beyond
the street to other places, despite the recent acknowledgment that street
children and youth’s lives are not lived in isolation, but rather are
connected relationally across space (van Blerk 2012).
2 Entangled Identities Inside and Outside: Exploring Cape Town . . . 15
This critical consideration of street youth’s relationship to the street

emerges in part through an acknowledgement of the problematic nature
of the ‘street’ label. First of all, defining children by the label ‘street’
positions them in relation to that place. It locates children in the street
(Hecht 1998) which is static, and excludes their capacity to move
between different social and spatial environments. Further, the label
‘street’ associates the negative characteristics of street environments to
childhood (Conticini 2004). Therefore, the socially constructed term
‘street children’ is less than helpful, as it ignores the diversity of experi-
ences in young people’s lives, as well as the spatial and temporal fluidity
of their interaction with the city and their families. Taking this into
account, the term ‘street youth’ is used here to refer to particular groups
of marginalised young people who, due to situations of poverty, live
their lives connected to the street, and struggle to access their rights (van
Blerk 2014). It is also the term the youth in this study selected for use for
themselves. However, this chapter goes beyond traditional connotations
of street children or youth labels to include the term ‘street-connected’
(Thomas de Benitez 2011), which recognises young people have rela-
tionships and connections that traverse space, and result in a focus on
street life as inherently fluid. Young people move between the streets and
other environments on a regular and sometimes sustained basis. Yet,
despite this acknowledgment, little research has sought to understand
the interconnectedness and impact of this movement between spaces for
conceptualising street life. This chapter begins to investigate these con-
nections through exploring street youth’s socio-spatial relationship
between the public environment of the street and the confined spaces
of prison.
Research Design and Methodology

This chapter elucidates the ways in which youth, moving between the
street and the prison, create identities that are intertwined – entangled
between their lives on the street and their lives in prison – and shaped by
experiences in both locations. In order to fully explore how identities are
16 L. van Blerk
shaped across space and time, I draw on selected life history narratives of
the ‘City Kids’,1 a group of around 25 street youth, mostly young men,
aged between 15 and 28, living on the streets in Cape Town, South
Africa. The majority of these young people had, at the time of participa-
tion in the research, been on the streets for several years; some longer
than others, but none less than three years. The majority have also been
arrested on many occasions, for a variety of reasons including theft,
assault, robbery (including armed robbery), violence, vagrancy and, for
some, murder/homicide. All of the young people over the age of 18 have
been to prison at least once and most have been in prison for multiple
reasons and usually several times. Their narratives explore many aspects
of street youth’s lives but of particular interest here are the nuanced
discussions they contain of the merging of identities between the street
and the prison and how these spaces are intricately connected.
Following Bemak (1996), the project employed a street researcher
approach for conducting participatory, ethnographic research with street
youth. A significant part of this methodology involves spending informal
time with young people connected to the streets, engaging in conversation
and learning from their expertise. In order to become accepted on the
streets, however, it was essential to work with former street youth, still well
connected and respected on the streets, to legitimate researcher presence
and allow for informal engagement to take place. In this instance, I worked
with two young people who had previously lived on the streets. They were
suggested to me by NGOs working in the city due to their current street
connections, and they facilitated my interactions and acceptance.
The research began with a process of relationship-building in order to
develop trust and ensure that participants were well informed about the
research and its aims and objectives. This was mainly established through
spending time with street youth in various public places for a few hours at a
time. This process usually involved playing sport (soccer) followed by
sharing food and drinks. In addition relationship-building took place
through informal meetings on the streets created as spaces to chat and
1
All names used are pseudonyms. This includes individual names, group names and place names,
other than names of prisons.
‘hang-out’ on a more ad hoc basis. During these meetings, the research was
introduced and discussed, and informal life history interviews followed.
Although the interviews were conducted under strict ethical practice based
on informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality, many of the youth
specifically asked to participate rather than waiting to be invited, demon-
strating a desire to ‘tell their own story’ and an emotional desire to narrate
their experiences. As Bondi (2013) notes, life history interviews are a
particularly useful method for engaging with the emotional aspects of
interviews that help to shape identities and develop a deep understanding
of the process young people have gone through to reach this point in their
lives (see also van Blerk and van Blerk 2015). Typically, the interviews
lasted about one hour, although some were significantly longer. Most were
conducted in English without the need for any translation or interpretation
and therefore an encounter only between the researcher and participant.
The remainder of the chapter begins by discussing the spatial contexts
of identity, drawing on carceral research and research with young people,
to explore how identities are created and shaped within and beyond
space. Following a conceptual exploration of the nature of street youth’s
identities, the chapter goes on to discuss how being on the street shapes
young people’s carceral experience but also how the gang structures they
are exposed to therein have implications for life on the outside. The
chapter draws on the experiences of a selected number of young people’s
case studies to highlight these points and concludes by showing that
‘street’ and ‘prison’ are intricately entangled, with street youth’s everyday
identities influenced and shaped by relational encounters and cultural
strategies of the prison number gang system.
Constructing Identities Between the Street

and the Prison: Spatialities, Relationalities
and Masculinities
Identity (or identities) has become a widely discussed conceptual issue
within geography alongside core concepts such as space, place, scale,
time and mobility. It is generally accepted that each individual’s identity
18 L. van Blerk
is not a fixed singular category but rather multiple identities that are
fostered through the intersection of gender, age, ethnicity and other
personal characteristics and attributes as well as influenced by wider
societal norms and values (van Blerk 2011). Identities have also been
linked to the social relations and actions that are considered appropriate
in particular bounded spaces. Yet, identities are not static, but malleable,
shaped by relations that change and develop over space and time (van
Blerk 2005; O’Neill Gutierrez and Hopkins 2015). Increasingly, as the
mobility ‘turn’ has taken hold (Kwan and Schwanen 2016) identities
have been discussed in relation to movement across space and between
places. According to Kaufmann (2002), mobility between places is
creating greater engagement between people and places that results in
new identities emerging through social relations encountered in new and
diverse settings. People are therefore becoming ‘multi-belonging’, taking
on different roles and identities through exposure to new environments
rather than simply having one spatial (and temporal) reference
(Kaufmann 2002; van Blerk 2011). The prison space is no exception
here, with prisoners’ identities shaped by their inside experiences
(Turner 2013). These are also fluid experiences, shaped by the mobility
of prisoners as they journey through the process of incarceration, or
move between the different spaces of confinement within carceral insti-
tutions that in turn are subject to changing social relations between staff
and prisoners or between the different groups or gangs contained therein
(Blue 2015; Peters and Turner 2015). Following these ideas, this chapter
positions identities as influenced and shaped by social relations, but
acknowledges that while social relations may take place in particular
bounded spaces, they transcend these spaces, connecting people across
space and over time.
When applying this relational and spatially fluid understanding of
identity construction to street youth, their location in the street, as an
imagined dangerous and problematic environment, comes to the fore
(Hecht 1998). The positioning of street children and youth as outside
‘normal’ (read traditional middle-class and Western) conceptualisations
of childhood and youth provides insight into the malleable and changing
shape of young people’s identities on the streets. For example, young
people display identities that resist dominant social, economic and
political structures in their communities and societies (Young 2003).

Beazley (2002) highlighted this point well in demonstrating how
Indonesian street girls take on masculine identities through the way
they dress, tattoo their bodies and adopt particular behaviours in direct
opposition to their subordination in male-dominated street life. While
in Kampala, Uganda, Young (2003) observed a highly mobile collection
of identities that are not static, but respond to the social relations present
in places frequented at different times. As young people move to
different places to avoid problems, they take on the desired behaviours
and values necessary to survive in those places. Therefore, street youth
develop multiple identities based on the norms and values appropriate
for the diversity of spaces they frequent, including the prison.
Prisons as Carceral Spaces of Confinement

and Fluidity
Philo (2012) notes that as carceral geography has gained momentum
within the discipline, some consideration has been given to exploring the
spaces and complexities of detainment, including the containment of
bodies that are considered problematic. He draws attention to work on
prisons and prison spaces as part of this move, and in particular high-
lights the boundedness of such spaces (Sibley and van Hoven 2009).
Interest in understanding carceral geographies of prison spaces as going
beyond these boundaries has recently gained momentum, with ideas,
bodies and identities discussed as both contained inside the prison, but
also moving beyond such spaces of confinement through fluid relation-
ships and networks. Research has explored the ‘leakage’ of the inside/
outside and vice versa (Turner 2014), suggesting the emergence of an
increasingly blurred relationship between prison and society. For exam-
ple, Wacquant (2001), taking a Foucauldian perspective, demonstrates
how poor neighbourhood ghettos in the United States have become like
prisons through increased societal surveillance and forces of control
employed by the state. He discusses the hyper-ghetto as a ‘carceral
mesh’. Neighbourhoods have taken on carceral features such as
20 L. van Blerk
fortress-like public institutions with security fences and perimeter patrols

for the containment and confinement of a surplus population that are
branded socially marginal by the wider state. Similarly, Brown (2014)
highlights de-carceralisation as significant in understanding these
blurred boundaries, with juvenile detention becoming one part of a
broader process of community orientation, thereby destabilising the
spatial separateness of prison and society. Yet, despite this growing
interest in understanding the intertwining of inside and outside, Baer
and Ravenberg (2008) state that it has rarely been explored from prison-
ers’ perspectives.
The shaping of identities through the porosity of prison boundaries
has also begun to receive some attention in the literature (see, e.g. Moran
et al. 2009; Turner 2013, 2014). Moran et al. (2009) explore the
disciplinary power structures within Russian women’s prisons to
uncover the ways in which beauty pageants are used to rescript female
inmates’ identities to resemble culturally appropriate feminine identities,
as displayed on the outside. Similarly, Dirsuweit (1999), through a focus
on sexual identity, illustrated that prisoners’ identities on the inside can
draw on cultural values and codes from the outside; while home iden-
tities have also been noted to become merged with, or separated from,
those expressed in prison. An increasing concern with the emotional
geographies of prison environments has pinpointed a consideration of
identity as performed within prison spaces. Crewe et al. (2014) draw on
Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical metaphor in The Presentation of Self in
the Everyday Life, which suggested that prison identities are performed
with roles and scripts that are socially determined and enacted. Goffman
further distinguished between frontstage and backstage behaviour –
separating public and private identities. Yet Crewe et al. (2014) and
others who have utilised and critiqued these ideas identify a more
nuanced understanding of the way in which prison spaces can be
simultaneously public and private. For example, Moran (2013) talks of
visiting rooms as ‘liminal carceral spaces’ where the outside and inside
worlds merge.
This fascinating discussion has tended to focus on understanding
expressions of identity inside the prison, or as part of confinement (or
on mobile journeys between prison spaces), certainly accepting identity
as non-static, porous and spatially malleable and drawing on influences

outside for the shaping of identities inside. However, the implications of
the prison experience (or fear of it) for identities on the outside has so far
been neglected. Through the exemplar of Cape Town street youth, this
chapter shows that prison identities are not confined to the inside, but
rather through entangled relational experiences stretch out to other
spaces, influencing identity practices and lived realities on the street.
Street Youth Identities in Cape Town: Spaces,

Relations and Masculinities
In order to begin to understand how shifting identities between the
street and the prison impact on the lives of young people, it is important
to consider the broader context in which their identities are experienced.
In positioning masculine identities in a post-1994 South Africa,2
Morrell (2001) draws on Connell (1995) in expressing not one but
multiple masculinities that will react and adapt to change in a variety of
ways: sometimes embracing new ways of thinking about manhood and
masculinity in a context of (deepening) inequality, through to preserving
the dominant status quo. Social transformation in the late 1990s and
beyond was an opportunity for South African masculinities to be pre-
sented in new ways. As Reid and Walker (2005, 3) pointed out: ‘Social
transformation has brought about ambiguous circumstances in which
brutal violence may coexist with previously unimaginable levels of
integration and acceptance of sexual minorities’. The post-apartheid
history of South Africa has witnessed political changes that have infil-
trated economic and social sectors and deeply affected young people
growing up in South Africa, particularly young men. Changes to social
structures in the 1960s through the creation of homelands and the
subdivision of land between households rather than families, thereby
2
1994 witnessed the transition from South Africa’s National Party government, which not who
had upheld the policy of apartheid within the country for decades, to the African National
Congress government which removed the apartheid policy.
22 L. van Blerk
fragmenting patrilineal clusters, has made it increasingly difficult for

rural young men to achieve bridewealth,3 marry and support themselves
– through cultural practices associated with traditional ideas for attain-
ing adulthood. Further, in many communities unemployment has
rocketed since 1994, particularly for the young. Communities, both
urban and rural, are still faced with violence, unemployment, impover-
ished families and welfare dependency, although social security pay-
ments in the form of pensions and child support are now paid to the
poor.
Neihaus (2005) asserts that these conditions make it increasingly
difficult for young men to demonstrate a dominant ‘masculine’ mascu-
linity (Paechter 2006). For example, in a context of changing social
relations and increasingly gendered relations, where women’s rights are
also being taken seriously, some young men are struggling to come to
terms with their sexuality and identity. In some situations, men are
rejecting violence as a method of resolving conflict in the home, funda-
mentally changing how family and gender relations are expressed in an
African context (Sideris 2005). However, the men in Sideris’ (2005)
study position themselves as different. In many other instances, young
men unable to secure employment may enter into criminal activity for
survival. This can make it difficult for them to find girlfriends, or they
may end up in relationships where their female partner is employed and
they are not. Neihaus (2005) gives examples of young men in such
positions seeking to rape successful women as a demonstration of
gendered (hegemonic masculine) power relations. As Hopkins and
Noble (2009, 812) pointed out, it is useful to explore the ‘intersection-
ality of masculine identities with other forms of identification, recognis-
ing that there are a range of vectors of relationality present within
masculinities in different places and at different times’.
For street youth, problematic conditions in their home lives have also
been the reasons why many have taken to the streets, although this has
3
Bridewealth is a term given to a payment presented by a groom or his family to his bride’s family.
It may consist of money or goods, and it may be paid in one sum or in instalments over a period of
time.
not enabled them to elude similar power struggles. In Cape Town,

newcomers to the streets were often subject to initiation into street life
which involved taking drugs, having money and clothes taken and
sometimes being sodomised by older boys, similarly demonstrating the
intersectionality of age and sexuality in creating dominant masculine
identities on the streets. The following quotes4 from Danyl and Xolile’s
two different life history narratives reveal the complexity and diversity of
the ways in which a dominant hegemonic masculinity on the streets
intersects with age, sexuality and criminality for young people develop-
ing street identities. Danyl highlights how street youth move around the
city looking to skurrel (to access money through begging or stealing);
linking their ability to survive on the streets to their mobility and
identity. As Beazley (2000) noted, a detailed knowledge of the city
creates place-based identities, a visible dominant presence and a sense
of belonging within the cityscape which are often celebrated displays of
masculine identities. Danyl (now 29) states:
I stayed everywhere on the streets . . . I went from one place to another

breaking into cars, sniffing glue and begging money. I started on the city
parade but my first group was W . . . street. All the clubs were there and I
was a cute kid so I made lots of money. The group noticed me and made
me join them. I moved around as well, when I fought with someone or
just got bored, when you learn street life you can move around. I went to
Dog Road, Sand Point and Grass Point and places like that. It was always
like that, you got a group in every area and they were named according to
that area but they were different, some did drugs, other glue, some did
break-ins, others begged at the robots [traffic lights].
In contrast, Xolile (21) describes how, as a newcomer to the streets at

the age of 9, he witnessed younger boys being subject to more subordi-
nate positioning through the dominance of older youth, creating more
complicit and marginal masculinities on the streets (Connell 1995; re-
discussed in Hopkins and Noble 2009).
4
These two quotes were previously published in van Blerk (2013).
24 L. van Blerk
We used to walk up to A . . . Street. There was a Roxy cinema there and we

would eat sweets and chips. Then at night we would come down to the
square to sleep. The station was one of the main groups and they (the
leaders) would sodomise and beat us little kids so we would work hard for
them. When it was busy they put us on different robots [traffic lights] to
beg for money. There were a lot of us.
Here the spaces of the streets, and the social relations therein, shape
the masculine identities of the young people located there based on age,
sexuality and survival. The particular contextual complexities of being
on the street therefore produced particular identities. As van Hoven and
Horschelmann (2005) noted, spaces and the social relations within them
produce those particular identities. Yet, it is also possible that such
‘street’ identities are influenced by relations beyond the street.
Merging Street and Prison in Street Youth’s

Identities
Moving beyond the street to consider how identities might be shaped by
relations within the prison, it is useful to consider the literature explor-
ing identities (masculinities and femininities) in South African institu-
tions, including mining compounds and prisons. Prior discussion of the
establishment of hegemonic masculinities through sexual practices in all-
male compounds has drawn on a relational approach (e.g. Grear 2005).
Cultural networks within these institutional spaces are discussed as
connected to, but separate from, home networks in rural areas, and
this work similarly points to the fluid nature of identity.
According to Harries (1994), age, sexuality and masculinities were co-
constructed in the mining compounds, where older miners would
assume a dominant masculine identity and take younger men as their
‘wives’ entering into ‘mine marriage’ relationships while away from
home. These relationships were inherently bound up with outside
spaces, as the norms of these marriages can be traced to the patriarchal
identity structures in the miners’ home communities. However, Grear
(2005) suggested that Harries’ (1994) work highlighted a static identity
transferred from rural communities to mining compounds (in this

example), and instead argued for a more fluid and shifting understand-
ing of identity. Similarly, Dirsuweit (1999; drawing on Butler 1990), in
her study in South African women’s prisons, suggested that rather than
traditional gender norms being carried into the institutional space as a
pre-existing identity, they were re-negotiated through repeated perfor-
mative acts, enabling same-sex relationships to occur inside. These
studies demonstrate both that gendered relations on the outside influ-
ence identities on the inside and that within these spaces, new masculi-
nities and femininities emerged as part of multiple fluid identities.
Reflecting on Moran et al.’s (2009) work, parallels can be drawn
between such fluid constructions of masculinities with Foucauldian
discourse on power, as a critical frame for understanding the ways in
which such identities are shaped within and between spaces. However,
these studies are concerned with understanding identity within carceral
spaces and do not consider how they might shape or transform identities
in other, ‘non-carceral’ spaces.
Entangled Identities: The City Kids

Cape Town street life is inherently mobile, with both Danyl and Xolile
highlighting the diversity of spaces they frequented for different aspects
of their livelihood strategies. Although the relational nature of young
people’s street lives has begun to receive some attention in discussions of
the relationship between home and street (van Blerk 2012), the prison
rarely appears as an important space. However, for the young men who
made up the ‘City Kids’, prison had begun to play a significant role in
shaping their identities. The City Kids frequently found themselves
spending varying lengths of time in prison, in particular the main prison
on the outskirts of the city. This carceral space is heavily dominated by
gangs that have held a position of authority inside the prison for over a
century. Steinberg (2004) documented the history of these gangs
through the eyes of a leading member. Although there is limited space
to delve into detail here, it is suffice to say that prison gangs not only
26 L. van Blerk
dominated carceral spaces, but were also connected to criminal gang

systems elsewhere in the Western Cape (the region in which Cape Town
is located). With a long and complicated history, the gangs that are of
interest in relation to the prison spaces frequented by the street youth in
this study were the ‘number gangs’: the ‘26s’, ‘27s’ and ‘28s’.
In the early 1900s, a Zulu migrant to South Africa named Nongoloza
established a gang of robbers, the Ninevites, and led them in a quasi-
military underground uprising against the White national government.
The number gangs later emerged from different interpretations of this
warrior’s rebellion against the former ruling government’s laws. In prison,
each gang has specific objectives and its own code of conduct, that must be
studied and learnt by new members. The 28s are known for their organisa-
tion and protection of wyfies5 (wives) for sex, the 26s and 27s are also
associated with specific sexual interactions and relationships. Although the
gangs were previously highly secretive, and confined their activity to the
prison system, Steinberg (2004) noted that the 26s and 28s (the larger of
the three number gangs) had begun to resemble the dominant gangs with
which they were affiliated on the outside, suggesting a malleable gang
member identity that for individuals may emerge through connections to
other gang identities encountered prior to carceral experience.
In this chapter, the focus rests mainly with the 28s, as this was the
gang with which the majority of the street youth in this study had
been associated. For the 28s, prison initiation usually involved gang
rape by those in the 28 hierarchy – a display of masculinity imbued
with masculine hegemonic power and domination. New entrants are
compelled to conform to the new forms of identity, and comply with
the new modes of behaviour, demanded by the intricate codes and
rules to which inmates are subject. In male prisons, the 28 gang is
divided into two sections, the ‘masculine’ line and the ‘feminine’ line,
5
A ‘wyfie’ (wife) in this context refers to the wife of a prisoner. This is another man who, usually a
newcomer, is less violent than the 28 soldiers. The young man in this position has to take on the
traditional identity roles of a wife – he will wash, cook, clean and take on a subservient role in the
sexual partnership. In return the 28 soldier will protect his wyfie and provide food. It is not,
however, a mutually beneficial or agreed relationship; the wyfie is forced into this role by more
dominant and violent members of the 28s.
each with separate chains of command. Those men in the ‘masculine’

line have access to those in the ‘feminine’ line as their wyfies. Wyfies
are usually tricked or forced into a subservient position of cleaning
the cell, washing clothes and sexual submission. In contrast, those in
the ‘masculine’ line assert their masculine status through power over
their wyfie, and have often achieved that position through violence,
such as through stabbing a prison guard or a member of another
number gang. Dirsuweit (2003) ascertains that these ‘masculine’ and
‘feminine’ gang identities are based on notions of heterosexuality
originating outside the prison. This means that those forced into
wyfie positions are effectively disempowered, relinquishing their mas-
culine status gained through patriarchal structures inherent in outside
communities. Here, identities inside are shaped by external power
structures and codes from outside, in the ways discussed by Moran et al.
(2009) and Turner (2013).
Drawing on these conceptualisations of identities as fluid and power-
fully constructed, this chapter focuses on the histories of four members of
the City Kids to explore how their experiences in prison then impacted
on their identities back on the streets. Like most of the group, Abraham
(28 years), Fergus (26 years), Grant (18 years) and Bonge (29 years) had
all been on the streets for some time and are considered to be fully
immersed into street life. They were engaged in the night-time informal
economy through criminal activity, drinking cheap strong alcohol and
regularly taking drugs, principally taking/smoking marijuana but also
smoking tik (home-made methamphetamines) and sniffing glue. The
majority of the City Kids came to the streets when there were relatively
large numbers of street children, in the early 1990s, and when there
seemed to be a rapid influx of young people into the city from the Cape
Flats region6 (an impoverished area situated to the southeast of the
6
Under the race-based legislation of the Apartheid government, such as the Group Areas Act,
from the 1950s the Cape Flats became home to people designated as ‘non-White’. Pass laws forced
many people designated as Black and Coloured into informal settlements, including in the Flats,
which are now home to much of the population of Greater Cape Town. The Flats area is today
still characterised by high levels of poverty, social problems, high unemployment and gang
activity.
28 L. van Blerk
central business district of the city). Some came because of problems at

home, while others merely got caught up in street life, deciding to stay
after visiting the city with friends or siblings. Most of the group have
girlfriends, some of whom have also been on the streets for several years,
but others have joined the group because of a relationship with one of the
young men. Generally, the girls reported coming into the city due to
problems at home, with some mentioning rape or sexual and physical
abuse from relatives, neighbours or step-parents.
Abraham’s (28) Entangled Masculine and Feminine

Identities
Abraham arrived on the street when he was seven years old. He left home
because his step-father was beating him and smoking Mandrax7 in the
house, so he decided to leave home and head into the city. After
becoming immersed into street life, Abraham developed some very
close friendships; he described his friends as meaning everything to
him and becoming more important than family. Abraham began break-
ing into cars for older youth, and carrying their guns for them. By the
time he went to prison at 14, he had been sodomised, shot and stabbed.
He explains how this impacted on his life:
The first time I went to prison I was 14. At that time the prison was rough
and small kids were there. They (28s) told me I must wash their clothes
and clean the room. If I don’t do it I will get beaten. A guy came with a lot
of tattoos and he asked me ‘Where is [your] bed?’ I told him it’s my first
time in prison. He told me he had a double – two beds. He told me I can
lay there. He treat me like a woman. Only two times I’m eating. They
took my bread and mealies [cornmeal porridge] . . . When the wardens
check that everyone is in their rooms I just go and lay on the bed. At night
he woke me up and told me to make a cigarette for myself. Then he told
me there is food in his locker for me. Then he told me to take a shower.
7
Mandrax is the brand name under which methaqualone is sold in the UK and South Africa. A
sedative and hypnotic medication, it is known as Quaalude in the United States.
He asked me for the soap, it fell on the ground and I must pick it up and
then he raped me. . . . Then he told me to go to sleep on his bed and at
3am he wake me up to wash my clothes . . . He told me I was his wife in
prison. . . . The next time I went to prison was for four years. A guy told
me the way to survive was to join them. So I did but that was my biggest
mistake. They put a knife in my hand and made me stab a warden. Then
they give me all these tattoos. . . . The tattoos make people scared of me so
I can’t get work [and] I have to be on the streets.
As a teenager, who had been establishing a criminal street career for

himself in the city, Abraham had crafted an identity that could be
likened to the dominant masculinities as noted by van Hoven and
Horschelmann (2005), where the social relations in the spaces of the
street had facilitated the production of a strong identity. Yet, for
Abraham, the experience of prison at the relatively young age of 14
required the performance of a new identity, resulting in the loss of his
masculine identity while inside, and the adoption of a ‘feminine’ mas-
culinity (Paechter 2006). On returning to the streets, Abraham took on
a more dominant role in the group, engaging in violent criminal activity
that resulted in assaults and return visits to prison. For Abraham the
constant mobility between the spaces of the prison and the street
resulted in a shifting identity that was re-shaped by the social relations
within each space at any given time. His identity inside as a 28, and in
particular as a wyfie, means he adopts subordinate behaviours within an
inherently hegemonic masculine space, and takes on roles that would
traditionally be associated with femininity. However, his identity as a 28
also makes Abraham feared on the streets. His tattoos, and the notoriety
associated with causing physical violence, deliver a dominant masculine
identity when back on the streets. This is not to say that Abraham has
two separate, compartmentalised and spatially located identities: these
aspects of his identity are not only malleable, but entangled, highlighting
a ‘carceral identity mesh’ (Wacquant 2001).
Resonant with the way in which hyperghettos in the United States are
mixing the spatial identities of prions and ghetto, the social identities of street
youth in South Africa are similarly entangled. For example, Abraham’s
prison experience has made it difficult for him to have girlfriends. Further,
30 L. van Blerk
although he has often tried to move away from crime, the very visible tattoos
that cover his face and arms make people distrustful and afraid of him,
making it difficult to access, let alone retain employment. Abraham now feels
he is committed to the streets as the only place where he is accepted and
powerful, which means he will probably continue to move between the street
and the prison, thus further entangling his identities.
Fergus’s (26) Entangled Identities of Age: Growing

up as a 28
Fergus came to the streets at the age of 12, with some other boys from
his neighbourhood, following problems at home. Although the others
decided to return home, Fergus quickly found his own way in the city.
At first, he was vulnerable, unsure of how to act on the streets, and
although he met other children who seem to befriend him, he was also
robbed by other children. In return for assisting them, Fergus recalls
being coaxed by some other children into trying new things, such as
smoking and sniffing glue. In the beginning, he used to park cars for
money, but older youth on the street would take it from him. As a
younger boy, he was completely dominated by older children. As Fergus
grew, his friends also taught him to rob people, and he gradually became
more assertive on the streets. He eventually developed a street identity
that was imbued with powerful discourses around criminality, danger
and strength. He stated:
I was 16 when I went to Pollsmoor8 [prison] for grabbing a chain [stealing

a necklace]. I was in the juvenile section. I was (not in a numbers gang).
They asked me what side I want to be on. I said I want to be a 28. I knew
the powerful men on the streets were all 28s and they told us to always fear
the 28s. Then I got out and I felt like a big boss. I was in prison for three
months so I wasn’t scared of the jail anymore. . . . I told myself I was going
8
Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison, a prison in the Cape Town suburb of Tokai, within which
is located Medium A Prison, housing both sentenced juveniles between the ages of 14 and 17, and
those awaiting trial.
to start robbing again . . . One night I was walking with a friend and we met
Zulu. My friend told me Zulu stabbed him and said I must get revenge and
stab Zulu. I stabbed him and made him dead. I told myself I didn’t kill him
but in my heart I knew. The next day the police surrounded the place and
found the knife. They took all our finger prints and I got three years in
prison at 18. Then I really became a 28. I met a friend in prison and he
organised for me to be a 28. I learned to talk the gangster language and he
taught me to stab the 26s in prison. He told us to sex the guys and I did it. I
learned to sex the other person like me and I take a wyfie.
Going to prison for the first time changed Fergus and enabled him to
consolidate his masculine identity on the streets. He says he felt like a
‘big boss’ when he came out, as he was no longer afraid of prison. His
fear of prison had previously prevented Fergus from engaging in violent
crime, but his period in the juvenile section at Pollsmoor encouraged
him to take on more violent activities. Being in the juvenile prison had
not been as bad or as difficult as Fergus had expected, from the stories he
had heard outside. Yet, Fergus later returned to prison for murder. This
action gave Fergus status immediately in the senior prison and offered
him an opportunity to become a 28 soldier (not a wyfie).
His time in prison therefore facilitated a continued performance of a
dominant masculine street identity where actions on the inside sup-
ported actions on the outside – entangling the spaces and social relations
of which he was part. The dominant masculine identity constructed
through his active engagement in sodomy in prison, and his violent
criminality outside, had won him respect in both places. His identity is
then fluid, permeating the spatial boundaries between the prison and the
street. The spaces are inherently connected in Fergus’ life, his identity
shaped by their ‘carceral mesh’ as the street and prison gang cultures
connect.
Grant’s (18) Entangled Identities of Growing up
Grant was born in the Cape Flats area. His father left when he was very
young and his mother struggled to make ends meet in the household. She
was often working and Grant was left in the care of her boyfriend – his
32 L. van Blerk
informal ‘step-father’. His mother’s boyfriend did not like Grant and
used to beat him regularly. It was for this reason that, at the age of six,
Grant decided to leave home and try working and living on the streets.
Although he left with some slightly older boys who had been going
backwards and forwards between home and the streets, Grant himself
did not return home. He spent a lot of time in the city fearing and
respecting the 28s – robbing to earn money for them. Now he hangs out
in the city with his girlfriend Jessie. He has only recently turned 18 and
his prison experience has been part of his transition to adulthood.
The Station Group [a gang operating at the station] was my biggest group.
They started sodomising the little kids like me and putting them there on
the robots [begging at traffic lights]. There was about 20 of us, all different
ages from 21 down . . . I started in the station and then I went to the docks
and other places to see Cape Town. It was territorial in that time but I was
small so I just do my job and do my own things. I was a bit scared in that
group. They were the 28s and they were the leaders. I had to look up to
them and then they will look out for me . . . I have been to prison two
times now. Now I am a soldier in the 28s. I am still a minimum. I still
have to go and learn the book of liberty like rules and prayers and
regulations and there is a lot of things. Prison does change you. You
learn more stuff there that you don’t expect. You learn like being a
number and beat people up.
Like Fergus, Grant was powerfully dominated as a young child on the

streets, very heavily abused by older youth who controlled him for their
own benefit, with age a significant marker of his identity. It is interesting
to note from his description, though, the ways in which prison gang
identities spilled out into the streets. Grant talked about the 28s being
the ‘leaders’ on the street, with actually going to prison, experiencing the
gang system, and coming out a 28 being viewed as a process to be afraid
of, but also to be admired. This highlights not only the multiplicity and
malleability of identities but also that the carceral space of the prison is
not contained, but connected to the streets through social relations that
permeate both spaces and influence identities and practices on the
streets.
Like Fergus, Grant aged on the street, grew stronger and participated in
criminal activity that resulted in his going to prison. At 18 he had already
been in the adult prison twice, but only for short stays. It is not clear from
Grant’s narrative whether he assumed the position of a wyfie or not; but it
is clear that although he has joined the 28s he is still seen as a ‘minimum’
– a soldier in training – someone who still has to learn the rules and
procedures to make his way to full 28 status. This suggests that his prison
identity still positions him as ‘young’ – someone who needs to be
instructed. However, Grant notes that just by having been in prison he
has earned greater respect on the streets. Whereas he has a ‘learner’
identity in prison, on the outside this identity is manifest as that of a
fully revered street adult, and he no longer has to ‘look up to’ the 28s on
the streets. His girlfriend, who while he was in prison had left him for
someone else, returned to their relationship. Here, the multiple states of
belonging, to prison and to street (see Kaufmann 2002) have enabled
Grant to transcend his position as ‘young’ on the street. Time spent in
prison has broadened the range of social relations upon which he can
draw, to assert his dominant masculinity on the streets on his return.
Bonge’s (29) Entangled Identities of Outside and Inside
Bonge spent most of his adult life in Cape Town prison and all of his
youth immersed in gang culture. He came to the streets as a teenager
already more physically developed than many of the other newcomers,
and he had previous connections with gangs in the Cape Flats. His status
as a member of the ‘Hard Living’ gang enabled him to connect with
others from similar gangs in the city centre, although he moved between
the city streets and the gang-controlled suburbs. Despite not having a
formal job, being in the gang and undertaking activities associated with
gang life meant Bonge could not only support himself but he could also
participate in the hegemonic masculinities of the Hard Living gang
through the social relations that were part of that experience (Neihaus
2005). Therefore, prior to going into prison Bonge had already devel-
oped a strong gang association that outwardly projected a dominant
masculine identity connected with crime and violence. His narrative
34 L. van Blerk
below demonstrates how his experience in prison became intertwined

with his identities outside, in the Hard Living gang in particular, and
on the streets in general. Having spent many years in prison, on his
release Bonge immediately won respect on the streets, due to knowl-
edge of his status in prison being communicated on the outside by
street youth who had come in and out of prison during his own longer
sentence:
There are lots of outside gangs. I am in the Hard Living gang. Hard
Living, City Kids, Dog Road Kids, they all linked up and get together and
fight the Americans.9 I was fighting the Americans in Mannenberg and I
kill someone. That’s how I got to prison. I was there 12 years from 1995
to 2007. One guy call me and tell me to clean the floor, I said no. He took
a stick and hit me so I came and fight the guy and a gang of 26 come and
beat me. They put me in the shower with all my clothes and hit me again.
After this, one 28 came and asked me what outside gang I belong to. He
asked me to be a 28.
Although somewhat different from the others, Bonge’s story equally

highlights the ways in which prison and street merge in the identities of
young people, and demonstrates that their identities are not spatially
bounded, but fluidly created, between the spaces they frequent. For
Bonge, being in a gang and having a strong masculine identity before
going into prison (given that the crime of murder is highly respected by
the number gangs), facilitated his fast-track position into the ranks of the
28s, despite being a relatively young man in the adult prison. By
asserting himself, withstanding a beating and identifying himself with
the Hard Living gang, he avoided the subservient ‘feminine’ masculinity
of the wyfie and maintained the dominant identity that he had brought
into the prison from outside. Further, given the length of his sentence he
became well respected inside, and developed social relations with others
on the streets as they moved more transiently between the street and the
9
Steinberg (2004) notes that the ‘Americans’ are associated with the 26s, while the gangs
identified by Bonge are linked to the 28s. These are rival gangs inside, and so fighting in this
way outside the prison is connected to their relationship inside.
prison. In this way, the prison itself became a liminal space (after Moran
2013) that connected Bonge to both the inside and outside. On his
release, going to the streets was familiar because of the social relations he
had maintained with others who frequented those spaces. His own
identity as a long-term 28 immediately provided him with additional
status on the outside. This type of entangled carceral identity echoes
Fraser (2013) who noted that gang identities are not necessarily spatially
located, but can facilitate connections and social relations across a variety
of spaces, further drawing out the porosity of carceral spaces and the
shaping of identities therein.
Conclusion
Moving away from carceral geography’s early focus on understanding
identities in prison spaces, the narratives of these young South African
men move us away from thinking about prisons as bounded spaces of
confinement, to thinking of them as porous or liminal spaces (Moran
2013) that are connected to both the inside and outside through the
churn of young people between the streets and prison. The identities
young people perform on the inside are not just the products of their
past experiences, relationships and identities prior to being incarcerated;
they also have the potential to shape identities on the outside when they
later leave prison. These examples of street youth are particularly useful
for demonstrating the malleable and shifting ways in which young men’s
masculinities (and femininities) are shaped not only by the spaces they
frequent and the relationships therein but also that their highly mobile
existence enables a connection between the inside and outside. In this
way, street life offers a unique perspective on the ways in which identities
are shaped and entangled through carceral environments.
Drawing on Wacquant (2001) and Moran et al. (2009), the carceral
identity that emerges is shaped by powerful social relations that connect
across space, between the street and the prison. For street youth, such
spaces are not separate, but intricately entangled, connected to each
other through wider gang structures and security controls on the street.
36 L. van Blerk
Prisons are spaces where identities are shaped, and reshaped, rather than
formed anew. Therefore, in moving beyond the assertion that prison
identities are determined by prisoner’s identities on the outside, before
they are incarcerated (Dirsuweit 1999), this chapter suggests that the
fluid nature of such identities mean that they extend beyond the prison
experience, to further influence identities on the outside. As the narra-
tives show, street youth are shaped by their prison experiences, such that
on their return to the streets, they create new identities that include
some, but not necessarily all, of the roles and identity performances
established inside.
In addition, the chapter also offers valuable insights into the lives of
young people living on the streets. These lives are not lived in isolation,
in specific street spaces (Conticini 2004; Hecht 1998) but are relational,
and as such, young people’s identities are created through interaction
with others in non-street spaces. As argued elsewhere (van Blerk 2012),
the relational aspects of young people’s lives on the streets are under-
researched, with very limited discussions connecting street life to spaces
and people beyond the streets. The case studies presented here attest to
the need to consider a much broader understanding of the fluidity of
street youth’s lives, and the relational connections they establish beyond
the street. The narratives emphasise that there is not one ‘street identity’,
but rather that, in the case of Cape Town street youth, a malleable
masculinity that is shaped between the street and the prison. These
spaces have become entangled through the social relations of gang
membership, within the prison number gangs and their external coun-
terparts on the streets and local communities. Further, the narratives
highlight that the entangled identities of street youth are not uniform
singular identities performed across the spaces of prison and street, but
rather diverse identities produced through intersectionality between
masculinity, age and other defining characteristics including criminal
involvement (Hopkins and Noble 2009).
Finally, street youth cannot be viewed in isolation. For street youth in
Cape Town, the street and the prison are intricately entangled, both creating
new possibilities on the street and in the prison but also shaping everyday
identities. This chapter has elucidated street youth’s identities, as relational
and stretched over space, through exploring the connections between the
street and the prison. However, identities should not be limited to these
spaces and indeed further work is required that examines the ways in which
other spaces, and the relations therein influence and shape street life.
This work is important in policy terms for the way in which street
youth are supported. The binary distinction that exists in much policy
and planning discourse, where the street is seen as a ‘dangerous’ envir-
onment from which young people must be removed, focuses simply on
the spaces of the street. However, the social, emotional and relational
aspects of young people’s street connectedness must also be fully incor-
porated into programme development. Although imprisonment literally
removes young people from street spaces, it does not remove them from
the social and emotional aspects of street life. This chapter has shown
that instead, street youth can develop deeper street-connectedness when
located off the street, through the entangled carceral mesh of prison and
street, where their identities are shaped and re-shaped. A more holistic
approach, one that goes beyond mere removal from public space, is
required to support young people connected to the streets in making
changes to their life situations.
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Lorraine van Blerk is Professor in Human Geography at the University of

Dundee. She has undertaken research with children and youth in marginalised
situations for the last 15 years, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. Lorraine has
written more than 70 academic and policy-related publications and is author of
the Routledge Critical Introductions to Urbanism book Children Youth and the
City (with K. Horschelmann) and editor of the Routledge book Doing
Children’s Geographies (with M. Kesby). Lorraine’s research is broadly based
on issues of social justice and equality and she is a keen advocate for more
42 L. van Blerk
effective participation of young people in research, policy and practice. Her

interest in carceral geography is directly related to the fluid connections of
inside and outside the prison for many young people living in poverty in
African cities.
3
An Extended Social Relational Approach
to Learning Disability Incarcerated
Caitlin Gormley
Introduction
Despite the politicisation of disability, there is no systematic approach to
identify people with a learning disability (hereafter LD) within the
criminal justice or penal systems in Scotland. As a result, their needs
are largely unmet while in custody. People with LD seem, thus, to be
disadvantaged and marginalised particularly as a result of an expanding
prison population based on risk assessment. Incarcerated people with
LD are forced to negotiate distinct structural, psychological and emo-
tional forms of disablism which reveal the ways in which space is active
and fluid within hegemonic power relations. Historically, structural
disablism has been the locus of Disability Studies, yet recent significant
shifts towards the transmission of oppression, exclusion and margin-
alisation through psycho-emotional and ontological spaces have
C. Gormley (*)
The Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, University of Glasgow,
Glasgow, Scotland
e-mail: j.gormley.1@research.gla.ac.uk

44 C. Gormley
prompted consideration of divergent spatial relations beyond physical

structures.
This chapter will explore how space, disability and society are inter-
connected within carceral settings. Specifically, it reveals the fluid
boundaries of punishment as well as the pervasiveness and impact of a
society designed by and for non-disabled people. This chapter is drawn
from a larger study which aimed to understand how people with LD
made sense of, and adapted to, imprisonment in Scotland. Here, the
stories shared by people with LD incarcerated in Scottish prisons expose
disablement as a spatial issue, revealing this marginalised, yet hetero-
geneous, group as systematically disadvantaged and disenfranchised with
new strata and experiences of disablism created by imprisonment. The
lived experiences of these individuals encapsulate the complex social
relationship between convicted people with LD and wider society.
At one stage considered ‘idiots’ or ‘the feebleminded’ who were
destined to be confined in the ‘back wards’ of closed institutions (see
Ferguson 2014; Philo and Metzel 2005; Trent Jr. 1995), people with
learning disabilities1 continue to constitute a unique prison population;
about whose carceral experiences we still know very little. First, this is, in
part, due to the lack of standard practices of identifying or recording
how many prisoners have LD, although recent prevalence studies esti-
mate that around 20% of prisoners in the UK have LD (Hayes et al.
2007); this figure is consistent with prison prevalence studies from
Australia (Holland and Persson 2011) and the United States (Petersilia
2000). Second, there are very few intersectional works that consider the
carceral experiences of disabled people as a minority group (cf. Ben-
Moshe et al. 2014). While the body of research regarding people with
LD and their criminal justice experiences is starting to grow more
traction, the majority of this work has been carried out by clinical
1
Learning disability is the preferred terminology in the UK, and is used most commonly among
legal documents as well as the World Health Organisation definition. Internationally, this term is
referred to as intellectual impairment, intellectual disability and cognitive impairment.
Throughout this chapter, the term has been applied deliberately loosely and is used as an umbrella
to cover learning disability, specific learning difficulties (such as dyslexia, dyspraxia and dyscalcu-
lia), Autistic Spectrum Conditions (including Aspergers), Acquired Brain Injury, Foetal Alcohol
Syndrome and developmental conditions (such as ADHD).
3 Learning Disability Incarcerated 45
professionals and often within forensic settings (De Villiers and Doyle
2015; Raggi et al. 2013).
Outside the prison walls, the literature shows that people with LD
face: multiple social and economic disadvantage spanning poor general
health (NHS Scotland 2004), limited work and education opportunities
(Department of Health 2001), and increased likelihood of living within
multiply deprived areas and impoverished living conditions (Learning
Disability Statistics Scotland 2014). Those with LD who find themselves
within carceral settings have not fallen through the cracks of an individ-
uating, punitive, social fabric which is shrinking its welfare provision
(Wacquant 2009a), but, rather, are subject to inter-relating, overlapping
and interlocking systems which control their everyday lives (Baldry et al.
2011). Cohen (1979) argued that while there are plenty of routes into
justice pathways for accused people, there are few opportunities to exit
the system; those under a clinical or welfare-related administrative gaze
in the community are often likely to find themselves on a pre-deter-
mined ‘conveyor belt’, or with a ‘ticket’, to incarceration (Baldry 2011;
Baldry et al. 2013; Spivakovsky 2014). This chapter foregrounds the
accounts of people with LD as they situate incarceration within the
context of their wider life experiences as disabled people, revealing the
ways in which they socio-spatially position themselves within the prison
population as a marginalised group. Based on qualitative research, the
chapter draws from over 70 interviews with incarcerated people with LD
and explores their experiences of structurally disabling barriers to their
full social participation while incarcerated, and the psychological and
emotional impacts that these and other forms of disablism create while
incarcerated.
Extending the Social Relational Model

of Disability
The social model of disability maintains that the impairments people
have are distinct from the oppression they experience in society, and
claims that disabled people are an oppressed social group (Finkelstein
46 C. Gormley
1980, 1981). While there are some common experiences of having a

disabled identity which those with and without LD share, and which are
markedly distinct from the non-disabled population, Stalker (2012)
holds that some disabling experiences are exclusive to people with LD
as a direct result of their unique impairment effects (Thomas 1999).
While Goodley and Rapley (2002) strongly argue towards a post-struc-
turalist conceptualisation of LD due to the tendency of viewing the
highly medicalised category as a ‘naturalised’ and ‘individualised’ impair-
ment, others have argued instead that focusing on individual impair-
ment categories may undermine and disband the disabled peoples’
movement as a unified minority group (Oliver 1996). Furthermore,
although disabled people share a common reality – of having an impair-
ment and being disabled by society – it is not necessarily sufficient to
formulate a common identity (Watson 2002). This study takes a critical
realist approach (Bhaskar and Danermark 2006; Williams 1999; Watson
2012) towards disability, and LD more specifically, particularly since
‘labels describe, rather than constitute’ impairment (Shakespeare 2006,
54). Critical realist readings of LD avoid approaches that ‘reject dualisms
to then set up a binary opposition’ between strong constructionism and
an individual deficit model (Stalker 2012, 132). The concept of ‘impair-
ment effects’ (Thomas 1999, 2007) can facilitate a nuanced reading of
the distinct experiences of impairment and disablism which people with
LD face in the public realm in spite of the invisibility of such impair-
ments and their effects. Disability, therefore, can be seen as a complex
bio-socio-spatial construction in the interplay ‘between the biological
reality of physiological impairment, structural conditioning (i.e.
enablements/constraints) and socio-cultural interaction/elaboration’
(Williams 1999, 810).
The social model approach considers people with impairments as
excluded and discounted from mainstream society, and views the bar-
riers which disable and oppress people with impairments as socially and
materially created (Barnes 1991; Oliver 1990). Abberley (1987) argued
that disability ought to be understood in the first instance as oppression
and, thereafter, as a political identity. He wrote that impairment has
social origins that are historically and culturally specific; the biological
origins of impairment, and their embodied manifestations, prevent
disabled people from adhering to the non-disabled ideal, resulting in

disadvantage, marginalisation and ‘internalised oppression’ (Reeve
2014). In exploring spatial manifestations of disablism, Hansen and
Philo (2007, 500) found an aversion to create dedicated ‘space’ for
disabled people in place of expecting disabled people to navigate ‘provi-
sional spaces’ which are minimally altered for disabled people ‘so long as
they seek to inhabit, utilise and conduct themselves in these spaces as
would a non-disabled person’ (ibid.). The ideological messages inherent
in these exclusive and patronising practices serve to remind disabled
people that they are ‘out of place’ (Kitchin 1998), and force them to
occupy a marginalised social position based on prejudicial attitudes
(Shakespeare 1994). Similarly, Dear et al. (1997) discussed the spatia-
lised construction of difference where the category of disability, and
related cultural connotations, produces distance between disabled people
and the non-disabled ‘Other’. However, given that LD can be an
invisible impairment, the spatial relations between social environments
and people with LD which maintain disablism can be frequently
neglected.
Recognising the short-comings of the social model of disability,
Shakespeare and Watson (2002, 5) argue that it has become a ‘sacred
cow’ in its ideology wherein its strengths have become its weaknesses;
these criticisms are even more visible when conceptualising LD, as will
be set out below. The first criticism of the social model of disability
regards the inclusion of personal experience and experiences of impair-
ment, both of which were of particular interest to feminist disabled
activists and writers (Morris 1992; French 1993; Crow 1996; Thomas
1999). French (1993) highlights that the social model falls short in the
omission of personal accounts of pain and limitation, which are part of
impairment for many disabled people. Finkelstein (1996), however,
contends that foregrounding impairment and personal experience
undermines the political reach of the social model as it relays only
‘sympathetic biography’ (Hunt 1966) and a ‘personal tragedy’ account
of disablement (Goodley and Rapley 2002). By ignoring impairment,
the social model has been criticised for homogenising the experience of
all disabled people and all manifestations of impairment and its effects to
the embodied, material realm; with regard to LD this means that the
48 C. Gormley
focus remains largely on physical impairment and socio-spatial forms of

structural disablism (Chappell 1998).
Second, the impairment/disability dualism has long been an issue of
debate within Disability Studies. The social model polarises the distinc-
tion between impairment and disability where the former regards the
biological (concerning the body or mind) and the latter deals with the
social through interactions between the person with impairment and
society (Oliver 1996). Thomas (1999) argues that impairment harnesses
a complex social situation which cannot only be reduced to the biolo-
gical: impairment, like sex, has a social character which shapes and is
shaped by social relations (Shakespeare and Watson 2002; Butler 1990).
Rather, impairment and its effects are ‘complex bio-social phenomena’
which impact on one another (Stalker 2012, 132; Thomas 1999;
Shakespeare and Watson 2002). The third question around the efficacy
of the social model was around identity, foregrounding its extrinsic
imposition, suggesting that ‘identity politics can be a prison as well as
a haven’ (Shakespeare and Watson 2002, 21). Disabled people are seen
as those who identify as such, thus for those with hidden or invisible
impairments, the element of choice is sometimes present in accessing a
mainstream identity or rejecting the label ‘disability’ due to stigma
(Hunt 1966; Goffman 1963; Stalker 2012). Whilst accepting that a
disability identity is ascribed to people with impairments, and con-
founded by a ‘medical domination’ (Ryan and Thomas 1998), an
internal conflict of classification also exists. Dowse (2001) argues that
the social model of disability harvests a ‘discursive othering’ of people
with LD due to a lack of theoretical attention paid to their unique
experiences of disablism.
Understood as social relational in character, disablism – like sexism or
racism – manifests, or materialises, as a particular form of unequal power
relations in certain social contexts, revealing itself through political,
cultural, economic and interpersonal exchanges (Oliver 1996; Thomas
1999). Building on the idea that disability is a social relationship
between people, where disability is viewed as a form of social oppression,
Thomas (1999, 60) proposed that by extending this social relational
understanding of disability a more nuanced understanding of its experi-
ence might be achieved:
Disability is a form of social oppression involving the social imposition of

restrictions of activity on people with impairments and the socially
engendered undermining of their psycho-emotional well-being.
The extended social relational approach encapsulates a materialist fem-

inist approach to understanding disability wherein disability remains
something imposed on top of impairment, but personal, private or
‘inner world’ experiences of disablism are not ignored. The psychological
and emotional (psycho-emotional) dimension of disablism arises out of
oppressive social relations in the same way as socio-structural barriers
and restrictions to full social participation (Thomas 1999, 2007; Reeve
2012). Just as disability is the socio-spatial restriction of activity, this
form of oppression impacts upon the psychological and emotional well-
being of impaired people. Cultural processes, which are deeply ingrained
in prejudiced and stereotypical views, (re-)produce negative social atti-
tudes towards impairment and disability (Reeve 2012; Shakespeare
1994); their internalisation can be corrosive to self-valuation and self-
making. Socio-structural ‘barriers to doing’ undermine the disabled
person’s self-esteem and, in turn, disrupt their sense of self through
inherent ‘barriers to being’ (Thomas 1999; Reeve 2012, 2014). These
barriers reinforce negative cultural predilections towards prejudice of the
Other (Shakespeare 1994), and lead to internalised oppression (Reeve et
al. 2014) as the disabled person feels ‘out of place’ (Kitchin 1998) and
comes, then, to regard themselves as Other (Reeve et al. 2014; Dear et al.
1997). This extended social relational approach can offer a more
nuanced understanding of the experience of disability by paying equal
attention to private realms and socio-spatial domains where oppression
can have an impact and affect, as these spheres can rarely exist
exclusively.
Prison and the Trouble with Learning Disability

In carceral settings, space is fundamental in the exercise of power: the
space itself is active and shapes the everyday lives of those who reside
within; it is dynamic, socially constructed and ingrained within social
50 C. Gormley
relations (Wolch and Dear 1989). The ‘post-disciplinary’ prison

(Chantraine 2008) is characterised by actuarialism (Feeley and Simon
1992) as well as individual responsibilisation and self-governance, and
represents the shift in the institution’s coercive hold over the individual
towards a more ‘soft’ regime of control (Foucault 1977; Crewe 2007,
2009; Drake 2012). Prison is an intersectional domain which requires a
focus on the structures of time (Cohen and Taylor 1972; Armstrong
2016; Schinkel 2015), of power, order and their technologies therein
(Foucault 1977; Goffman 1961; Crewe 2009, 2011; Liebling 2004;
Sparks and Bottoms 1995), as well as the exploration of the ways in
which individuals interact with, through and beyond spaces of confine-
ment (Schliehe 2014; this volume; Crewe et al. 2013; Moran 2015).
The application of such a multi-disciplinary conceptual approach
permits a more nuanced analysis of the socio-spatial carceral experiences
of such a marginalised population with unique needs while incarcerated.
Broad questions about competency, capacity and criminal culpability
render people with LD particularly vulnerable as they proceed through
the criminal justice system as accused persons and convicted offenders.
They may have diverse communication requirements, preferences and
comprehension abilities and, as a result, may take longer processing
information; be acquiescent and suggestible (Clare 2003); or, try to
appease other people (Talbot and Jacobson 2010). Since prisons are
considered highly disciplinary environments, prisoners are subject to a
high degree of power exerted over their lives (Goffman 1961 [1991])
and the resultant prescribed vulnerability classification places people
with LD at further risk of marginalisation and exclusion within prison
communities. The social interactions between individual actors, the
penal institution and wider society reveal the intrinsic power imbalance
which constitutes, and even sustains, this relationship. Power, in this
context, is at the same time material and abstract: it is ever-present and
far-reaching, albeit a governing, and governable, force embedded within
institutional interactions (Goffman 1961 [1991]). According to
Goffman (ibid.), wider, yet more specific, processes of social control
produce, maintain and subsequently exclude those deemed unfit for
liberal community living. Cohen (1979) wrote that while there are
many entryways into the growing ‘carceral continuum’, which govern
and control the lives of those in their care, there are very few exits.
Prison, therefore, is a powerful and insulating institution. Routes to
prison for those with LD are often confounded by the sense of being
‘betwixt and between’; of inhabiting a liminal existence which is never
fully in the community (Baldry 2010; Baldry et al. 2011; Turner 1995)
and yet never entirely out of reach of a governing institution due to
complex, interlocking, socio-cultural and structural disadvantage. Those
subjected to periodic institutional living occupy a transient space
between the community and carceral settings in their many forms and,
as a result of the cyclical and continuous clinical- and criminal-gaze,
become predisposed to living in carceral spaces (Baldry 2010).
The penal landscape set out by Foucault (1977), characterising
carceral spaces through hierarchical forms of surveillance and self-
governance, outlines the shift from the punishment of the body towards
moral punishment of conscience and of self, and signifies the move
from retribution in favour of rehabilitation and reform of the indivi-
dual. This is particularly interesting with regard to the punishment
of people with LD, whose competence and capacity are frequently
under observation or questioned regarding their inclusion in many
mainstream social arenas, such as giving their testimony as witnesses
in court (Gudjonsson et al. 2000); giving their consent in sexual
relationships (Murphy and O’Callaghan 2004) or making their own
health-care decisions (Wong et al. 2000). People with LD have been
historically deemed problematic (Philo and Metzel 2005, 81) and have
had segregated social spaces carved out for their management, govern-
ance and care – such as the former ‘idiot asylums’ (Ferguson 2014) and
special education schools – marking their removal from full social
participation. In light (and spite) of the normalisation and de-carceration
procedures ignited in the late 1960s to early 1970s (Nirje 1969;
Wolfensberger 1972), which were geared towards community-based care
and governance, some former ‘inmates’ were liberated from institutions of
‘care’ only to be incarcerated in another informed by populist punitive
regimes (Pratt et al. 2005). This process of trans-carceration was guided in
tandem by swift justice and risk-focused penal technologies (Feeley and
Simon 1992), revolving the door of ‘serial institutionalisation’ (Baldry
2010).
52 C. Gormley
Wacquant argues while discussing the rapid expansion of the penal

system through mass incarceration in the United States, the carceral
institution, rather, socio-spatially segregates those excluded from the
labour market through a ‘public programme for the poor’ (Wacquant
2009b). This is significant conceptually and intersectionally as the
material social relations, which presuppose society’s interaction with
marginalised and excluded individuals, present carceral spaces as ware-
houses for those superfluous to the requirements of the economic market
in liberal society. Thus, the shift from the highly medicalised treatment
of people with LD towards their punitive rehabilitation within carceral
spaces reflects their wider positioning within society and its spatial
transience. This in turn reveals, for Cohen (1979, 344), the ways that
spatial boundaries of segregated and insulated institutions of care and
control are blurred over time and begin to form a ‘correctional con-
tinuum’, akin to but farther-reaching than Foucault’s (1977) concept of
the ‘carceral archipelago’. Thus, the penal management of people with
LD must be considered through the placement of such carceral spaces
within the wider social nexus of governance that structurally contain and
control the lives of people with LD more generally.
Researching with People with Learning

Disabilities in Carceral Settings
This chapter draws from qualitative data that formed a doctoral study
which sought to understand what it is like to ‘do time’ for people with
LD from their perspectives, based on their wider life experiences, and
using their own frames of reference. In 2013–2014, multiple semi-
structured interviews were conducted with 25 incarcerated men and
women in Scottish prisons; these sought to promote inclusive research
with people with LD while being informed by an ‘Appreciative Inquiry’
(AI) approach (Liebling et al. 1999). AI is a strength-focused approach
rooted in appreciating the value of situations as they are and as they
could be, rather than what they could have been (ibid.). It is based on
trust and familiarity (ibid.), and facilitates a positive dynamic between
researcher and participant, which can be useful particularly within such

constraining environments as prisons (ibid.). This chapter relies on
interview data specifically regarding experiences and perceptions of dis-
ablism during incarceration.
It should be noted that those individuals with LD enmeshed within
the criminal justice system as convicted and incarcerated persons will
rarely – if ever – have a ‘severe’ or ‘profound’ LD, in accordance with the
World Health Organisation’s International Classification of
Functioning, Disability and Health (WHO 2001). Given that the
participants in the study stood trial as accused persons, were deemed
‘fit’ to enter a plea and then ordered by a court to serve custodial
sentences, they ought, therefore, to be deemed ‘competent’ to give
their consent to participate in a research study. That said, this project
used an ongoing process of consent to ensure that participants were
additionally assisted to give consent throughout the course of their
participation; easy-read participant information packs were available to
everyone, and ethical approval was granted to secure verbal consent
where appropriate. Achieving consent from individuals in custody is
often regarded as problematic particularly with claims of their being a
‘captive audience’ (Jewkes 2002; Sykes 1958). There is no way to be
certain of individual motivation to participate in research; however, this
study did not incentivise participation due to the risk that a gift or
monetary subsidence may place a participant at an advantage over other
prisoners, rendering them vulnerable to manipulation, coercion or vic-
timisation (Matheson et al. 2012). All interviews were subject to fully
informed consent with participants, and all participants have been given
pseudonyms to protect their identities. Participants were also given the
choice of completing the interview in one single session or over the
course of multiple shorter interview sessions in order to account for the
potential disabling barriers that longer interviews may present to some
people with LD. Given the choice, the majority of participants elected to
complete the interviews in multiple sessions and only one person actively
chose to complete the interview in one session as he was being liberated
from custody into rehabilitation for drug use the following day.
However, a further three interview sessions were cut short due, respec-
tively, to prison movement, mental health intervention and arrest.
54 C. Gormley
The semi-structured interview approach supported a more conversa-

tional style of interview, while focusing on participants’ understandings
of the events, interactions and experiences they faced along the offender
pathway. Interview topics were arranged in a linear order akin to a typical
justice pathway for accused person; organisation in this way was espe-
cially useful to those who struggled with the sequencing of past events. A
total of 72 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 men and
women over the course of nine months (October 2013–June 2014) and
across five research sites (four Scottish prison settings and one supported
living community setting for recently liberated people with LD2). The
sample was over-representative of women within the context of the
present penal landscape in Scotland: women comprised 30% of the
sample (eight women and 17 men), while (adult and young) women
only constitute around 4% of the custody population (i.e. 361 of 7,661
prisoners were adult or young women based on population statistics
accurate on 11 March 2016 – SPS 2016). The group varied in many
respects but most notably their ages ranged between 19 and 56 years old.
The participants’ backgrounds were also extremely heterogeneous in
terms of their past experiences of offending, the types of offences com-
mitted and the types and lengths of sentences which they were serving
when interviewed. Table 3.1 depicts participants’ respective conviction
Table 3.1 Conviction statuses of participants
Type of prisoner Number

Remand 6
Life sentence (convicted) 2
Order of Lifelong Restriction (convicted) 1
Long-term sentence (convicted) 2
Short-term sentence (convicted) 10
Short-term sentence (served) 4
Total 25
2
This study was partly supported by a Scottish third sector organisation – Cornerstone – via their
‘Positive Tracks’ prisoner through care programme designed for people with LD upon liberation
from short-term sentences. Working closely with the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), Cornerstone
held existing partnership agreements with various prison estates that were, in turn, extended to
this project.
status at the time of interviews; however, the six participants who were on
remand at the time were all later sentenced to custodial terms of varying
lengths (although only one received a long-term sentence). One commu-
nity-based participant from the ‘short-term sentence (served)’ sub-
cohort, below, was re-arrested during interview proceedings and was
held on remand at the last check (2013).
Given that LD itself is a broad umbrella category for a variety of
conditions (see Table 3.2), the sample was also diverse in terms of
impairment type; individually experienced impairment effects; the
related social, cultural and psycho-emotional barriers they face and
how they relate to or reject their diagnoses. While many scholars argue
that LD is a constructed category (Rapley 2004; Goodley 2000), the
study utilised a critical realist lens (Bhaskar and Danermark 2006;
Watson 2012; Stalker 2012) following that a single reality may be
ascribed multiple interpretations by individual social actors, based
upon and derivative of their life experiences (Bhaskar and Danermark
2006). As such, individual diversity was central in the research approach
and informed the decision to conduct multiple semi-structured inter-
views, which varied in length, as an attempt to respond to the respective
unique communication styles and needs of participants.
The paradigm shift away from research about people with LD being
carried out by, or indeed from the perspectives of, clinical or custodial
Table 3.2 Participants’ ‘index1’ diagnoses
Participants’ ‘index’ diagnoses Number

Formal LD diagnosis2 (including Autistic Spectrum conditions) 16
Screened LD (indicator-only) 7
Acquired Brain Injury 1
Specific learning difficulty 1
Total 25
1
Given that people with LD tend to have multiple and overlapping diagnoses, the
term ‘index’ has been applied here in reference to the ‘main’ diagnosis, identi-
fied by the participants themselves.
2
Formal diagnoses can only be given by medical professionals while screening can
be completed by anyone fully trained to use the respective tool; those who
‘flag’ as having LD or specific learning difficulties would then be referred to the
relevant medical professional for a formal diagnosis.
56 C. Gormley
professionals towards one which favours the views and perspectives of

the individual who is subject to sanctions, sentencing decisions and
confinement transcends normativity and acknowledges participants as
‘experts’ of their own subjective realities. These inclusive measures of
participation ensure that research promotes the interests of people with
LD (Walmsley and Johnson 2003) while maintaining a commitment to
providing a platform for the unheard voices of such a hidden popula-
tion. This compliments the AI interview approach which actively
departs from ‘the darker side’ of social reality, rooted in negativity,
and challenges questions to be more empathetic, appreciative and situa-
tionally responsive (Liebling et al. 1999: 75–76).
‘Barriers to Doing’: Structurally Disabling

Barriers
Participants’ respective carceral experiences shaped and were shaped by
their wider lifeworlds; for some this meant ‘doing disability, incarcer-
ated’, while for others this was more about ‘doing time, disabled’. The
following section considers the ways in which people with LD are
routinely oppressed by the normative nature of carceral environments
through socio-structural barriers and restrictions to their full social
participation in an already restrictive setting (Kitchin 1998). Structural
barriers exist ‘out there’ and restrict or limit what people with impair-
ments can do (Thomas 1999, 2007); a social model of disability
approach argues that it is those barriers ‘out there’ which disable people
with impairments (Oliver 1990). Such disabling barriers can structurally
manifest just as frequently in physical environments as socio-spatial
relations when such spaces have not been designed, culturally (re-)
produced or maintained with disabled people in mind (Hansen and
Philo 2007). Since space is an active constituent within, and through,
social interactions (Wolch and Dear 1989), carceral spaces are instru-
mental in maintaining disablist power relations between people with and
without LD due to the discriminatory manifestations of routinised
structural barriers. Inherent in the socio-spatial fabric of prison,
normative expectations are placed upon all prisoners in their daily lives
(Goffman 1961 [1991]), operating through formal relations between the
institution and its actors as well as informal networks among prisoners.
As a result of these normative expectations, those with impaired cogni-
tive and social functioning are at risk of being cast towards the margins
of an already ostracised community.
Participants in this study often discussed adapting to prison life in
terms of the reliability of the structure of the daily regime as some-
thing absent from their lives in the community. While prison
relieved participants of most responsibilities they held in their
home worlds (Goffman 1961 [1991]) and, for many, the respite or
‘breathing space’ this offered was a welcome by-product of incarcera-
tion, there are still expectations placed upon all prisoners in terms of
managing their daily lives, for which they must take individual
responsibility. These expectations have a normative character, in
that the same standard is expected of all prisoners without individual
need being taken into account, and this affects the daily lives of
prisoners with LD in unique ways. Unavoidable forces of discrimina-
tion and disablist power relations deeply entrenched in the socio-
spatial structure of prison seem to place people with LD at risk of
additional punishment, harassment, victimisation, and social exclu-
sion while incarcerated.
In the most obvious sense, all prisoners are expected to manage their
behaviour in regulation with the formal prison rules, and should they
break these rules, they are placed ‘on report’ – reported to the governor-
in-charge to receive appropriate sanction. Some participants felt safer in
prison due to the unpredictability and turbulence of life outside, while
others felt that the threats they perceived were more contained or,
perhaps, containable due to the disciplinary regime. Only one partici-
pant brought up the prison rules – Nicole explained that there were so
many rules and that she found it difficult to learn them:
You’re not allowed to do this and you’re not allowed to do that, and
you’re not allowed to do this. It’s stuff that you’ll pick up but if, for a first
timer you’re like, they don’t know anything! They don’t know not to be
cheeky to staff, so they’ll be cheeky and get put on report and I’m sitting
58 C. Gormley
in front of the Governor saying, ‘I didn’t know this!’ Then the Governor is
like, ‘Why did you not know that?’
Nicole was frustrated at the impossible expectation of understanding the

official Scottish Prison Rules as an accessible version was not available to
her, nor were there any alternative formats to the current formal legisla-
tion style. This is in spite of a recent Scottish Government (2014)
strategy recommending that, with immediate effect, justice organisations
make all written documentation available in ‘Easy Read’ or any other
accessible format for people with LD. Inaccessibility while incarcerated
was a dominant theme in the study through the difficulty people faced
with the paper-based request form system. Forms are required3 should a
prisoner wish to: arrange a visit; see a doctor; sign up for courses or to
attend education; make a complaint; order medication and repeat pre-
scriptions or manage their finances by purchasing approved items from
the prison ‘canteen’ such as hygiene products, tobacco or snacks. These
forms were a huge source of frustration for many participants as the
inaccessible format forced them to confront their respective impairment
effects. Chloe said: ‘I fill it – I fill it out myself but I can’t count. I can
count, but I can’t count very well so I go down and ask the officers to
help me out.’
Thus, the disadvantage faced by people with LD is inherent in the
inaccessible structure of the system which has been designed by and for
people without LD. Since space is socially produced (Kitchin and Law
2001), it is organised, and operates, in ways that force people with LD to
act in extra-normative ways while incarcerated: some participants asked
prison officers for help with the inaccessible and structurally disabling
forms necessary for daily living in custody. However being seen to ask
officers for help runs the risk of being labelled a ‘grass’ [snitch], thus, in
an effort to avoid officers, some participants would ask cell-mates or ‘jail
pals’ to help with their forms, which could also be risky.
3
These processes differ according to individual prisons.
Drew: I get somebody to give me a hand with [forms]. Well, it used to be

the guy next door to me, he used to come in and give me a hand with my
referral or my medication repeat prescriptions and that. And, eh, he still, he
still does it for me because I went into his [cell] this morning after yester-
day’s carry on and, eh, I said to him, ‘I’m sorry for shouting at you but, eh,
you did trip me up.’ And he said he was sorry as well, so he told me not to
worry about it, forget it happened. He was only doing it for a joke he says.
The neighbour who helps Drew with his forms also bullies, verbally degrades
and physically assaults him ‘for a joke’. As an unlikely benefactor, the
neighbour and bully held power over Drew beyond the exchange: by helping
with his forms, he bought Drew’s silence. Medication was often the target;
Drew shared that the prisoners on his wing claimed that he was ‘running a
chemist’ with the variety and amount of differing medications he required,
coupled with the fact that his prison medication was issued weekly in pill
strips which was difficult to manage: in short, Drew felt like he was seen by
his non-disabled peers as an easy target for theft or coercion. Other prisoners
often offered to assist with his medication arrangements; but he reported that
those offers often turned into threats given the relative value of some of his
prescribed pills within carceral spaces. The circuits of exclusion at play above
reveal the permeability and inescapability of oppression in the everyday lives
of people with LD. The hidden impairment and its effects are overlooked in
the public domain; people with LD are, thus, socio-spatially displaced into
unequal power relations with non-disabled people that are predicated by
prejudicial attitudes that posit difference as oppositional to the ‘norm’ (Dear
et al. 1997). Another participant, Karen, described a similar experience:
Karen: But you see, I had my own shop, I had £195. I blew it all
on them. I’m like that, I’m awful helpful and I blew the
thing! But I realise I should of kept that for going out! But
I never thought.
Interviewer: Did they ask you to?
Karen: Well some of them are pretty demanding and bullying
and saying, ‘oh I want a bar of chocolate, put that down
on your shop.’ Well you know me, I’m soft, I just write it
down. I’m like that, I’m too soft, you know?
60 C. Gormley
It was no secret that Karen needed to ask officers for assistance with
her canteen sheet when it came to calculating the cost and mana-
ging her personal finances, as is expected of all prisoners while in
custody. The social world of prisoners is extremely small (Crewe
2011): everyone knows everyone else’s business; Karen’s difficulty
counting and managing her finances made her the target of coer-
cion and, ultimately, the victim of financial abuse by non-disabled
prisoners. This would meet the criteria of being a hate incident as
her victimisation has been motivated by virtue her impairment and
its effects. Cycles of ostricism, which occur socially and physically
within carceral environments, emerge from structural barriers
attending neither to the needs of people with LD, nor to the
consequences of this inequality. The experiences of ‘daily denials’
(Watson 2003), routinised oppression and structural discrimination
were not isolated incidents which resulted less favourably for pris-
oners with LD, but, rather, they occurred within a structure that
affords more power to certain groups to the disadvantage of others.
These power relations uphold and are constituted by disablism;
they routinise oppression on a daily basis in the failure to make
appropriate, not ‘reasonable’,4 adjustments. Hansen and Philo
(2007, 500) argue that there is an aversion in the mainstream to
provide ‘space’ for disabled people, and that ‘reasonable’ adjust-
ment is often synonymous with ‘minimum’ adjustment. Since
participants in this study did not benefit from structural alterations
to better enable their full social participation while incarcerated,
the cultural message would suggest that since space has not been
carved for people with LD, they are ‘out of place’ (Kitchin 1998)
within socio-spatial environments designed for and maintained by
people without LD.
4
The ‘duty to make reasonable adjustments’ is a central component of the Equality Act (2010) to
ensure that disabled people have the same access to goods, services and conditions as non-disabled
people.
‘Barriers to Being’: Damage to Psychological and

Emotional Wellbeing
As participants’ wider life experiences and carceral journeys are

interactive, the extended social relational approach facilitates a
more nuanced understanding of disablism within prison settings by
considering how people with LD may internalise those disablist
power relations which are socio-spatially created and sustained. As
explored earlier, structural barriers – that is, restrictions which are
inherent within the social or spatial fabric of the prison and which
place people with impairments at a disadvantage – reveal the exclu-
sionary, oppressive and discriminatory practices that are socio-spa-
tially rooted in disablist discourse (Dear et al. 1997). While physical
and interpersonal manifestations of structural barriers limit what
disabled people can do, psychological and emotional (psycho-emo-
tional) dimensions of disability interpret the limits placed on who
disabled people feel they can be ‘by shaping their “inner worlds”,
sense of “self”, and social behaviours’ (Thomas 2007, 72). Psycho-
emotional disablism reveals the damage to self-esteem and self-con-
fidence that stem from prejudicial and stereotypical views. These
unconscious negative cultural perceptions are internalised and impact
on self-worth (Reeve et al. 2014). As the organisation of space
reproduces dominant cultural ideologies which exclude certain
groups (Anderson and Kitchin 2000), disabled people can internalise
the devaluing messages of disavowal and exclusion (Shakespeare
1994). The remainder of this chapter will explore two spatial man-
ifestations of psycho-emotional disablism to which people with LD
are subject within carceral settings; internalisation of which may
adversely impact their sense of self, and self-worth, during and
beyond their carceral experience.
Psycho-emotional disablism can emerge as a result of structural bar-
riers, although this is not always inevitable (Reeve et al. 2014): the social
barriers ‘out there’ can convey an underlying message which commu-
nicates that the disabled person is ‘out of place’ (Kitchin 1998), not
welcome and not worthy of full social participation. Through normative
62 C. Gormley
carceral expectations which produce everyday and routinised forms of

oppression, people with LD face a ‘socially engendered undermining’ of
their psycho-emotional well-being (Thomas 1999, 60). These attacks on
existential security (Hughes 2012) are augmented by the socio-spatial
disablist interaction order, which transmits cultural messages of
unworthiness. Discriminatory practices and exclusionary consequences,
upheld by disablist power relations, force people with LD to occupy a
‘negative reality’ (Finkelstein 1993) at the margins of an already margin-
alised society. These processes are lived, emotional and felt (Ahmed
2004) across spatial, psychic and social spheres as disability is discur-
sively invalidated by the ‘non-disabled imaginary’ (Hughes 2012, 68).
Almost all participants in the study depicted a felt sense of margin-
alisation or feeling ‘out of place’ (Kitchin 1998) within wider social
domains; this was radically reduced within institutional settings. The
manageability of this familiarised social sphere inside the prison’s walls
confounded with the feeling of being excluded outside became a ‘pull’
factor for some to incur more of a sense of ‘belonging’ within prison
than outwith. Some participants felt that they ‘needed the jail’ to re-
establish a ‘norm’ as they started to lose sight of themselves amid chaotic
liberal lives characterised by social and material exclusion, poverty,
trauma and substance misuse.
Craig: That was it, simple: I needed the jail. I, I knew what to expect from
it and I knew it was gonna help me and I knew that I don’t think there was
anything else that could of [sic] helped me at the stage I was at in my life,
because, eh, if I never got the jail when I did I dunno where I would
be . . . Really, I don’t, man, I don’t know if I’d be dead or, or if I’d have
done something a lot worse or I really don’t know. You get too used to
being here.
While prison offers stability in the face of the complexity of the

unknown, abstract, potential of life outside, a reparatory approach to
incarceration is applied in the above extract through the need to reflect,
recount and ‘re-group’ with himself whilst inside. Through focus on
‘soft’ power in prison (Crewe 2011) incarceration is rendered less
punitive and more pastoral (Foucault 1977), ensuring a sense of security

within while invoking a sense of belonging through familiarity with
carceral settings, in their many forms. This was overt for some partici-
pants, especially among those who transitioned ‘out of care, into cus-
tody’ (Carlen 1987) or followed the ‘school to prison pipeline’ (Arcus
2012). One participant gives a prognosis of his self-understanding as
‘institutionalised’ and ‘co-dependent’ [with the prison] in response to his
trajectory through diversionary schemes for young people at risk of
offending, young offenders’ institutes and ultimately cycling into the
adult prison system, which he marks as ‘proper jail’. By ‘Othering’
(Ahmed 2004) himself as a result of this process of deep institutional
embeddedness, he overtly corresponds with Clemmer’s (1940) concept
of ‘prisonisation’ wherein he identifies more strongly with the customs
and mores inherent in prison than outside. Similarly, Nicole invokes her
institutionally-informed biographical history to explain how she makes
sense of being in prison:
I know this is a prison but I look at it as a big child’s home tae me, do you
know what I mean? Because there’s hunners [hundreds] a’ lassies [girls],
there’s hunners a’ staff – I don’t see them as screws or prison officers, I just
see them as staff, do you know what I mean? They’re there tae help with
somethin’, do you know what I mean?
By reflecting on her institutionally embedded socialisation, Nicole

revealed her knowledge of and familiarity with the penal field. She
explained that in order to make sense of this domain, she drew from
her experiences within other locked institutions – the children’s homes –
to then cast officers and other prisoners into roles of contextual relevance:
staff and girls. Here, space becomes an important frame of reference
through which social positions are internalised; in the extract above,
Nicole rigidly sees herself in the role of captive. Felt prejudice (Ahmed
2004) arises and is produced by being ‘Othered’ through the internalisa-
tion of cultural representations of disabled people. Shakespeare (1994)
contends that impaired people are disabled by material discrimination as
well as prejudicial attitudes, as cultural ideology reinforces the
64 C. Gormley
‘subordinate position’ disabled people are forced to take in mainstream

society. The concept of ‘difference’ is systematically institutionalised as a
boundary maintenance function, forging distance between disabled and
non-disabled people (Dear et al. 1997).
Psycho-emotional dimensions of disability are also present within the
relationships individuals have with themselves (Reeve et al. 2014).
Identity shapes and is shaped by carceral experiences, and self-under-
standings persist beyond the institution as participants internalise mes-
sages about their value and worth through the punitive nature of
incarceration: the institution materialises a discursive, prescriptive and
administrative category depicting a ‘less-than’ state of being (Foucault
1977; Goffman 1961 [1991]). Some participants expressed belief that
due to their ‘long history’ of convictions and charges, or as a result of the
nature of their offences, they were rendered undeserving of protection in
the community or within the prison itself. The concept of stigma and its
embodiment can be reconsidered through the concept of prejudice so as
to relocate the locus of blame; shifting focus to prejudice as the product
of social interaction and spatial organisation forces a reconsideration of
the notion of ‘vulnerability’ (Abberley 1987; Watson 2003). Garland-
Thomson (2011) considered the United Nations Convention for the
Rights of People with Disabilities Treaty (2006) definition of disability
as implying that the ‘misfit between ‘persons with impairments’ and an
unsustaining environment made up of ‘barriers’ materialises our inher-
ent vulnerability’ She argued that the site of vulnerability is not in the
body, but rather in ‘the fit’ of any given individual – granted that we are
all inherently vulnerable – within any given environment; more hostile
environments will inspire more frailty, but ultimately it is in the inter-
action between the individual and the physical, built, social and psycho-
emotional world that the lack of fit presents itself (Garland-Thomson
2011). Therefore, carceral spaces permit ‘vulnerability’ to materialise in
the lack of fit between people with LD and the normative expectations
of the institution. This prescribed and deterministic label, which often is
proceeded by standardised segregated living arrangements for the dura-
tion of the carceral experience, presents a socio-spatial fracturing
between how individuals identify themselves and how the institution
categorises and manages them. For example:
Interviewer: Were you in [the vulnerable unit5] before?

Robbie: Nah, I was just over in the main halls. I think because of
the medication that they were puttin’ me on at the time,
that was making me more, kind of, withdrawn towards
people, ehmm, I wasnae comfy in big groups. [ . . . ] Then
I seen the psychiatrist or psychologist – or one of the two.
[ . . . ] And they said about goin’ tae [the vulnerable unit]
to just sort myself out, so I’ll do that, I’m not gonnae stay
there long ‘cause it’s . . . Gonnae get my life sorted out.
Robbie’s focus on the time-limitedness of his time in the vulnerable

prisoner’s unit, which remains segregated from the mainstream popula-
tion at all times, depicts the disjuncture between his prescribed vulner-
able status and self-conceptualisation. As cultural representations of
disabled people affect disabled and non-disabled people (Watson
2002), Robbie forges social and spatial distance between himself and
the material and extra-material stereotype of being seen as ‘vulnerable’
within carceral settings (Dear et al. 1997). The interaction between
Robbie and the institution is predicated by a clear imbalance of power:
namely, the power to categorise, segregate and even imprint upon one’s
self-understanding. This operates in a similar way to sexual orientation
being ‘outed’ by anyone other than the individual; the personal, private
self becomes public knowledge over which the outed individual’s agency
had been altogether removed (Cass 1979; Goffman 1961 [1991], 37).
Thus, in spite of the very real need to provide appropriate care and
treatment to those who inhabit a reality which is does not ‘fit’ with the
normative flow of the penal environment, the danger in being cast as
vulnerable is in the highly communicative element of defining someone
in a way that they themselves do not choose to be defined. The unequal
power relations between the individual with LD and institution permit
the potential inference of ‘vulnerability’ as permanence in the process of
5
In order to further protect the identity of this participant, a standardised term has been utilised
to describe that which a recent NHS review refers to as ‘sheltered accommodation’ for vulnerable
prisoners and those who suffer from poor mental health.
66 C. Gormley
denying, or depriving, the enactment of agency to self-identify within

the institution, with a lasting effect beyond.
Conclusion
Imprisonment creates new forms of disablism for people with learning
disabilities, although their incarceration as a minority group is not a new
phenomenon (Trent Jr. 1995). The carceral experiences of this group
within Scottish prisons reveal that structural and psycho-emotional
disablism are at the same time spatial and emotive issues, exposing the
ways in which prisons are organised and imagined yet without consider-
ing the needs of a population with diverse impairment effects. People
with LD face structurally disabling barriers inside the carceral sphere in
ways that differ from those without LD: these result in their exclusion
from the degree of social participation relatively afforded to, and
expected of, all prisoners. This systematic marginalisation, routinised
forms of oppression and exclusion places them at higher risk of being
manipulated, victimised, and disadvantaged throughout the social fabric
of prison. As such, prisoners with LD are subject to intensified ‘pains of
confinement’ (Sykes 1958) and experience this more acutely, in many
instances of their daily lives, than non-learning disabled prisoners.
Restrictions on the things people with LD can do within prison convey
strong cultural messages about who they feel they can be, or become; this
becomes more complex, yet more dangerous, as ‘soft’ power in prison
permits the purpose of incarceration to be understood as more pastoral
than punitive. The ‘shrunken’ social carceral domain becomes familiarised,
internalised, and more manageable than the home world; this was rendered
even more complex as many participants revealed that more routes to care
and support were available through those normative ‘pains of confinement’
(Sykes 1958). Just as the Howard League for Penal Reform (2015) pre-
sented findings to argue that women who face multiple disadvantage and
victimisation should not be criminalised as a means to receive support, so
too must prison not be a precursor for people with LD to receive support,
nor to generate hope, re-establish holistic well-being or improve their wider
opportunities. Carceral spaces and the continued institutional manage-

ment of people with LD perpetuate the socio-spatial positioning of this
group at the margins of society, devaluing cognitive diversity and compli-
cating disadvantage further by instilling a sense of dependency on institu-
tional contact.
Although recent policy recommendations stipulate that all written
information within carceral settings must be available in Easy Read
format (Scottish Government 2014; Prison Reform Trust’s ‘No One
Knows’ series [Talbot 2008]; the Bradley Report [Department of Health
2009]), this is a minimal adjustment (Hansen and Philo 2007) which is
only concerned with material restrictions to inclusion; the cultural
messages transmitted along the psychological and emotional dimensions
of disability are far more damaging to self-valuation, and far more
difficult to change. The goalposts constantly shifted whilst the partici-
pants in this study grappled to make sense of their social situations
within the varying and overlapping frames of reference within carceral
spaces; yet, it was clear that this group felt excluded from multiple social
and spatial domains. As such, drawing on conceptual resources from a
variety of disciplines, while also engaging directly and inclusively with
prisoners with LD, supports a more holistic socio-spatial understanding
of such complex, multi-dimensional and interactive phenomena.
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com/watch?v=u61kdTMLJTQ&nohtml5=False
Walmsley, Jan, and Kelley Johnson 2003. Inclusive Research with People with
Learning Disabilities: Past, Present and Future. London: Jessica Kingsley.
74 C. Gormley
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You, But I Don’t See Myself as Disabled’: Identity and Disability.’ Disability
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4
Towards a Feminist Carceral
Geography? Of Female Offenders
and Prison Spaces
Anna K. Schliehe
Introduction
Women’s incarceration is a topic on the margins of carceral studies,
but it is also one of the first subjects explored by early carceral
geography research. Dirsuweit’s (1999) article, on South African pris-
ons for women, was one of the first contemporary carceral geography
articles and raised many different aspects that define incarceration:
architectural and social forms of control; the prisoners’ adaption and
resistance towards control; the issues of identity, agency, culture and
sexuality. This work was developed by others such as Moran et al.
(2009) who drew on research in Russia to demonstrate ways in which
embodied subjectivities and identities are bound up with assumptions
about gender and class, being inherently place contingent. They con-
ceptualised the lived experience of incarceration as inherently embo-
died, and argued that these trans-carceral spaces exist not just as
A.K. Schliehe (*)


76 A.K. Schliehe
physical locales but also through the ‘inscription’ of incarceration

upon the body (Moran 2012, 2014).
This chapter attempts to conceptualise a distinct ‘feminist carceral
geography’ by bringing together previous carceral geography research
on female prisoners with a new case study on young female offen-
ders. Drawing on extensive empirical evidence gathered in a Scottish
prison, the study attempts to analyse their feelings, beliefs and
experiences of ‘the carceral’ and their descriptions of the nature of
closed environments. These emplaced descriptions focus mainly on
their ‘body in space’ within closed institutions, on their spatial and
social characteristics and their ‘body as a space’ of resistance and
assimilation, of deviance and rehabilitation. The study reflects the
many ambiguities, inconsistencies and opacities that seem to be
inherent in the study of the carceral. The young women’s testimo-
nies greatly assist in ‘moving the institutional bricks-and-mortar’ and
allowing a rare view into these carceral environments through their
eyes.
Connecting this case study with research on other prison sites and
practices reveals how breaches of gender-appropriate behaviour and
gender-stereotypical roles are tied to opinions on what is essentially
‘offending’ behaviour. Prisons and other closed institutions benefit
from an examination of how they define and normalise gendered iden-
tity, as well as how the institutionalised females actually live and poten-
tially resist or undermine such attempts. The embodiment and discursive
structures in a carceral context offer new and important insights into the
relationship of subjectivity, the body, the penal system and femininity.
As a relatively novel and fast-developing subfield, carceral geography
provides a spatially informed view on confinement and closed spaces,
while at the same time attempting to make efforts towards ‘positive social
and political change’ (Moran 2013). This chapter aims to introduce feminist
studies of the ‘carceral’, and in particular the development and recent growth
of carceral geography. Critiquing an absence of ‘women’ in the subfield’s
theoretical work, but also engaging a rich vein of empirical scholarship on
women within carceral geography, this chapter raises the possibility of a
feminist carceral geography – paralleling similar movements in wider human
geography and criminology. The chapter concludes with the reflections of
4 Towards a Feminist Carceral Geography? . . . 77
young women on some of their experiences in a carceral context. Tamara

said, when talking about prison life, ‘You either take it on the chin and get on
wi’ it or you drag your heels and make it worse for yourself. I learned that the
hard way’. Connecting these reflections with research on other prison sites
and practices reveals how breaching of gender-appropriate behaviour and
gender-stereotypical roles are tied to opinions on what is essentially ‘offend-
ing’ behaviour. Prisons and other closed institutions benefit from being
examined as to how they define and normalise gendered identity, as well
as to how institutionalised female individuals actually live and potentially
resist or undermine such attempts. The embodiment and discursive struc-
tures in a carceral context thus offer new and important insights into the
relationship of subjectivity, the body, the penal system and femininity.
The feminist perspective on space and place, and the particularities of
both within the ‘closed’ context of penal institutions, point the researcher
towards issues that make up the main reason for researching closed spaces.
Space in a closed environment has particular characteristics and categories, as
home/place or home/land might hold a different connotation than ‘on the
outside’ (McDowell 2003, 11). The politics of place and location acquire
special connotations – be it in the fact that one is displaced (or dis-located)
when put into prison (and might not even know which way is home) or the
fact that many female prisoners are homeless when they come out. Others
might even be dis-located to a different country or a different continent in
order to ‘get them under control’ (e.g. sending women abroad for psychiatric
treatment in closed wards). To introduce a more conceptual feminist lens to
carceral geography offers opportunities to challenge traditional representa-
tion and to think critically about issues like exclusion, resistance and gen-
dered experiences. It does at the same time throw up questions about
labelling and the role of the researcher within closed institutional regimes.
The empirical material below focusses mainly on issues of identity, gender
identity and sexuality that reveal some of the institutional underlife in which
lived practice and regime intentions diverge. The prison environment shows
on a heightened scale how ‘suitably feminised’ normative roles alienate
assumptions about other concepts of relationships and identity, while at
the same time revealing added dimensions of struggle around traditionally
‘female’ issues like body image, pregnancy or childbirth. The complicated
nature of gendered, feminised and exclusionary practice and institutional
78 A.K. Schliehe
intentions underlines the opaque nature of closed environments, while also

accenting similarly dire struggles beyond the prison gates.
Short Recourse to Feminist Geography

Turning the lens onto feminist geography allows engagement with a form of
written human geography that challenges traditional representation.
Questions about women’s ‘entrapment’ (and confinement to smaller activity
zones, for example) have always been central; and as an approach feminist
geography has indeed started to inform all manner of substantive subfields of
geographical inquiry. The wide-raging and penetrating criticisms of geogra-
phy as a discipline that have developed under the heading of feminist
geography (Horton and Kraftl 2014, 135) help the way carceral geography
forms and informs itself, in more than one way. Alongside other disciplines,
geography became concerned with feminism1 in the early 1970s. This period
caused turmoil in the more traditional strands of geographical theory and
research and led to the development of many ‘new’ approaches of which
feminist geography is one that cuts across many other schools of thought and
thus across different ontological and epistemological concepts. Other social
science fields were quicker than geography in developing and embracing
feminist scholarship. This delayed engagement meant that the critical work
under way in sociology or anthropology was available to the pioneers in
feminist geography (Nelson and Seager 2005, 2). Feminism emerged as a
critique of the content of human geography and its research practices
(WGSG 1997).2
The feminist project can be seen as inherently political and striving for
emancipation and recognition of these power gradients while at the same
time resisting and challenging the claims of ‘the dominant group’. According
1
During this period feminist thought became more fashionable and more publicly accessible but
of course the underlying ideas are much older than that.
2
Since then feminist geographers have criticised further geographical knowledge as well as
methods and research practices (ibid.). The first paper raising the issue of the relative status of
women in geography appeared in 1973 (Zelinksky). Around the same time Antipode started to
publish papers on feminist geography (Burnett 1973; Hayford 1974). Early feminist analysis
stressed the clear power gradient between men and women and the female experiences of these
distinctive and unequal structures.
to McDowell, the early feminist geography projects underlined questions of

gender inequality and oppression of women in all life spheres (Johnston and
Sidaway 2004, 302). Rose (1993) describes how feminists have made many
connections between masculinity, men, knowledge and power, and where
the association between the feminine and the corporeal reoccurs across many
research projects and writing (ibid.; see also Johnson 2008). The connection
that lies at the heart of most feminist discourses goes back to the mind/body
dualism (Valentine 2001, 16) that has shaped the belief in masculinist
objective rationality and (geographers’) understandings of society and space
and the (re)production of knowledge. Since the 1980s many feminist
geographers branched out into different strands of feminist geography and
some feminist geographers incorporate several simultaneously, for example,
Marxist, feminist and poststructuralist (Gibson-Graham 1996).
Rethinking geography’s own history has been an important ‘cathartic’
step towards a more equal discipline. The aspiration is, however, not just
to add another fragment but, rather to ensure that a feminist perspective
informs all work within (human) geography. According to Bowlby et al.
(1989), this is where the geographical practice itself reveals its ‘sexist,
patriarchal and phallocentric’ notions. The process will in their eyes
open the way to emancipation by providing a guide to political practice
(Johnston Ron and Sidaway 2004, 305).3 The more recent history
involves four major arguments (Rose 1993; Dias and Blecha 2007):
(1) that geography as an academic discipline has been historically
dominated by men; (2) that within the profession women have been
patronised, harassed and marginalised; (3) that feminism remains ‘out-
side the project’ of geography and (4) that this heritage has particular
consequences both for what ‘is’ legitimate geographical knowledge and
who can produce that knowledge (Rose 1993, 1; WGSG 1984).4
3
Here the debate around the recognition of women travellers and the writing of a feminist history
of geography has been particularly contested (see e.g. Stoddart 1991).
4
A shift is noticeable, for example, in how feminism is included in contemporary theoretical
debates and pieces of writing: while in Cloke et al.’s (1991) introduction to theory in human
geography feminism was not included (however, self-consciously: feminism should be seen as
more than just ‘another’ approach (ibid., x–xi)), more recent books that describe concepts in
human geography generally do include feminism (e.g. Hubbard et al. 2002; Horton and Kraftl
2014).
80 A.K. Schliehe
During the early 1990s, feminist geography shifted towards the social
creation of gendered beings in particular spaces (feminist geography instead
of feminist geography). This shift happened in ‘radical’ geography’ in
general and came along with paralleled concerns for and foci on excluded
or oppressed groups (be they women, working class or ethnic minorities)
(cf. geographies of migrant women workers or different forms of geogra-
phies of illness and disability or geographies of children or geographies of
‘the body’). This significantly overlapped with postmodern/poststructur-
alist/postcolonial ideas and developed into feminist geographies of differ-
ence (e.g. McDowell 1993, 1999; Blunt and Rose 1994).
The postmodern impulse has been seen to give a voice to gendered
and sexual difference and has been adopted into feminist geographies
(McDowell 1993; Mills 2007, 49). Since the early 1990s, a distinct set
of research agendas has appeared within/in close relation to feminist
geography including a rich literature on spatialised performance of
sexuality, gender, race and spaces of embodiment (see e.g. Bell et al.
1994; Binnie 1997; Nast and Pile 1998; Skelton 2011; Mahtani 2002;
Dirsuweit 2005), on geographies of masculinity (Massey 1996; Morrell
1998; Myers 2002; Bye 2003) and on geographies of (dis)ability, illness
and health (e.g. Asthana 1996; Moss and Dyck 1996; Butler and Parr
1999). These contributions cannot only be seen within a feminist
context but they cross-cut feminist geography and other geographical
work. Feminist geographers have also continued to work on the more
‘traditional’ subfields in geography with a distinct feminist perspective
like economic and labour geography, political geography, urban geogra-
phy and others (see Nelson and Seager 2005, 5).
Feminism has been a major basis for wider geographical research
on difference, for example, on sexuality and space or queer theory (e.g.
Valentine in McDowell and Sharp 1997; Colls 2012). Recently, it
started to seep into other areas of critical geographies, such as analysing
and even deploying GIS(Geographical Information Systems) (Kwan
2002). Generally, the nuanced theorisation and conceptualisation of
place and scale with a feminist perspective have shaped broader fem-
inist and social theoretical debates about issues like identity. Asking
about the where that ranges from one’s own body to mundane spaces
like the kitchen or the urban park to other spaces like prisons or
psychiatric wards and ideological spaces like territory or nation is the

important perspective that connects feminisms and geography. The
feminist project of ‘embodying, engendering and embedding knowl-
edge claims and social research in the material context of space and
place’ is also inherently geographic (Duncan 1996, 245). Neither
feminist geography nor feminism can be adequately summed up in
their diversity and dynamism, but many aspects can be applied to or
incorporated in the analysis of specific spaces like closed institutions
and in the understanding of the experiences of certain people such as
incarcerated young women. Feminist geography’s take on authoritative
structures and its take on challenging and contesting dominance
through thinking (creatively and critically) and writing (and represent-
ing) but also ways of being heard and being read, offer a conduit for
carceral geography.
Towards a Feminist Carceral Geography?

Feminist perspectives on elements of gender, identity and female
incarceration are far-reaching, diverse and complicated concepts in
their own right as well as in combination. This chapter aims to connect
the new and emerging sub-discipline of carceral geography with a
feminist perspective in order to add a more conceptual direction to
the very rich and diverse empirical material on carceral environments.
Sketching the empirical material both in respect of female inmates as
well their (often) female researchers will open up new opportunities to
understanding the particular situation of female inmates experiencing
incarceration and ‘closed space’ – a specific environment that would
benefit from a feminist geographically informed analysis. In geography –
feminist as well as carceral – there is little material on an overtly
feminist perspective regarding closed spaces. Carceral geography as a
young field has until now focussed more on empirical rather than
conceptual feminist debates. Other related disciplines like criminology
have for some time pointed towards the importance and the lack of a
feminist perspective on crime and justice in confronting the fact that
82 A.K. Schliehe
there is an absence of women’s points of view both academically and in

policy and practice. What is remarkable about the development of
carceral geography, however, is that from the beginning empirical
research on women has held a prominent position.
One of the first carceral geography papers, in fact, raised issues
around sexuality and transgression in a women’s prison with a
discussion of complicated gender roles and normalising institutional
power at play. Dirsuweit’s (1999) article on South African prisons
for women is one of the first contemporary ‘carceral geographical’
articles and it raises many different aspects of identity, agency,
culture and sexuality. Claiming that the prison ‘breaks down the
identity of the criminal and maps out a suitably feminised and law
abiding identity’ for prisoners, she shows how architecture and
internal regimes both work towards normalisation (Dirsuweit 1999,
73). Her accounts of these mechanisms of ‘normalisation’, which tie
in with gender stereotypes of ‘appropriate’ behaviour (rehabilitation
through learning about childcare, sewing, relationships between men
and women, beauty pageants, etc.) and occupation (doll making,
hairdressing, cooking, etc.), is very similar to what other researchers
have found in other prison settings (see Moran below). Dirsuweit
elaborates on sexuality and gendered space by analysing multiple
lesbian identities as transgressions of the feminised and heterosexual
identity enforced by the prison regime. These multiple identities, for
example, in butch-femme roles, play out differently in confrontation
with the prison regime that works towards maintaining microscopic
knowledge of lesbian prisoners (especially butch) as sexual delin-
quents (ibid., 81). Her description of the alienation of ‘other’ sexual
identities and the use of spatial design and discipline to control these
‘other’ bodies in particular ways shows how highly significant the
factor of gendered identities is in an analysis of closed institutions.5
5
In a different context of highly mobile female tramps and hobos, Cresswell (1999) analyses
similar structures of exclusion, resistance and emancipation surrounding the lives of female
travellers. He shows that the gendered and embodied politics of mobility mirror those in
confinement, which becomes highly relevant when assessing the complex geographies of institu-
tional inertia and ‘outside’ mobility for young women in Scotland.
Moran has analysed many different facets of women’s incarceration in

Russia (2012; Moran et al. 2013a, b) and she argues that Russia’s
exceptional and exclusionary geography of women’s imprisonment,
encompassing both the remote prison-community assemblages of the
carceral system and the internal spaces of the prison institution, com-
bined with a particular set of rehabilitative and educational processes,
seeks to rescript criminal women towards a predetermined ‘ideal’ of
Russian womanhood. Moran et al. (2009) conceptualise femininity as
a disciplining power by expanding Foucault’s notion of docility and bio-
politics. They refer to King (2004) who emphasises the female body as a
particular target of disciplinary power and social control and underline
the engendered practices that render female bodies ‘more docile’ than
men’s (Moran et al. 2009, 705, referencing; Bartky 1988). Moran and
her colleagues draw on scholarship within feminist geography which
demonstrates the ways in which embodied subjectivities and identities
are bound up with assumptions about gender and class, and are place
contingent. This conceptualises the lived experience of incarceration as
inherently embodied, and argues that these trans-carceral spaces exist not
just as physical locales but also through the ‘inscription’ of incarceration
upon the body. Inscriptions of incarceration thus become corporeal
markers of imprisonment, blurring the boundary between ‘outside’
and ‘inside’ the prison and extending carceral control through the
stigmatisation of previously imprisoned individuals. In this context, an
example is the deterioration of teeth as a marker of imprisonment and
the focus on solving this post-release (Moran 2012, 2014). One area of
re-feminisation that is well described here is in the practice of beauty
pageants that are run by prisons in order to normalise women’s bodies
and create a culture of wanted and unwanted femininity (Moran et al.
2009). Similar albeit less prevalent practices can be found in British
prisons as well.6
6
Another (criminological) example is Pickering’s (2014) article on floating carceral spaces and
gender in relation to border enforcement on the high seas in which she examines the enactment of
gender in maritime carceral spaces relating to paradigms of enforcement (masculine) and rescue
(feminine) and the feminisation of an otherwise hyper-masculine task (ibid., 192).
84 A.K. Schliehe
The feminist perspective on space and place and the particularities of

both within a ‘closed’ or ‘total’ context of prison, secure care or psy-
chiatry point the researcher towards issues that make up the main reason
for researching closed spaces. One of the key functions of prison space,
writes Dirsuweit (2005, 350), is the normalisation of aberrant behaviour
in which the body (site of subjection and resistance) has a special role, as
has the training of the mind (e.g. in feminisation of female prisoners to
push them towards the accepted gendered norms). So the closed institu-
tion needs to be examined as to how it defines and normalises gendered
identity, as well as to how institutionalised female individuals actually
live and potentially resist or undermine such attempts. The embodiment
and discursive structures in a carceral context offer new and important
insights into the relationship of subjectivity, the body, the penal system
and femininity (or other concepts of identity) that matter beyond
carceral spaces. In order to set a possible feminist carceral geography
into context, feminist geography and feminist criminology are vital to
capture an environment which is the scene of a constant struggle with
prescribed, normalised and resistant being.
Learning from Feminist Criminology

Within criminological literature, gender (both social structure and
social process) as a form of social control is nothing new, but it is
challenging to conceptualise the multiple and diverse processes affect-
ing femininity and masculinity (and the many other gendered identities
in between/beyond this dualism) in their construction and contestation
(Moran et al. 2009). Chesney-Lind and Eliason (2006) identify how
the feminist movement and thought on women’s crime are intercon-
nected. The practices of normalisation at play within the criminal
justice system support ‘traditional’ stereotypes and do not present as
‘gender-neutral’ – but the question of ‘what is recognisably ‘feminine’?’
is not easy to answer and resides with complex cultural, economic and
historical discourses (ibid.). Feminist criminology as a ‘mature theore-
tical orientation’ (Burgess-Proctor 2006) is described as a field that
recognises multiple interlocking inequalities with relation to criminal

justice that include race, class and gender but also age, or physical and
mental ability. Similar to feminist geography, feminist criminology
developed along different schools of thought (debating sameness, dif-
ference, etc.) and waves of feminism more generally. Burgess-Proctor
(2006) arrives at an intersectional approach to using a race/class/gender
framework which also provides important underpinnings for feminist
carceral geographic research. In theory (e.g. use of concepts of inter-
sectionality in relationships between inequality and crime (ibid., 40)),
practice (e.g. on multiracial feminist activism (ibid., 43) and metho-
dology (ibid., 41)), feminist criminology has made advances on issues
like power, privilege and oppression. However, as Chesney-Lind
(2006) points out, feminist criminology has been increasingly charac-
terised by politics of backlash.
There are many examples of feminist criminological scholarship that are
extremely relevant to carceral geography. Stoller’s (2003) paper on space,
place and movement in relation to health care in women’s prisons, for
example, theorises prison as a ‘place’ through combining Foucault’s dis-
ciplinary lens with Casey’s (1997) notion of ‘anti-place’ and thus under-
standing multiple connotations/inscriptions of prison space, for example,
as a place of home, as fragile constructs. She understands prison life as
embedded in geography and the social organisation of space (Stoller 2003,
2269). Her heart-wrenching account of a prisoner’s death and its intimate
connection to prison space and distance/boundaries and prisoners strate-
gies to overcome barriers sits within the intersection of carceral geographic
and criminological research. She also addresses a particular feminist per-
spective in her analysis of the prison as an environment that understands
‘women in general as emotional, irrational overseekers of health care’
(ibid., 2273). Rowe’s (2011) work on self and identity in women’s prisons
similarly highlights the significance and threat to (spoiling/mortification)
identity in the prison’s micro-politics.7 Discursive repositioning and
7
See also Rowe (2016) on tactics, agency and power in women’s prisons where she offers ways of
mapping the ‘feel and flow of power in prisons at the level of lived experience’ and the lens of
discipline which she claims resides more on women in their perception of higher vulnerability
(ibid., 13).
86 A.K. Schliehe
resistance by challenging normative femininity (e.g. through practised

sexuality) and body image (e.g. rebellion through losing weight) can be
seen both as ‘coping’ or as ‘resistance’ (ibid., 585). The complicated
negotiations of ‘identity capital’ by the institution and individual prisoners
are conceptualised by Rowe as a practice that can resist and redefine
meanings to the self and own status in multiple ways (ibid., 587). As an
important example of work merging both gender and age, Wahidin (2004)
has researched the embodied experience of older women in prison and the
related challenges for carceral environments.
As a more established subfield within criminology, feminist research
has attempted comparative studies (see Kruttschnitt et al. 2013) and
highlighted the absence of women in general comparative work within
criminology. Kruttschnitt et al. (2013) underline the similar perceptions
of control by women in three different prison regimes that nonetheless
ultimately produce different outcomes for them (focus on California,
England and the Netherlands) (ibid., 18). This important step towards
the understanding of larger punitive structures and their direct impact
on women’s lives is also addressed by Carlton and Segrave’s (2011) paper
on women’s survival post-confinement which confronts prison research
ending ‘at the gate’ and post-release research seeing prison, rather than
post-prison life, as traumatic (ibid., 551). By analysing a continuity of
trauma and risk (with failure resulting in death), they point towards
future directions for critical feminist and prison research that resonates
with carceral geography.
Feminist criminology provides an important means of reference to
carceral geography and is already invested in interdisciplinary research.
Both feminist geography and feminist criminology provide a basis for an
argument that calls for a more boldly ‘feminist’ carceral geography that is
attuned to issues of race, gender and class, among others. While this has
already been the empirical focus of the subfield, a more distinctly
conceptual approach would help to draw out women’s entrapment
and engendered practice in the material, social and symbolic spaces of
confinement. The deeper epistemological engagement with understand-
ings of carceral space and gendered power gradients holds the potential
for critical and emancipatory theory and practice. Raising questions
for the potential of a distinct ‘feminist’ carceral geography means
engaging more systematically with challenging representation, thinking

through resistance and more diverse takes on activism. In order to
narrow down the focus and apply the carceral/criminological feminist
input to my own research project, I will now look into how this could be
applied to research with young women.
Researching Spaces of Female

Incarceration
De Beauvoir opens The Second Sex by asking a question like ‘Is there a
problem? And if so, what is it? Are there women, really?’ (1997, 13).
Attempting to do research with young women in carceral environments
throws up similarly fundamental questions and challenges in discussing
problems of age, gender and confinement. Much of the preceding
carceral and feminist research has directly and indirectly informed this
project. Introducing a doubly under-researched group of detainees to the
carceral geographic debate – being both young and female8 – means
tapping into wider research on young people, and particularly young
women in the criminal justice system. Speaking to young women and
people who work with them resulted in re-thinking the category of
carceral environments and stretching the ‘mainstream’ carceral geo-
graphic understanding of prison. A lot of conceptual inspiration to
include ‘other’ carceral environments came from both research on
migrant detention and asylum/post-asylum geographies. Listening to
young women’s stories it transpired that their experiences of being
‘locked-up’ extended to facilities like secure care units and closed psy-
chiatric facilities as well as prisons. This, however, means that ‘new’
aspects of detention, not just under the ‘punishment’ category but also
under headlines like ‘care’ and ‘health’ had to be considered and inte-
grated into current carceral geographic debates.
In Scottish criminology, this group of young women has received some
attention from Burman and Batchelor (2009) who analyse the broader
8
Here relating to sexual as well as chosen identity as a woman.
88 A.K. Schliehe
context of the politicisation of youth crime and youth justice policy in

Scotland with the ‘emergence of the “problem” of violent and disorderly
young female offenders’ (ibid., 270). They explore the paradox of young
women ‘falling between two stools’ of policy responses mainly designed for
young men, and policy responses to female offenders that do not distin-
guish by age. Young female offenders, they argue, constitute an invisible
minority with a largely undocumented and unaddressed set of needs and
pathways into the criminal justice system. While numbers of young
females in prison continue to increase, ‘most have committed relatively
minor offences, and most pose little risk to the communities in which they
live ( . . . ) many young women in prison are more of a danger to themselves
than to others’ (ibid., 280). Focussing on the aspects of gender and age at
the same time, Burman and Batchelor (2009) argue that for this group,
prison (and other closed institutions) exacerbates the social, emotional and
health problems that contributed to their offending in the first place.
The focus on gender- and age-specific characteristics and physical and
spatial features reveals the processes of being ‘locked up’, highlighting
perceptions and emotional responses to confinement. Young women’s
own accounts of their incarceration are seldom heard in discourses on
crime and punishment and can provide an insight into these otherwise
enclosed spaces. Considering the geography of three carceral systems, this
study extends beyond physical detainment and works towards an under-
standing of the carceral experience as an emplaced, gendered, embodied,
emotional and often repetitive practice. The young women’s testimonies
show how being ‘out of control’ generally leads to confinement in one or
more closed institutions. Much of the carceral geographic literature that is
mentioned above has been extremely helpful in the analysis of female
inmates’ situation. To focus on women means to have a slightly different
perspective on closed spaces and practices of incarceration. There often are
particular details when it comes to architecture and the design of women’s
prisons or detention facilities such as the common environments made
‘feminised’ and more ‘pleasant’ for their female inmates (Schliehe 2012,
2016). Obviously, many issues that come up in a prison context like health,
mental health or ageing, for example, can be applied for males and females
alike and help to uncover the gendered politics of containment more
generally by pushing for debates on, for example, men and mental health.
Some issues are solely women-related like going into labour behind bars,
and there is a need for more detailed accounts of gendered aspects of life on
the inside like looking at visitation or work in prison. With increasing
public debates and news stories about personal struggles of transgender
prisoners in male and female prisons, this focus on gender is increasingly
important, beyond a male/female dichotomy (Sumner and Jenness 2014).
Triggering much needed discussions in policy and practice, feminist carc-
eral studies have much to contribute to this debate. Conceptualising the
embodied experience of imprisonment means analysing how the trans-
carceral takes form not just spatially but also through the stigmatising,
intersectional and gendered effect of the bodily inscription of incarceration.
In geography – feminist as well as carceral – there is little material on a
conceptual feminist perspective regarding closed spaces. But despite the
limited nature of research into women’s imprisonment, scholars have
identified the gendered nature of incarceration, and the institutional ‘refe-
minisation’ resultant from a pervasive perception that criminal women
offend not only against the rule of law but also against accepted gender
roles. The combined focus on gender and age provides a challenge to
carceral geographic research raising many further issues like mobility,
emotional and affective geographies, or mental health.
Young Women in Scottish Prisons

This chapter draws on qualitative interviews conducted as part of a
wider, mixed-methods doctoral project. Interviews and observation
helped to encapsulate the importance of closed institutional spaces in
the current societal response to ‘offending’ girls and young women.
The wider project explored the social and spatial situation of this
marginalised group while recognising that the study could only
provide a snapshot of existing experience. In this chapter, 24 inter-
views with young women conducted in prison are used, with an
additional 12 interviews with prison staff. Another 15 interviews
with young women on the outside (with the help of Up-2-Us, see
below) are also occasionally referred to. The young women could
choose their own ‘interview names’ which have been used
90 A.K. Schliehe
throughout.9 The interviews were organised as in-depth, semi-struc-

tured, oral history interviews that focussed on the feelings, beliefs,
experiences and social worlds of these young women (Schliehe
2014). The young women were contacted with the help of Up-2-
Us, an intensive support service for young people at high risk of
secure care or custody, working across a large area in West-Central
Scotland. The questions that were asked ranged from biographic
details about their upbringing and earlier memories to the issues
that led to their detention (ibid.). For this chapter, answers about
their identity and self-image as well as views and experiences on
gender specifics, sexuality and motherhood were foregrounded. The
young women’s responses underlined how important a task it is for
carceral geography not just to exemplify a concept but to participate,
and, as Moran says, to make an effort towards positive social and
political change (2013). Most of the young women urged me to get
their stories ‘out there’ and to tell ‘what it is really like’. While this
is one of the ethical dilemmas of a carceral researcher, it is also an
opportunity to let them speak for themselves (ibid.).
This project on the nature and experience of ‘closed spaces’ for young
women in Scotland is based on discourse on spaces of confinement that are
extended by highlighting their ‘journeys’ through spaces of incarceration and
their life beyond detention. A critical engagement with the metaphor of
‘journey’ was needed to adequately engage with their experiences and it has
proven a continuing challenge to address matters of representation and
give voice to people that are rarely heard. The use of closed institutions as
a response to ‘deviant’, ‘unmanageable’ and ‘disorderly’ behaviour of young
people and the ways in which these social, material and symbolic spaces are
utilised by them sit squarely with a critical, feminist-informed carceral
geography while also pushing its boundaries in different directions.
Research with young people, however, is not straightforward but
raises ethical issues in addition to the demands of good practice
9
There are two exceptions (see below) where the chosen ‘fake’ names were changed again in order
to keep confidentiality. No other indicators like age, institution or length of sentence are revealed
here for reasons of anonymity.
(Burman et al. 2001). Awareness of complexities of closed institutions

and sensitivity of the research topic is key to achieving good research
practice which must be embedded in an understanding of the imbalance
of power between researcher and young people. This has implications
relating to personal, emotional and potentially traumatic effects of
disclosing experiences of being locked up as well as ‘relating to the
exploitation of participants’ vulnerabilities for the sake of career
advancement’ (Burman et al. 2001, 447). Accessing young people in
prison involved gaining consent from the institution (managerial prison
staff) in addition to the young person’s consent. This is problematic to
achieve in an environment that allows the young interviewees to make
their decision in a way that ensures confidentiality, understanding of the
context the research sits in and most importantly being able to choose
‘freely’ to take part. As a ‘captive audience’ they are subject to institu-
tional constraints as well as encouragement by staff and observation by
other young people. In participating, most of the young people entered
‘unfamiliar territory’ not sure of what was required of them hence the
research had to be explained, albeit without ‘pre-defining’ characteristics
or leading them to give responses that they thought were anticipated.
Informed consent was an important part of the beginning of the inter-
view but had to be re-assessed by the researcher throughout the research
encounter. Research in closed environments raises other issues one of
which is the role of empathy (Liebling 2001). The capacity to relate
plays an important role in the interview process. The researcher has to be
affectively present to achieve a ‘subjective understanding of situated
meanings and emotions’ (ibid., 474). In closed environments like pris-
ons, the researcher faces a (continually changing) dilemma of apprecia-
tive10 understanding between the institution, the ‘locked-up’ and
those who manage them. To balance these competing perspectives is a
continual challenge which can only be addressed in imperfect
ways, often with ‘high emotional drainage along the way’ (ibid., 480).
10
Here loosely referring to ‘appreciative inquiry’ (see, e.g. Liebling et al. 1999) in which an
‘appreciative stance’ is understood to permit emotional space and encourage ‘positive as well as
negative projections’ in an environment that is often perceived as particularly judgmental and
contested (Liebling et al. 1999, 76).
92 A.K. Schliehe
The researcher has to find a way to live with complexities and dilemmas
that are particular to closed environments like politics of access, over-
identification with research subjects, exceptions to confidentiality and
permission clauses. Significant ethical questions and uncomfortable
realities also arise when reflecting on the larger role of the researcher
within the secure estate or when considering the direct involvement in
individual cases (Moore and Scraton 2013). Overall, researching closed
institutions like prisons but also secure care units is challenging on many
different levels ranging from ethical to practical issues. Methodologies
need to be chosen with the young people and environmental restrictions
in mind, and have to be re-assessed on a continual basis.
Doing research with women raises similarly complex issues. Walklate
(1995) mentions a number of difficulties in relation to the sole focus on
women and crime, one being that the more women are separated from men
as a group, the more the ‘male-stream’ criminology is left to its own devices,
at the same time this means that men in their relationship with masculinity
and crime are not challenged as they are seen as the main (or only) category
without analysing their ‘maleness’ as a contributing factor. Second, the sole
focus on women and crime might lead to the replacement of the biological
category – often used as an explanation for mis-behaving – with the
socio-cultural category of gender [replacing biologically rooted explana-
tions (sex) with societally rooted ones (gender) and thus hinting at
essentialism] (Walklate 1995, 14). Burman and Batchelor (2009) point
out similarly that the overall tenor with female offenders is often on the
multiple deprivations that female offenders tend to take with them into
closed institutions. This, however, often results in the medicalisation and
pathologisation of their person and their role within the policy and
practice discourse. This in turn can lead to the image of the female
offender as ‘hapless and dependent’ – far from what young women in the
criminal justice system are perceived as – which might contribute to their
image as ‘intractable’,’ awkward’ and ‘too difficult to work with’ (ibid.).
Working with a feminist agenda, then, requires particular consciousness
to gender while avoiding labelling women. In their 2001 article, Burman
et al. characterise their work as ‘feminist’ criminology on the basis of
their epistemological positioning and also in regard to the methodological
decisions that were made before commencing the study. The key
imperative here is seen in the production of knowledge that provides an

understanding of women’s experiences as well as method of interpretation
that is based on feminist concepts (ibid., 446). Conducting the research
meant being aware of the importance of ‘remaining flexible, recognizing that
our own (personal and theoretical) assumptions and beliefs needed to be
carefully dissected and explicated in terms of their effects on the research
process’ (ibid., 451). Conducting research with young women in a prison
environment raises many issues ranging from access to ethics in the field.
While the prison service sees women as over-researched11 and therefore does
not grant access easily, researchers point at women as the exception in the
overall prison estate. Carceral geography has a role to play to start debates
about field practice and feminist research. Gendering empirics and the
continuous challenge not to label makes researching young women and
their experiences of closed environments a complex undertaking.
‘Becoming Woman’ in Prison – Gendered

Empirics
In many ways, prisons provide a challenging environment for anyone –
entering during the teenage years, however, brings particular challenges
that centre on becoming adult and responding or adapting to different
identity, gender and cultural frameworks: ‘becoming woman’ in its widest
sense. The notion of ‘becoming woman’, even though it is not set in a
detailed and in-depth theoretical analysis here, draws on Deleuze and
Guattari’s collaborative work, Mille Plateaus, volume 2 of Capitalisme et
Schizophrenie (first English translation 1987) which coined the term.12
11
When this project started and underwent negotiation for beginning fieldwork, it was relayed to
me that access was difficult because the women’s estate received by far the most requests/
applications for research.
12
For more in-depth analysis, see Dawson’s 2008 thesis in which she explores various conceptions
of the body (e.g. Spinoza, Nietzsche, de Beauvoir) that are important to an understanding of
Deleuze and Guattaris’ notion of a body ‘lived on both an immanent and transcendent plane,
which, in turn, is indispensable to an appreciation of the concept of becoming (and, in particular,
the concept of becoming-woman) as intended by Deleuze and Guattari’ (ibid., i). For other
feminist readings and analyses, see Braidotti’s writing on ‘becoming-woman’ (2011) and Grosz’s
2005, 2011 essays that draw on Deleuze and Guattari 2005, 2011.
94 A.K. Schliehe
Importantly, the term corresponds with de Beauvoir, whose writing of the

Second Sex threw up many issues about the social significance of gender.
She discusses the specificity of the woman’s situation and her position as
the Other that cannot be captured adequately by psychological, physiolo-
gical or economic factors alone, and explains that ‘we shall study woman in
an existential perspective with due regard to her total situation’
(de Beauvoir 1997 [1949], 83). The theme of ‘becoming woman’ fits
well into the institutional context in relation to both gender- and age-
specific processes that reflect a complex and ambiguous net of constraints,
developments and identity formations. These not only centre on biological
sex and attached understandings of gender but also on sexual and gender
orientations. Both young female detainees and staff mentioned gender lines
and sexual orientations to be particularly fluid in the prison environment
(see below). In the following, I want to explore three key themes that
emerged from the empirical material which are; relationships to a signifi-
cant other, gender identity and motherhood, for the young women whom
I interviewed. These three themes all play into one another and do not exist
in an institutional vacuum of any kind but are rather rooted in both the
prison as well as previous other institutions and life on the ‘outside’.
It emerged from almost every interview with the prisoners that
relationships with significant others outside and inside prison are
complicated affairs. Many reported continual struggles to keep rela-
tionships on the outside going through their time in prison, often
entangled with inter-couple containment (and issues like inter-prison
visits or phone calls: see Olivia, prisoner) and being implicated in
co-offending with/in relation to their partner (Kayleigh, prisoner).
Some reported continuous struggles with abuse and trauma related
to their relationships (e.g. Charlotte, prisoner), while others saw
theirs as their way out of the criminal justice system (e.g. Kirstie,
previous detainee). Many young women mention having both homo-
sexual and heterosexual relationships, sometimes at the same time or
in succession. Challenging both heteronormative notions and tradi-
tional representations of ‘femininity’ recalls Dirsuweit’s (1999) work
on prisons as particularly gendered spaces. Apart from few excep-
tions, however, the young women did not try to define their
sexuality. One main factor of distinction, though, was inside–out-

side, as another prisoner, Sophia, described:
Aye, but [I] get a lot of weirdoes trying to go wi’ me. A lot of smelly
people. It’s funny, but, it’s a laugh. A lot of ( . . . ) jail relationships an’ all.
People jumping from one bed to another. Me, I don’t, but I am going wi’
somebody the now, but I’ve known them from I’ve come in. But it still
doesnae make any difference, really. When I get oot I wouldnae think
aboot this life. When I’m oot, I’m back to ( . . . ) You know what I mean? I
wouldnae carry the relationship out.
Many are implicated in offending and subsequent detention in prison

due to trouble in their relationship. While Annie (prisoner) describes
being co-accused with her female partner and jailed for breaching
probation, she meets her again when entering prison. Kayleigh (pris-
oner) underlines that she had never been in prison before meeting her
boyfriend: ‘he’d just got oot the jail that day that I met him at court’,
stating that he has been a bad influence, but ‘I’m still with him so he
must be daeing something right’. At the same time, though, she says that
she is in a relationship with another young woman in her block, similarly
dividing inside and outside relationships. Offending and turbulent
relationships are linked with many other circumstances ‘outside’ that
often create a ‘chaotic’ environment and challenging lifestyle, as Daisy
(prisoner) described:
We finished on that night [of the offence that landed her in prison]. I
finished wi’ him. We were on/off, on/off. And I’d seen that he was trying
to control me and stuff so my pals tried to get me away from him because
he was just dragging me down even more wi’ drugs and stuff. So he was
just making my life hell. And obviously I only took so much off him and I
must have just snapped and I get like that because when I’m on drugs
( . . . ) I blank out, I’ve done that a lot of times. I’ve blanked out, done bad
things to my family members and that and I don’t remember doing it.
Prison staff in the block recognise relationships as the most disruptive

element that complicates their everyday work. While some describe
96 A.K. Schliehe
managing young female prisoners’ relationships as ‘working in a soap

opera’ (Aileen, staff), others are less obliging, saying that ‘the relation-
ships are the worst part of the YOs [young offenders]’ (Alice, staff).
Their task of monitoring relationships and changing attachments comes
as part of the block management, but it has deeper implications for how
they see the young people and how they implement rules and regulations
or give advice and attempt rehabilitation. With underlining the young
women’s emotional state, their relationships could be seen as a stigma of
their gender and age. Alice:
You tend to find out if it’s definitely a relationship when they’ve fallen
out, or if they have an argument because the YOs can’t hide it all. They
cannot hide it; they’ll erupt in front of the staff because they’re not
bothered, because they just can’t control their emotion at all. So you
tend to find that if you’re watching someone and you think ‘Yeah. That
could be a relationship.’ You always find out when they have their
arguments, always, because they just cannot hide it all.
Describing relationships and the accompanying ups and downs of

emotions as a ‘playground’ (Heather, staff) in which the young women
test themselves, means understanding relationships with a certain kind of
mentality: the view on homosexual relationships or ties can be judgmen-
tal, while actual sexual encounters are rather rare.13 One of the staff
members stresses that ‘the YOs are worst for it because they see it as
company, ( . . . ) they bed-hop their friends and as soon as one goes
they’ve got somebody else. And there are lassies that have never looked
at women on the outside in their lives and all of a sudden [they are] gay in
here and they’ve got themselves a girlfriend and ( . . . ) it’s bizarre ( . . . )
it’s not healthy for the YOs’ (Alice, staff). Other staff like Stevie or Aileen
underline similar points that it is creating difficult working conditions
and at the same time leading ‘very vulnerable young girls with abusive
backgrounds’ to experiment sexually beyond their ‘actual’ interest. These
13
Two young female prisoners found (fully clothed) in bed cuddling caused a stir among staff and
led to punishments, particularly because they attempted to close the door to the cell which is not
allowed during times when they are opened up (from Field Diary 05/14).
views underline a perceived transgression of appropriate ‘feminine’ and

heterosexual identities and attempt normalisation or ‘rescript’ towards
predetermined ideals of womanhood (see Moran et al. 2009).
The changing or developing gender identity coincides with this complex
web of relationships to significant others as well as relationships to fellow
inmates more generally. The navigation of social relations among a group
of people that cannot choose their company or withdraw from social
encounters provides a challenging social terrain that is particular to captive
populations. Developing gender identities in this environment, one that is
socially and environmentally challenging with its particular regimes and
aims of normalisation/rehabilitation, is a by-product of the institutional
moulding of prisoners coupled to their own interaction and adaption
processes. Living part of your adolescence and early adulthood in prison
adds to the already complicated implications for the self as well as for group
dynamics.14 Capturing the formation of identity, or gender identity, is
complicated, but there are certain issues within the institutional framework
that add some distinct factors. Kayleigh (prisoner), for example, talks about
coming into prison when she had just turned 16 and how she struggled the
first couple of times that she was in prison, picking up charges on the inside
and spending a lot of time locked up in separation because she ‘didn’t really
find herself’ on the inside. Talking about the last time she came out, she
describes how at almost 18 years she was ‘in a different stage of life,
different frame of mind, everything’. The confinement has impacted on
her sense of self and identity, promoting her to self-describe as a ‘black
sheep’:
And if people were to read that in black and white it would deem me as
one of the worst kinda young offenders, if you know what I mean, there is
in Scotland. So it’s weird when you look back at it like that. Especially the
14
Flo talks about her friend who has been in a long time as being more mature than the YOs and
needing to get away (into the adult system). The changing social environment put particular
pressure on those who have to stay long periods: ‘Cause she’s been here and she’s seen people come
and people leave. Like I’m her best pal and I’ve been her best pal for 4 years, and she’s seen me
come in and then seen me leave and it’s obviously hard for her tae see that ‘cause she knows she’s
no gaun tae be leaving for a while’ (Flo, prisoner).
98 A.K. Schliehe
stage I’m at now when I dae just want to get oot noo and just get on wi’ it
and stay out, you know what I mean?
Looking at this group of young female prisoners, then, shows that age
seemingly magnifies ‘female’ trades (see, e.g. Stoller 2003) – on the one
hand in relation to ‘unmanageability’, increased ‘neediness’ and a form
of ‘hysteria’, on the other framings of female offending as particularly
‘bad’ or uncharacteristic (see Kayleigh). While many prisoners tell me
about their boyfriends and girlfriends inside or outside,15 most do not
attach a particular gender identity to their often fluid sexuality. Even
though they do not raise issues around their own gender or pressures to
conform to the prison regime, they do talk openly about the transgender
prisoners that are ‘in’ with them: ‘Her real name is obviously Scott,16 it’s
a guy’ (Kara, prisoner). The higher level of visibility and different rules
that apply to transgender prisoners mark them in particular ways and
cause prisoners to reflect on gender identity differently. Calling her ‘the
tranny’ or ‘man whore’ is usually followed by ‘you’ve got to love her for
it’ or ‘I love her to bits, she’s amazing’ (Kayleigh, prisoner). Kara
explains how pushing gender boundaries in prison creates an environ-
ment where rules might change for everyone, using the example of being
allowed no more than three people in a cell at any one time:
But she’s got a protocol where she’s got to stand, sit at folks’ doors. So she
is allowed to have a chair in the door and sit there. But then some of them
[staff] will say anyone can just sit at a chair, because you can only have
three in a room. So some of the screws will say that you can sit at a chair,
not just Paris.17 ( . . . ) And the some will say that only Paris can, and some
of the screws will say not even Paris. You know?
Paris herself, however, feels like it is continuous struggle to keep up an

appearance, which is a lot more obvious in her case than with the other
15
For example Sophia (prisoner): ‘I’m no’ gonnae lie about that. I’m no’ that kinda person. You
know what I mean? Obviously I go wi’ lassies and don’t go wi’ boys’.
16
Name changed for confidentiality.
17
Name changed for confidentiality from the name she chose to give herself for the interview.
young women who have mentioned similar opinions about their look
(make-up, hair, clothes, etc.). Similar to what Dirsuweit described,
carceral environments break down identity related to crime but also
sexuality and gender, and map out (or at least attempt to) a suitably
feminised and law-abiding identity instead. The alienation of alternative
sexuality and gender is regime immanent. Appearance, as part of gender
identity that defines young women, is thereby subject to prison rules and
regulations:
I’m in here because obviously I’m living as a female so therefore they

should be treating me like a girl. If they’re going to put me in a women’s
prison, then I feel like they should be treating me like a female but they
don’t treat me like a female, they treat me like a male in a women’s prison.
I basically came in here as a woman and I’m gonnae leave here looking like
a male because ae them. They’ve took my hair, they’ve took everything
that defines me. (Paris, prisoner)
Defining and/or stretching accepted gender roles in a different way are

the young women who are pregnant in prison or have children outside.
Pregnancy, childbirth and mothering as ‘particularly’ female issues high-
light practices that Moran et al. (2009) associate with the female body as
a particular target of increased docility. The politics around these bodily
processes are directly related to disciplinary and bio-political pressures.
The immanence of life and death within the constraints of a closed
institution is more pronounced under these exceptional and at the same
time everyday circumstances. Most women with children report feeling
subjugated to higher levels of control, dependency on positive reviews
and mostly self-control.18 While it is theoretically possible to care for
young children in prison in Scotland, this did not apply to any of the
young women interviewed here. Being in prison makes it much harder
for most mothers to keep custody of their children and navigate relations
with social work outside. Most explained how they felt they had to obey
rules and regulations in prisons a lot more thoroughly than might
18
Similar to Stoller’s (2003) description of serious illness and death behind bars.
100 A.K. Schliehe
otherwise had been the case, as they were more susceptible to ‘black-
mail’19 than other prisoners for their emotional ties to their children.
Annie:
I never raised my voice, never swore or nothing, and because I was

answering them back at what they were saying, they were like ‘well, do
you know we can pull the plug on this?’ So if you mention anything to
them then they’re threatening my contact ( . . . ) anything can mess up my
visits, even if I get put on report for anything, that can stop my visits. If I
go over there and try and talk to them, that’s going to stop my visits so it’s
only one situation, basically: I’ve just got to sit up here, not know
anything. If I do get told something then I cannae challenge them about
it because they threaten me with my contact. So I just do not get on with
social work at all.
Most mothers mention feeling guilty and worrying constantly about

their children without being able to influence decisions on the outside.
While some are still in contact with their children, others have not seen
them for a long time and are entangled in family rows over custody or
visits (Tamara, prisoner; Charlotte, prisoner). Having children is also
presented as a ‘maturing’ element, making mothers different from the
other YOs around them. ‘Sorting oneself out for the bairns’ (Tamara,
prisoner) is a common objective that ties in with feeling the extra
pressure to conform and to keep a low profile in prison. The exacerbated
feeling of loss and powerlessness that is attached to giving birth in prison
is reflected on by Annie (prisoner): ‘So it was weird, I’d just gave birth to
him in there, like I had my bump and then I gave birth and then I was at
the hospital and then I was back and he wasnae inside me and he wasnae
in my arms, so it was weird and it was hard, really hard.’20 Motherhood
in prison in many ways pushes boundaries of ‘acceptable’ gender role
19
‘You know what social work are doing? They keep giving me false hope ‘yeah, if you do this, you
do this, you’ll get this’ right? But then I go to a panel and they go ‘she’s not seen them in 18
months, it’s not good for her to see the kids, they don’t know who she is.’ That’s the kind of thing
they come out with’ (Charlotte, prisoner).
20
Baby was removed from mother in the hospital as she was told that it was not possible for her to
keep the baby in prison with her.
behaviour and stigma attached to it, while creating additional constraints

on mothers during their time in prison.
‘Becoming woman’ in prison with views on both the aspect of ‘grow-
ing up’ and ‘being female’ highlights many wider societal issues on a
heightened scale. The additional web of constraints and discipline seems
almost to work as a looking glass on gender and sexuality. What it means
to navigate the implications for the self, individual identity formation
and also group dynamics is something that would benefit from further
feminist-informed analysis. Challenging normative femininity (e.g.
through practised sexuality) can be viewed as both ‘coping’ and/or
‘resistance’, and coping with changes in body image (due to visible
pregnancy or being transgender. for example) can be exceedingly diffi-
cult and emotionally challenging. The complicated negotiation of what
Rowe (2011) calls ‘identity capital’ is particularly charged in the ‘explo-
sive’ combination of young age, being female, and being incarcerated, as
pointed out by both staff and young women. Being prone to higher
levels of normalisation and education and being seen as ‘still mouldable’
due to young age, these prisoners live through distinct experiences of
‘becoming woman’ that span across prescribed, normalised and resistant
being.
Conclusion
Feminist thought and the elements of gender, identity and female
incarceration are far-reaching, diverse and complicated issues and, mak-
ing it difficult to discuss them in a way that does not seem fragmented.
Many aspects, however, are important to consider in the research pro-
cess, and also to help in tying up empirical and theoretical work.
Gelsthorpe (2008) identifies important feminist perspectives on crime
and justice in confronting how ‘criminology in all its guises has ignored
women to a large extent’. The absence of women here raises questions
about adequate analyses and appropriate ways of representation and
conducting research in order not to go down the ‘stereotypical’ route
of simply ‘adding’ women to the discourse: ‘rather it is necessary to
102 A.K. Schliehe
deconstruct criminological frames of reference and to reconstruct them’

(ibid.). The highlighting of issues like sexism within prison research,
theory and practice or the promotion of the domestic role in penal
regimes, penalisation for behaviour that is not condoned in boys and
men or the stereotype of the ‘doubly deviant’ for women who do not
follow ‘appropriate’ gender roles are all part of the achievements of
feminist perspectives (ibid.). Gelsthorpe also mentions other achieve-
ments of feminist research, as in the field of methodology and placing
women’s experiences at the forefront of research – ‘allowing women to
speak for themselves’ (ibid., 9). She sees scope in the connection between
feminism and research in developing further work on female offending
and women as victims. The apparent and especially difficult distinction
between offender and victim is very important to discern, although it
means walking a fine line for the researcher in order not to victimise the
female offenders through research.
What becomes apparent is that penal systems are not gender neutral
and ‘legal practices, sentencing, and imprisonment forms actively dis-
criminate against women in response to their perceived defeminisation’
(Bosworth in Moran et al. 2009, 705). Moran et al. also mention how
themes of body image and heteronormative domesticity form a large part
of the efforts to rehabilitate women. Although the institutional and
societal practices in Scotland are not as openly heteronormative as the
Russian beauty pageants (2009, 709), the same patterns still apply with
courses in beauty and hairdressing being available in penal institutions,
being allowed make-up and beauty products, and surrounded by framed
pictures of flowers and potted plants. Underlying, and maybe more
important than the immediate surrounding, is the regime’s view on
required normalisation of gender roles and sexuality. The opaque field
of gender and sexuality in prison, with its inherent association with
power structures, tactics and dominance – as exercised by the institution
but also among groups of prisoners – calls for a more in-depth critical
analysis. A feminist carceral geographical perspective would have the
potential to call into question binary gender understandings in closed
space and a more abstract ‘entrapment’ of prisoners in relation to
identity and culture. To question traditional representations and think
critically about how research subjects are characterised is a ‘research lens’
that feminist carceral geography could utilise not only for women, but
for subjugated or alienated groups more generally. The use of resources
on queer theory, gender and sexuality in the questioning of dominance
that can be derived from feminist human geography more widely
provides useful lines of thought. Feminism, defined by its heterogeneity
and plurality, has developed many concepts that can be transferred to
and used in the analysis of incarceration and its effects on female (and
other) inmates. The often extreme situation that women face in prison
or other closed institutions shows general societal problems (as analysed
by feminists) on a heightened scale. Due to the totality of the spatial and
social surrounding, as well as the history of most incarcerated women,
general societal problems are arguably magnified. While a distinctly
feminist perspective of carceral geographic research throws up certain
problems, like avoiding another restrictive label for research subjects, a
more systematic emancipatory approach that works across theory and
practice, could potentially underpin more radical and challenging ana-
lyses of exclusion, resistance and gendered experiences of confinement.
Overall, feminist issues like equality of the sexes or the disadvantaged
social, legal and economic situations of women are particularly pressing
when considering incarcerated female populations. Also, gender stereo-
types that are promoted in closed institutions seem to lag behind
feminist points of view, when, for example, vocational qualification
choices of young women in prison are considered (like courses in hair-
dressing, beauty and make-up or child-minding). These more obvious
points that ‘jump out’ to any feminist-minded analyst can possibly be
complemented by a more in-depth assessment of underlying issues as
they have been discussed on gender identity and of practices of sexuality.
The imbalance between young women’s ‘difficult behaviour’ and their
societal assigned gender roles is taken up by Burman and Batchelor: ‘It is
perhaps precisely because young women do not fit the stereotype of
‘dependent victims that they are seen as intractable, awkward and
difficult. Indeed, recent contributions to the literature have emphasized
the need to acknowledge young women’s agency and approach their
risk-seeking behaviour as an active (albeit misguided) attempt to exercise
control’ (Burman and Batchelor 2009, 279). The examples of young
women’s experiences above showed another level of disciplinary control,
104 A.K. Schliehe
attempted normalisation and compliance, but they also raised matters of

resistance both personally (in relationships) and institutionally (e.g.
taken for granted status of ‘sex-segregated prisons’ (Sumner and
Jenness 2014, 231)).
The complicated nature of agency and resistance in prison is further
illuminated by the empirical material above, ranging from disciplinary
and bio-political implications around gender, sexuality and struggles
with body images, to the grave implications of exclusion and societal
abandonment that can result in death. The latter was talked about by the
young women in relation to complicated child birth in prison, deep
depression around identity, tragic suicides of friends in prison and the
suicide of, for example, transgender prisoners as covered in the media
recently. This closeness to abandonment and a form of Agambenian
‘bare life’ is entangled in gendered everyday practices in prison and
beyond. In the interviews, these young women threw up issues around
gender and age specifics that have previously gone largely undocumented
and unaddressed. ‘Becoming woman’ in prison is a largely invisible but
highly conflictual process that involves excluded, emancipated and
‘boundary pushing’ ways of being. In this environment, carceral geo-
graphy feminist ‘dissent’ might be able to open up new ways of thinking
about agency, resistance and representation, as well as our own utilisa-
tion of theoretical concepts.
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experiences of spaces of confinement for young women in Scotland. Anna
has published several book chapters and articles in Scottish Geographical
Journal and Geografiska Annaler B: Human Geography.
Part II
Moving Beyond Carceral Walls
5
Illusions of Utopia: When
Prison Architects (Reluctantly)
Play Tetris
David Scheer and Colin Lorne
It is a dream project for an architect because this is a global project.

To think a prison is thinking about everything. It is to think of life.
A prison is a dormitory, it’s a restaurant, it’s a sports club, it’s a
hospital, it’s a factory, it’s a school, it’s a public square.
(Eric, prison architect, Belgium)
Introduction
Although prisons are increasingly built away from cities, prison archi-
tects are imagining prisons as cities. Such an urban metaphor is perhaps
unsurprising; both the prison and the city are often assumed to be
D. Scheer (*)
Centre lillois d’études sociologiques et économiques, Université libre de
Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
e-mail: davscheer@gmail.com
C. Lorne
Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
e-mail: colin.lorne@manchester.ac.uk

114 D. Scheer and C. Lorne
relatively bounded places, prisons arguably resembling self-sufficient

cities with facilities such as accommodation, classrooms, workshops,
laundries, health clinics and gardens contained within their walls. The
vocabulary of the city is also pervasive when justifying prison architec-
ture. In this chapter we consider why prison architects use the metaphor
of the city to describe the prisons they design, using terminology such as
‘walled bungalows’, ‘penitentiary houses’, ‘vertical prisons’ and ‘cell
apartments’, and we examine the significance of this rather dystopian
urban imaginary in allowing architects to retain some agency within a
design process which minimises their creative and political input.
Whilst recognising that prison boundaries can be understood as
porous (e.g. Moran 2013), we are not, here, examining the multiplicity
of spatial relations between prisons and cities per se. Although these are
worthy of exploration, not least in that prisons are often located in rural
areas on cheaper land away from both the urban populations they serve
and their associated institutions (courthouses, rehabilitation centres,
schools and workplaces) (Combessie 1996), what we are specifically
concerned with here is the imaginary of the prison as a new form of
city in itself: ‘the prison-city’. Exploring the idea of the prison built as a
city, we examine why prisons are conceptualised in this way by architects
who are increasingly marginalised in their design and delivery, with
minimal capacity to challenge or rethink the conditions of such carceral
spaces. We argue that prison architects are able to deny the discomfort-
ing, unsettling as well as mundane experiencing of carceral spaces by
imagining such prison-cities as sealed, static utopias, their actions dimin-
ished to the arranging of blocks akin to the computer game ‘Tetris’.
The chapter unfolds as follows: we first examine the historic links that
‘place’ the prison in relation both to the city and to notions of utopia,
suggesting that the utopian spatial imagination of the prison-city is
distinct from previous prison models based upon the ideals of redemp-
tion, rehabilitation or education. As such, we consider the ways in which
attempts to realise utopian architectural visions often manifest in the
securing of rather dystopian carceral cities. From this position, we draw
upon empirical research to examine contemporary prison building pro-
jects in Belgium, questioning the role of architects in the design and
construction of carceral spaces. In the context of recent privatisation of
5 Illusions of Utopia: When Prison Architects (Reluctantly) Play Tetris 115
construction and design processes, we echo Moran et al. (2016) in

arguing that architects are largely restricted to an apparently technical
role in prison design and construction. By exploring architects’ entan-
glements in the production of the ‘prison-city’, in which they seemingly
fail to question the ongoing experiencing of such spaces, we argue that
the creative and political practices of architects are limited to the
imagining and selling of universal utopian projects rather than rethinking
the lively social and material conditions of carceral space.
Methodology
This chapter is the product of both sustained empirical engagement
with prison design processes in Belgium and sustained discussion
between a criminologist and a geographer, its co-authors, and as
such it operates as a reflection upon contemporary prison architec-
tural practice, utopia and the city. The first author, Belgian crimin-
ologist David Scheer, has undertaken doctoral research examining the
processes of design and daily experiences of different users and inha-
bitants of Belgian prison architecture, including professionals and
prisoners (Scheer 2016). The second author, British geographer
Colin Lorne, has been examining the changing roles of socially-
orientated contemporary architects and their explicit rejection of
claims of being artistic form-givers or expert technical problem-solvers
(Lorne 2017).
We draw here from David’s embedded ethnographic research under-
taken in three Belgian prisons built in different eras, spending four
months at each site, as well as his interviews with prisoners, alongside
guards, directors and others professionals, including six prison architects
(Scheer 2016). Archival research was also undertaken and proposed
prison projects were closely examined, with David attending design
meetings and tracing the tendering of prison projects. Following socio-
logical convention, and in order to protect the anonymity of those
interviewed, we specify neither the architectural office nor the prison
project on which architects have worked. All respondents have been
given pseudonyms.
A Genealogical Inquiry: A Logical

Reconciliation of the Prison and the City?
The advent of the modern prison in the nineteenth century was deeply
influenced by notions of architecture as the ultimate treatment for
prisoners, as an architecture of control, surveillance and conversion of
souls and bodies (Foucault 1975). This was the prison as a theoretical
project rather than rooted in socio-material reality (Bentham 1791).
Then, as a concrete construction, the modern prison was intended to
serve, through architecture, a punitive project of reform (Evans 1982).
Solitary confinement, correction, work in silence or coercive education
could only take place in a space designed for that purpose. Indeed, the
birth of the prison immediately gave birth to the statement of prison
failure (Foucault 1975 [2007]) where the following centuries sought to
legitimise the existence of the prison as punishment.
Particular utopian ideals have often been evoked, associating prison
models with the city. Although the concept of utopia far predates this,
and can be traced back to the Plato’s theory of ‘idea’, notions of utopia are
often attributed to Thomas More (1516 [2012]), meaning simultaneously
a ‘good place’ and ‘no place’. Whether a village or city, this place is
imagined to be conducive to the ultimate happiness of its occupants.
Such utopian spaces include the city built anew on an island (as imagined
by Thomas More) or limited by the inescapable confines of the desert and
surrounded by walls (such as the religious Carthusian city). The effect of
this utopian thought has been to try to make possible an ideal society:
Utopia was to be the fortress of certainty and stability; a kingdom of

tranquility. Instead of confusion – clarity and self-assurance. Instead of
caprices of fate – steady and consistent, surprise-free sequence of causes
and effects. Instead of the labyrinthine muddle of twisted passages and
sharp corners – straight, beaten and well-marked tracks. Instead of opacity
– transparency. Instead of randomness – a well-entrenched and utterly
predictable routine. (Bauman 2003, 16)
Utopia tends to be portrayed as free from the prison as a necessary

construct. If everyone is happy, the argument goes, there should be no
need for a prison. Yet, somewhat ironically, many attempts at building

ideal communities have been cited as ‘golden prisons’, with Marchal and
Stébé (2010) describing such gated communities as cultural and fortified
‘isolates’. The apparent (but contested) hermetical ‘seal’ of prisons
provides the potential to build an ideal city, be it an ‘untouched’ island
or an inhospitable desert. Thus, the ideas of the contained spaces of the
city and the prison begin to be associated with each other.
Particular notions of isolation, surveillance or education have often
been evoked in relating prisons and cities. So, for instance, if we take the
‘prison-monastery’, such spaces have often been considered as institu-
tions in the city:
Experience has shown and proves every day that the inmate in the cell is
much more accessible to good advice, exhortation, teachings of morality
and religion than in public areas where he is surrounded by his compa-
nions and exposed to their influence. Isolation causes the reflection which
usually was a consequence for the submission and repentance of com-
mitted sins. (Ducpétiaux 1834, 2, our translation)
This particular model aims to protect (male) prisoners from the

‘temptations’ of the city. It is not intended to reproduce the city, but
to provide shelter from it. In this instance, the ‘safe-keeping’ and
‘correction’ of inmates is made possible by confinement. Alternatively,
and more recently, the ‘prison-container’, or warehouse, is built to hold
a mass of ‘undesirable’ people out of the city where only road access
provides a link, so that the prison is far from urban life (as is the case of
the Belgian Ittre prison, discussed below, built between 1996 and 2002):
A comparative study of two locations, one in Tubize and the other in Ittre was
performed. Ittre, located near the Clabecq’s forges, was chosen in particular
because of its shape and its size as well as the proximity of road infrastructure.
(Public Federal Service, Justice section, Ittre prison website, our translation)
Moreover, the ‘prison-school’ is constructed to educate, and ultimately

reintegrate, convicted people with the aim of bringing them back to the
city. In this way, the prison is seen to need separation from, but also
integration into, urban infrastructure. Indeed, this is explicitly declared as

the ambition for the Belgian Haren prison, still under construction,
although originally scheduled for completion in 2016:
The prison complex is part of society and should be built there. This also
means that, as a built landscape, the prison complex should also be
integrated into the environment and, if possible, that the environment
must be able to enter the prison complex. (DBFM contract for the Haren
prison complex. Specifications, 2010, 7, our translation)
Urban metaphors are often found in alternative Belgian prison pro-

jects (alternative inasmuch as such models have been proposed, but not
realised). For example, intentions to accommodate prisoners in domes-
tically scaled ‘houses’ rather than large cellular prisons have been pro-
posed by prison directors and supported by some architects and
criminologists, as a means to (re)inscribe the prison into the city:
Detention houses are connected to the neighbourhood where they are

located. From the idea of reparation, they play an economic role, social or
cultural in their environment. Under the principle of standardization, they
use the offer of help and services from the immediate area. (Claus 2015,
36, our translation)
Observing these relations between the prison and the city, prison
spaces are understood as a functional component of the urban fabric
and contribute to what Foucault (1975) understands as society’s institu-
tional disciplinary mesh.
The Utopian Prison-City?

These relationships between the prison and the (actual) city are histori-
cally and geographically diverse and multi-faceted, and we can do little
more than gesture towards them here. Instead, it is the prison seen as a
city in itself that we focus upon. When we refer to the ‘prison-city’, we
are talking about the concept of the prison developed as a city with as
many necessary facilities as possible located within its walls. In this way,
the prison does not just allude to utopia, it is utopia.
If we treat prisons-cities as utopian projects, we uncover a problematic
relationship with the meaning of utopia. Whilst it may be relatively sealed-
off, and may gather together useful functions, the prison-city in fact negates
everything that makes the city project utopian: participatory democracy,
connection with nature and architectural vision. Instead, the prison-city is
more like the Stahlstadt (as described by Jules Verne 1986) or perhaps
Charles Dickens’ Coketown (1854). Its role becomes purely technical and
utilitarian; a place that although designed with utopian aspirations, quickly
becomes dystopian. Consider, for example, San Pedro prison in Bolivia.
This is a prison without guards that is self-managed by inmates. It has a
sponsorship deal with Coca-Cola. Tourists visit the prison and hear guides
talk of the benefits of its self-governing system. Yet further examination
exposes the prison as a setting for trafficking, injustice and other forms of
oppression (Langlois 2006; Skarbek 2010). Prisons are becoming simulta-
neously more open and porous – open to particular associations, external
controls, researchers and so forth (Moran 2013) – yet at the same time ever
more closed and secured, with increasing technical safety devices and
proliferation of walls and gates (Scheer 2015). This runs counter to official
speeches made about prisons claiming increasing openness and exhorting
the rehabilitation of prisoners (Mincke and Lemonne 2014). The notion of
the ‘prison-city’ model as utopian may not be all that it seems.
Securing Utopia: An Architectural Dream

Architecture has long been enrolled in visions of a utopian society, where
appeals to the presumed permanency and firmness of architecture facilitate
radical societal transformation. As Picon (2013, 17–18, our emphasis)
argued: ‘There was an expectation that beyond the critical stance usually
adopted by utopians, there lay the possibility of some real social and political
progress. Architecture and urban design thus offered a path towards concrete
reform’. Replacing industrial urban slums, for example, was intended to
bring about harmony, acting as a symbolic and material break from existing
conditions (Picon 2013).
There is a danger inherent in such utopian association that architec-

ture is thought to smooth out conflict, ‘fixing’ social relations, rather
than being situated as continuously open to the multiplicity and possi-
bility of space (Massey 2005). It is precisely these appeals to controlling
and ordering space by architects and planners that inspired much of the
utopian visions of Modernism in the twentieth century which sought to
reconcile societal and technological change. Yet, as David Harvey (1989)
has argued, in Europe, the appropriation of utopian rational Modernist
planning and architecture was instrumental in the provision of post-war
housing and urban reconstruction which simultaneously helped ensure
society remained capitalist. A tension emerges: where utopia has often
envisaged the abolition of private property (Jameson 2004), the constant
circulation of capital is integral to architecture and architectural practice
(Tafuri 1976). To be clear, we attribute blame for social-urban problems
neither solely to architects and planners, nor to design or the style
of modern architecture. Rather, we propose that the ability – the
desirability – for architects to programme and fix notions of a perfect
place which is always in flux, which has always been a dream, is in fact a
fantasy.
And yet we may trace aspects of these seemingly utopian ambi-
tions through Mike Davis’ (1990) City of Quartz, an examination of
a controlled, divided Los Angeles composed of increasingly policed,
securitised ‘carceral’ urban space. From the remnants of urban visions
comes the post-liberal ‘fortress LA’, a dystopian, prison-like city
mobilised through technologies of security and control, privatised
space and the enforcing of social boundaries. The work of architects
is thus enrolled in the wider regulation of urban spaces, be that
through ‘defensible space’, closed circuit television (CCTV), chain
fences or security guards. Notions of ‘fortified’ or ‘revanchist’ cities
typify these accounts of a patchwork city composed of utopian and
dystopian spaces (MacLeod and Ward 2002). As Kraftl (2007) has
noted, ‘traditional’ notions of utopia tend to enrol ideas of stasis and
comfort, yet through a recognition of unevenness, recent utopian
accounts of cities are turning to engage with more processual under-
standings that attend to notions of risk, dynamism and unsettling.
Kraftl makes an appeal for utopian thinking through performativity
and post-structuralism so as to foster affective and ethical utopia

(drawing upon work such as Grosz 2001; Law and Mol 2002).
In particular, this emphasises the ways in which utopian desires,
practices and visions may themselves be examined, wherein an
open-ended, post-structural understanding of utopia may well be
far less comfortable. Through this mode of thinking, Kraftl (2007)
calls for us to become ‘more attentive to the unsettling impact that
all utopias can have’, whilst questioning the ‘stability, comfort, and
homeliness that many utopias have historically offered’. In this spirit,
we might consider how architecture is understood not in terms of a
blueprint for utopia (or, for that matter, dystopia), but how open-
ended, contingent utopian desire and ethics is enrolled in performa-
tive understandings of architectural space.
Recent work within carceral geography calls for attentive examination
of the experience of material spaces of incarceration (Moran 2015). This
corresponds with the perspective of critical geographies of architecture
that has called for a shift in our attention towards the ongoing perfor-
mances, actions and experiences involved in producing ‘big things’
(Jacobs 2006; Rose et al. 2010). In this way, rather than a finished
artefact or architectural form, we can recognise the many different
processes and practices that are involved in the life and death of build-
ings (Lees 2001; Llewellyn 2003; Kraftl and Adey 2008; Jenkins 2002;
Jacobs 2006; Yaneva 2009). Even before a building is constructed,
architects and digital visual technologies may be enrolled within the
production and branding of atmospheres that compose urban architec-
tural spaces, a process mediated through many human and non-human
actors (Rose et al. 2014). Together, these new geographies of architec-
ture have clear implications with regard to the designing and experien-
cing of prisons: not only are prisons particular symbolic expressions of
power in society but they are continuously and variously experienced by
different actors in myriad, predictable and unexpected ways. As such, we
can begin to examine prison architecture in much more lively, processual
and unstable terms, with architects as one of many actors involved,
blurring the distinction between the ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’ of
buildings (Llewelyn 2003). In this way, any capacity for architects to
bring about concrete reform seems much less certain.
The Marginalisation and Creativity

of Prison Architects
There are strict specifications for prison projects, communicated through the
pre-determined design briefs for prison builds (Moran et al. 2016). Though
recognising the many human and non-human actors involved in producing
buildings, there is a danger of over-emphasising the capacity by which
architects can influence the design and inhabitation of prisons. The actual
role of architects is reduced to subcontracting for a powerful consortium who
have already received the design brief for a project. Through multiplicitious
regulations, standardisations and stipulations (Imrie and Street 2009;
Faulconbridge 2009), architectural projects are shaped in ways well beyond
the control of an architect. The example of prison building is a strong case in
point. Projects are constrained by a set of detailed and weighty specifications
pre-determined by the brief of a prison project:
We have no grip on the project. For example, for the cell window, the
brand and model are inscribed in the specifications. That will be it, period.
[ . . . ] We could have offered an alternative, but we risk not getting the job
(Eric, prison architect).
The specification describes the buildings. This is programming. This is not
architecture. It is [Company X] who wrote the specifications for the
benefit of the Buildings Agency, which has been receiving information
from [The Ministry of Justice]. How, in this process, the information ends
up in the document that becomes ‘the Bible’, we do not know. (Michel,
prison architect)
Much as Moran et al. (2016) described for England and Wales, in the
Belgian case, officials directed by the Justice Minister who acts on behalf
of the elected government, decide upon the construction and capacity of
new prisons. The correctional administration then writes the design
specifications with technical assistance from other government depart-
ments, and further guidelines are agreed upon during the writing of
these specifications. Moreover, with the increasing privatisation of the
design and construction processes of prisons, architects are also subject
to the processes of commissioning private companies to undertake work

for the state. As one architect explained:
This type of project is . . . It’s very complicated to create. We must make

decisions in the void without being able to consult with the client. It’s a
simple project: just follow the specifications. But if we want to go further,
thinking of the impact on society, this is very complicated in my opinion.
Rethinking, rebuilding a prison system is a huge ambition. A challenge. In
our proposal, we have not tried to rethink how it works. We have
strengthened the system that exists but with a humanist point of view.
[ . . . ] And we do not know the prison. We had no exchanges with the
Prison Administration. The only contact we have had is with the
Buildings Agency to obtain the specification but that’s all. (Bart, prison
architect unsuccessful in tendering for prison work)
The architects interviewed all expressed frustration about their lack of

power to influence prison projects. Their descriptions of involvement in
prison projects suggest that they simply maintain the ‘sterile reproduction
of outdated models’ (Espinas 1989, 375). It is clear that technical or
aesthetic expertise – encouraging the saturation of natural light, designing
gates that provide shade, drawing windows without bars, for instance – is
annihilated in prison design where specifications require certain features,
such as window bars spaced at set distances. One architect put it like this:
There are many things that escape us. You know, we are in a consortium.
It’s [a big company] which is selected for the entire logistics component. It
is they who take care of the laundry, the kitchens, et cetera. And we, we
cannot change anything. The visiting room, the workshops. Specifications
are respected. We can almost not change anything. And there are things
we would like to change. But it’s the specifications, it is the price, it is the
offer. We try to work the acoustics a little. So all in all it is good, but we
cannot do it everywhere. The difficulty is that they demand that every-
thing be anti-vandalism, given the context. And anti-acoustic materials,
they are soft and fibrous materials. We must find a way to put the
materials in inaccessible places, where you cannot hide things, you cannot
break things. But our actions are limited there. [ . . . ] We will not rethink
the prison. We’re not in secret discussions. It is to think the space, as is
possible within the given limits. (Michel, prison architect)
As Moran et al. (2016) have argued, security demands, as well as the

financial model of project commissioning and delivery inexorably, stifle
architectural innovation in prison projects. In our experience, we suggest
that in prison design, architects do find a semblance of creative power,
but that this power is relative, especially when the prison comes to be
understood as a technical object. As a result of their experience of the
restrictive design and commissioning context, Belgian prison architects
have adopted a position of ‘distance’ from the social issues entangled in
designing for imprisonment. In England and Wales, Moran et al. (2016)
described prison architects as unable to engage in face-to-face discussion
with the client (the Ministry of Justice) because of the distance imposed
between them by the legal tendering process, and therefore unable to
raise questions about the purpose of a proposed prison in respect of the
overall purpose of imprisonment. We find that the situation is the same
in Belgium, and that as a result, Belgian prison architects frame their
discussions of designs for proposed prisons in terms of architecture and
cities, rather than using the terminology of imprisonment or rehabilita-
tion. Architects talk of producing new architectural forms, such as the
‘cell apartment’ or the ‘walled bungalow’. This discourse serves two
purposes; first, it provides a sense of architectural control in the design
of prison buildings, when genuine creative scope to shape design is
diminished. If architects cannot actually design prisons to be different
from the specified plan, they can at least engage in aspirational (if not
utopian) discourse about them.
The second reason for this terminology is that it enables architects to
avoid raising ethically challenging questions about the lived experienced
of imprisonment, open discussion of which may jeopardise the business
interests of the bidding consortium of which they are part:
In a democracy, we need prisons as we need supermarkets or

hospitals . . . But it’s not for me, as an architect, to ask whether the place
of prisoners is in prison or not. We’re not here to talk about that. (Steve,
architect)
This type of terminology was argued by retired architect and author

Arthur Allen to enable the architect to refrain from ‘comment on the
moral and ethical character of captives and captors’, flattering the client
‘with limited moral and ethical comment on the nature of prison
designs’ (Allen 1981, 5). He also argued that such euphemistic language
is used by architects in public relations terms, in deflecting attention
from troubling issues; for example in architectural designs where groups
of cells are called ‘villages’ and corridors between ‘villages’ are called
‘walks’ or ‘streets’. These, he argued, are labels, through the use of which
‘we are only fooling ourselves’ (Allen 1981, 6). He concluded that:
If architecture continues to support questionable institutions and move-

ments, and to defend them with euphemistic and specially constructed
ethical languages, then the profession’s part in deception and its self-
centred indifference to moral and ethical issues cannot be defended on
moral and ethical grounds. (Allen 1981, 7)
The role of the architect in prison design, at least in our empirical

example, seems to no longer be to think about the purpose of the project
(to ‘answer the [client’s] question’, as the architects put it), let alone to
ask a different question about what imprisonment might be for: ‘If you
successfully built a prison, you can design anything else’ (Anthony,
architect). The way in which architects are encouraged to project visions
of the prison, activities which extend their practice beyond the technical
production of the architectural object, is in the ‘selling’ of a utopian
vision of the prison.
Urban Metaphors to ‘sell’ the Prison
This process was witnessed in the ‘performances’ of architects involved

in early stages of bidding for future prisons. During the presentation
phase for a proposed new prison in Brussels (when potential consortia
‘pitched’ ideas in person to a panel representing the client), architects
were present as part of each bid team. However, rather than presenting
and explaining architectural designs that they had creatively generated,
their role was to only to ‘legitimise’ the design choices that had been
made in advance of their professional involvement – that is the choices
that had been made by the client in preparing the design brief, and
which they as architects had interpreted and worked-up within very
restrictive technical and security specifications. The prison designs pro-
posed by the various consortia were necessarily very similar, since they
had all worked to the same design brief, and within the same restrictive
specifications. Only the architects’ speeches about the proposed prisons
were different; in terms of the terminology they used and the style they
adopted to present to the panel. For example, during the presentation of
‘improved offers’ for the Brussels’ prison, all projects were similar, yet
the ways in which their performances were enrolled into the ‘branding’
differed. One casually dressed architect displayed ‘artistic flair’ to convey
the originality of the creative process, giving an impression that the
design had architectural merit in addition to its technical quality.
A suited, austere figure bet on technical rigour through a ‘serious’
presentation style stressing technical and security characteristics through
complex technical patterns of flow management. Architects were thus
used to legitimise the choices that were made for prisons:
This is a difficult position, the architect’s position in a PPP [public-

private partnership]. Traditionally, in a conventional competition, the
architect is the adviser of the client. An architect drafts a specification for
the benefit of the client. Then, the client and architect brawl together
against the contractor to obtain compliance with specifications. Here we
are in a quite different pattern. There is a specification that is written by
the applicant, the project owner. And on this basis, there is an offer
made by a contractor who employs an architect. It completely reverses
the positions. (Eric, prison architect)
Architects are aware that they have become communication tools for
more powerful entrepreneurs. Presentation brochures of future prisons
follow the same path by posting bright views of the prison, cell windows
without bars, inmates smiling, yards without cameras, a presentation far
from reality. The ‘game’ is always to show a prison where detention condi-
tions are humane and ‘normalized’, all the while re-emphasising security.
They must show that the prison is evolving yet providing reassurance that
prisons have not changed too much. The role of architects, then, is to present
this in different ways.
This diversity in architectural ‘sales pitch’ for near-identical plans for

new prisons resonates with long-standing concern for the ways in which
architects ‘sell’ urban projects (for instance, Knox 1987; see also Harvey
1989; Goss 1993). Tracing changing trends in the architectural profes-
sion, the postmodern city exemplifies a shift from ethics to aesthetics: ‘As
the forces of late capitalism make themselves increasingly felt, profit for
the professions becomes a motive more compelling than status or class,
and the interest of architects falls into line with that of the construction
industry’ (Saint 1983, 160). Architects know they are being manipu-
lated, that they have become tools of communication for more powerful
clients, as they shift from being a ‘principled professional into a hustler’
(Banham 1982; cited in Knox 1987, 371). Considering again the prison
architect’s sales pitch, it becomes more commercially expedient, and
perhaps more ethically palatable, for prison architects to sell the uni-
versal ‘good’ of the prison-city, than to challenge the principles of
imprisonment. One way in which this happens is through the deploy-
ment of city metaphors in descriptions of prisons.
The vocabulary of the city is omnipresent within discourses justifying
the architectural characteristics of prison buildings. Architects often use the
metaphor of the city to describe or legitimise the prison they have designed.
Take, for example, Fresnes Prison in France, composed of blocks intended
to resemble French suburbs, ostensibly so as not to disorientate inmates
(Carlier 1998). Recently, built juvenile detention facilities have resembled
– on the surface, at least – holiday resorts, with living units located around
a central square in an attempt to reduce the impression of confinement
(Chantraine et al. 2011). Haren prison, currently under construction in
Belgium and due to open in 2018 will be the country’s biggest prison, with
bedspace for 1,200 prisoners. It has been described by the correctional
administration itself as a trial version of a ‘prison-city’. Within the same
walls, there will be three men’s prisons, two women’s prisons, a juvenile
prison, a hospital, buildings for prison work, a gym and gardens
(Kozlowski and Scheer 2015). The publicity surrounding the project is
very clearly orchestrated towards a goal of creating a prison-city that
promotes rehabilitation (Kozlowski and Scheer 2015). Alongside the
explicit pretext of removing offenders from society and placing them in a
secure environment where they can receive social education; there is a tacit
desire to pursue the far more ‘technical’ achievement of efficiently and

safely, providing various services in a closed container.
The Unfamiliar Prison-City
Although the metaphorical use of urban terminology to ‘sell’ the prison

may be an effective use of architects’ creativity in the absence of other
outlets within the design process, it also perhaps arises from unfamiliar-
ity with the lived experience of this architectural form. Unlike their
intimate knowledge and experience of ‘actual’ cities, many prison archi-
tects know very little, initially at least, about the lived experiences of
imprisonment. Never having been imprisoned, and disincentivised
within the design process from engaging in costly and challenging
consultations with an alternative set of clients (i.e. prisoners themselves),
prison architects deliver impassively planned and assembled buildings.
As a prison architect stated:
We know nothing about the prison. Personally, I have never built a

prison. I never even thought about the prison before the project. We
were in contact with another architectural firm that had been working on
prison projects in France. But obviously, they did not know the prison
better than me. So we are talking architecture, we do not talk prisons.
(Jacques, prison architect)
This limited knowledge of the prison is highly significant. One of us

had the opportunity to spend 30 hours in one of these new prisons, as an
‘inmate’ to test infrastructures and procedures. Everything is visually
very clean and circulation is well regulated. But it was very quickly
noticeable that this new architecture was not designed to be lived in.
Although at best, human design dimensions can be found in the ergo-
nomic design of cells, their soundproofing, interior fixtures and so forth,
this prison was uncomfortable at the human scale. The bed was too high
to sit on comfortably. There was not enough room on the table for a
plate. The shower splashed and soaked the toilet paper. In short, many
basic human experiences were forgotten or ignored.
Reflecting on the marginalisation of their design role, one architect

said ‘This is the evolution of the profession’. If we were to follow Jean-
Denis Espinas, who wrote in 1989 that architectural design was the way
to prison revolution, and the realisation of social transformation, we
might conclude that it is off to a bad start.
When Prison Architects Play Tetris

To measure the life ‘as it is’ by a life ‘as it might or should be’ is a defining,
constitutive feature of humanity. The urge to transcend is nearest to a universal,
and arguably the least destructible, attribute of human existence. This cannot
be said, however, of its articulations into ‘projects’ – that is, of cohesive and
comprehensive programmes of change and of visions of life that the change is
hoped to bring about – visions that stand out of reality, adumbrating a fully and
truly different, alternative world. (Bauman 2003, 11)
In this chapter, we have considered why the ‘prison-city’ may be the dream
project for architects. We have outlined a shift towards conceptualising
prisons as cities, as apparently bounded ‘universal’ places. For prison archi-
tects, they evoke a vision of utopia in deploying a language of the city to
design life as it ought to be. For those who are increasingly marginalised as a
profession, imagining prisons as a city is a dream. Yet it is an illusion.
We are not arguing that the diminished role of architects means that
they no longer have any influence in prison projects. Rather, we suggest
that their roles are more nuanced, serving to legitimise particular prison
constructions. Even ‘alternative’ projects surround themselves with archi-
tects – seen as technicians of the prison space – to give weight to a
proposal. We argue that it is the language of the city, the urban metaphor,
that both helps justify such spaces and assists architects who become
entangled in the marketing and selling of prison building, to distance
themselves from consideration of the complicity of their practices in the
ongoing production of carceral spaces. These metaphors may enable them
not to think about how such spaces are lively and lived in, about life as it is.
So what of the prison architect today? If they are to win commissions,
within the restricted tendering process they cannot protest against
imprisonment, challenge these new projects or propose innovative alterna-

tives. The briefs are already written, the specifications already set. The
potential power of architecture is already heavily imbued within these
plans. We are not the first to point towards the problems facing prison
architects, as just one particular actor in the multiple lives of prison buildings.
Those within the broader profession are themselves questioning their own
complicity (Allen 2014). Such protests rely on the recognition that architects
are not merely technicians, but they instead have to confront the messy,
ethically contested, lively challenge of space (Awan et al. 2011; Kraftl 2007;
Till 2009). But for now, the Belgian prison architects in this study talk
architecture, not imprisonment. The question of whether such mega projects
are appropriate or ethical remains unaddressed. Instead, they merely assem-
ble boxes and arrange different services on site. They can do little more than
play Tetris.
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David Scheer is a criminologist at the Centre for Criminological Research at

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Colin Lorne is a Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. Working as

an inter-disciplinary geographer, his work draws upon relational geographies of
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practices and politics of architects working on non-conventional building
projects and he has published work in Social and Cultural Geography,
Planning Practice and Research and the British Medical Journal.
6
The Artistic ‘Touch’: Moving Beyond
Carceral Boundaries Through Art
by Offenders
Jennifer Turner
‘The guilty person, the prisoner’, comments Ioan Davies, ‘everywhere

across time and societies . . . [is] not expected to write. They are expected
to be written for [either by the authorities or by benefactors]’ (1990, 7).
However, in spite of this, there are many different ‘voices’ to be heard
from inside the prison, which act as an ‘instance of . . . resistance’ (1990).
What then emerges are narratives where prisoners attempt to speak for
themselves, producing ‘a new language of desire . . . [where] they resist
the image and the gaze that produces them as “others”’ (Hugunin 1999,
418). These may include demands issued by disgruntled prisoners,
inmate-edited prison journals (such as the prison monthly from Iowa
State Penitentiary at Ford Madison, the Presidio, and the Federal
Penitentiary at Atlanta’s Atlantian, both of which are no longer active),
other forms of expression (e.g. inmate poetry, painting, photography,
J. Turner (*)
Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
e-mail: jennifer.turner@liverpool.ac.uk

136 J. Turner
and recently, webpages such as Ben’s Prison Blog1) and prison memoirs
(written during or after incarceration2). These narrative or aesthetic
practices resist the dehumanising, colonising practices of the visual gaze
that prisoners so usually find themselves under (Camhi 1989). In many
cases, the confinement of prisoners results in a production of rich out-
puts, including artwork. Indeed, as the foreword by Roger Cardinal in
Kornfeld’s Cellblock Visions, states,
the artistic output of the physically and spiritually confined, achieved

almost entirely against the grain of circumstance, forms both a substantial
corpus and an admirable proof of the tenacity of the human urge to
expression. (1997, xiii)
In this chapter, I draw attention to the annual Koestler Award scheme

that actively encourages prisoners to not only produce art but submit
it for external scrutiny and possible commendation3. I argue that this
process of allowing ‘outsiders’ to interact with this artwork has a
number of important purposes. First, as many of the pieces are for
sale, prisoners contribute to a system of production and economic
exchange. Second, as well as generating their own income, the cele-
bration of these pieces, both in the gallery and through specific
awards, helps in the self-production of creative individuals legiti-
mised in the arts community and wider society. Finally, then, the
production and consumption of this artwork may enhance prisoners’
ability to ‘touch’ the world outside of prison. Drawing on literature
concerned with ‘touch’ and hapticality, and taking particular influ-
ence from Emmanuel Levinas’s (1981) conceptualisation of touch as
something more than simply physical, I consider how artwork con-
tributes to metaphorical or ethical relations of ‘touch’ across the
prison boundary.
1
Available at: http://prisonerben.blogspot.co.uk/ [Accessed 12 August 2012].
2
For example, see Hugunin (1999).
3
A version of this chapter also appears in Turner, Jennifer. 2016. The Prison Boundary: Between
Society and Carceral Space. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
6 The Artistic ‘Touch’: Moving Beyond Carceral Boundaries . . . 137
Prisoners and Art

Kornfeld (1997) argues that the art of prisoners has not been mapped
as thoroughly as, for example, the literature narratives that Hugunin
refers to above. This may be explained by the fact that ‘art’ by
prisoners takes many different forms. Prison Art was first recognised
as an artistic category by Hans Prinzhorn in his account Bildnerei der
Gefangenen (1926) (‘Artistry of Convicts’). It may also be likened to
the category of ‘Outsider Art’ developed by Roger Cardinal (1972) to
refer to art created outside of the boundaries of official art culture.
Originating in the asylum art genre, ‘Outsider Art’ now encompasses
a variety of art that transgresses expectations of mainstream society,
including work by children and other marginalised groups, such as
ethnic minorities; those polarised by welfare systems (Zolberg and
Cherbo 1997); or by those experiencing other hardship such as
mental illness, poverty or drought (Rubin 2004). Along these lines,
early types of art produced within prison included coloured playing
cards, water jugs scratched with letters and images, and sculptures of
kneaded bread, amongst others (Kornfeld 1997, xviii). Envelopes are
often decorated to send home as presents to the recipients (Gussak
and Ploumis-Devick 2004); and handkerchief art, known as Paño
Arte – Paño is Spanish for handkerchief – is another popular hobby
(Kornfeld 1997, 25). There are often specific restrictions on art
materials in prison, which explains the unconventional mediums
employed. Much prisoner art represents necessity. It is made of
materials that become available regularly as ‘waste’, or the more
valuable ad hoc items become cherished pieces. This is similar
to other situations, such as soldiers creating Trench Art using
empty shell and bullet casings to fashion items (Kimball 2009;
Saunders 2000, 2001, 2003). Other popular genres include ‘fantasy’
and tattoo art. In the latter, the skin becomes an obvious material
for choice owing to its ready availability. Designs can be very rich,
with images such as handcuffs, chains, bars, brick walls, barbed
wire, clocks, hourglasses, eyes and tears representing imprisonment.
138 J. Turner
Birds, wings and scenes of outer space may symbolise freedom

(Kornfeld 1997, 25).4
Contemporary scholarship has paid specific attention to the motivation
behind prisoners ‘doing art’. Benchoam (1993) argues that prisoner art can
be used as both refuge and protest. Those that produce ‘good art’ can earn
themselves status, respect and friendship from their peers, who might pay or
exchange items for commissioned pieces (Kornfeld 1997). Fox (1997) argues
that art programmes can help re-humanise those in the penal environment
allowing others to view them as more than simply ‘inmates’ or a threat to
society. For many, art is something that had never been a priority but by
producing it they can contribute to a new creative life beyond prison
(Liebmann 1994).
Argue et al. (2009) highlight an Inmate Mural Arts Program, where
prisoners worked together to paint a large mural on an exterior prison
wall, developing team-building skills and mutual respect. Prisoners also
gain a sense of confidence and respect for themselves too. Art therapy
reduces depression in prisons (Gussak 2006, 2007). Similar results
have been drawn from literature therapy (Cocking and Astill 2004;
Daveson and Edwards 2001) and music therapy (Baker and Homan
2007). Cohen (2009) explains how choral singing has been used as a
form of therapy that encourages self-esteem, increases social connec-
tions and builds trust. Other forms of arts-based education strategies
can include focus on movement or creative writing (Mullen 1999) and
dance (Houston 2009). In the following section, I focus attention on
the annual Koestler award scheme, noting particular themes and pat-
terns within the artwork that speak to wider issues of the prison/non-
prison relationship.
4
Tattoos have a huge significance in criminal culture, although often constituting a metaphor for
difference (see Shoham 2010). The proceedings of the court of the Old Bailey in London reveal
that branding of criminals was a common occurrence in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
(see Emsley et al. 2012). Convicts found guilty of manslaughter but not murder were often
branded on the thumb (with a ‘T’ for theft, ‘F’ for felon, or ‘M’ for murder), so that they would be
unable to receive this benefit more than once. In a similar vein, prisoners at Auschwitz concentra-
tion camp were forcefully tattooed with a serial number marking their identity a skin-scarring
technique employed deliberately to impose shame upon the individual who bore them (see United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum 2012).
The Art by Offenders Exhibition 2011

The 2011 Koestler Awards exhibited at London’s Royal Festival Hall
Southbank Centre from 22 September to 20 November.5 Open to prisoners,
offenders on community sentences, immigration detainees and secure psy-
chiatric patients in the UK, the aim is to motivate and reward artistic
achievement (Koestler Trust 2012c). Arthur Koestler had a very personal
reason for sponsoring this type of work. As a journalist covering the Spanish
Civil War, Koestler spent 3 months in solitary confinement under sentence
of death never knowing when the fatal summons might come. Ultimately,
and thankfully, it did not; and 1962 marked the beginning of the Koestler
Awards for Art, Craft, Music and Writing. Feeling so passionate about the
miserable times spent incarcerated, Koestler initially funded the project
himself, hoping to inspire creativity in the carceral world. Reflecting on
the stifling nature of his time spent incarcerated, he wrote:
It is a peculiar mechanism, the brain; it manufactures only if a market

through the medium of the word or the pen is assured beforehand. If there
is no demand for its products, it goes on strike. (Koestler 1983, 118)
There are 59 different categories for submission and 2011 attracted 7,656
entries (an increase of 2,000 upon the previous year). Twenty per cent won
an award of between £20 and £100, with the highest prize being a
Scholarship Award where winners received £150, art materials and a year’s
support from a Koestler mentor (Koestler Trust 2012b, no page). In this
programme, we can find similarities to US counterparts, such as the Angola
Prison Arts and Crafts Festival (Schrift 2006, 2008); and the Prison Creative
Arts Project,6 which runs the Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan
Prisoners through the Michigan Prison Art Initiative. The South Bank
5
The Koestler Awards and associated exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall Southbank Centre are
both annual events. Fieldwork carried out at the 2011 exhibition formed part of a wider
programme of research exploring interactions across the prison boundary at this time (see
Turner 2016). Much of my analysis of the 2011 artwork could indeed apply to latter exhibitions.
These have not been specifically interrogated due to the absence of official Koestler post-Award
statistics and reports; and/or artist permissions to reproduce the work.
6
Available at: www.lsa.umich.edu.pcap [Accessed 1 August 2012].
140 J. Turner
exhibition entitled Art by Offenders was curated by 12 volunteers from the

Magistrates’ Association, who each bring their own perspective on the
criminal justice system.
I visited the exhibition and carefully recorded all the entries, noting
also the ones that were for sale and those that had already been bought
by private collectors. The following section reflects upon my subsequent
interpretation of the pieces, alongside publicity materials and other
media reports of the exhibitions where possible. Some entries were
displayed alongside comments made by either the curator or the artist
themselves. I also engaged with free-flowing conversations with other
visitors to the exhibits, where possible. Throughout this chapter, I will
make reference to a variety of different artwork from the exhibition. Due
to the nature of the pieces often being produced by individuals who were
subsequently released from custody, it was not possible to obtain consent
to reproduce all of these images. I am grateful to the Koestler Trust for
their assistance in contacting artists to gain permission from the indivi-
duals they were still in contact with. All artwork mentioned in this is also
exhibited via an online collection at the Koestler Trust website.7
As Kornfeld explains, ‘the prison environment limits artistic subject
matter’ (1997, 10). Prisoners often copy from photographs or books,
such as the National Geographic with its exotic colourful imagery. In
terms of real-life subject matter, the revelation of anything personal can
be too risky particularly because of the destructive emotions it may bring
up. However, ‘horrific images of the general evils of incarceration are
quite acceptable, because they are commonly understood’ (Kornfield
1997). Each piece in this exhibition highlights fundamentally different,
but highly charged emotional responses to the prison environment –
often literally painting a different representation of the ‘inside’ from
within. Many pieces attempt to represent the frustrations, anger and
loneliness of prison, grasping at the fragile and destructive life that many
of them lead (Fieldwork Diary Entry, 20 October 2011). Yet, violent art
is often prohibited and images of buildings or reproductions of the
7
Available at: http://www.koestlertrust.org.uk/pages/uk2011/exhib2011gal1.html [Accessed 16
September 2015].
prison layout is prohibited (Kornfield 1997, 12). One example is My

Pad by Claude Chain of HMP Wolds, which depicts the bare bricks of
the cell, over-emphasising the dirty-looking toilet and steel door. The
artist here draws inspiration from the meagre surroundings, perhaps
making a more serious point about its sparseness. My World and Life
on the wing on the inside both follow the theme of illustrating prison
landscapes, such as the prison landings and the everyday items that
represent prisoners’ slim collection of possessions. Death in Custody
(see Fig. 6.1) addresses the topic of prisoner suicide. At first glance, it
may seem pertinent to recognise a potential negativity of prisoner art-
work in the production of such powerful emotive responses by artists.
However, much literature supports a converse response to such reactions
– the therapeutic function of engaging in art. Indeed, as Johnson
explains, ‘feelings that one may be uncomfortable expressing outward
or are hard to put into words can be externalized through visual images’
(2008, 103). Subsequently, art provides a vehicle for expressing things
that one cannot, or should not say ‘out loud’ or that might put them at
threat from their ‘environment’ (Gussak 1997, 61).
Other pieces incorporate traditional prison-art emblems. For exam-
ple, Tapping and Reflection appears very innocuous to the untrained eye.
The piece, commended for drawing, comprises a pencil illustration of a
tap and harnesses the three-dimensional elements of the object and its
metallic surface with fine detail. However, although the image simply
appears to be of an everyday object, the single droplet of water dripping
from the spout is very similar to the teardrops found in many prison
tattoos, a popular symbol of imprisonment as noted by Kornfeld (1997).
In a different register, Constant Observation uses the metaphors of
isolation, vulnerability and surveillance that the prison can conjure up,
representing incarceration by illustrating a man, curled up, naked inside
a fish bowl. The sombre nature of the theme is symbolised by the use of
blue and purple tonal pastels.
Aside from providing some inspiration for content, it is clear that the
physical landscape of the prison has a bearing on the content and
characteristics of the art. Inmates are often forced to work in poor
lighting conditions and often sit in close proximity to their pieces due
to the small dimensions of their cell (Kornfeld 1997, 22). For example,
142 J. Turner
Fig. 6.1 Death in Custody Anon. (HMP Bullingdon), Bronze Award for
Portraits
Source: By artist’s permission
artists used fine biro- and pencil-lines to create an attention to detail.

The creator of Not so amazing has represented prison as a maze – a space
of confusion – and minute details have been included such as graffiti on
the walls, despite this being a very large piece overall. Although operat-
ing at a much smaller scale Birds of a Feather depicts tiny, but intricately
detailed portraits of different birds on false nails; each requiring a great
deal of patience, dedication and restraint when working with such a
delicate medium.
Much of the work on display at the 2011 awards reflected the traditional
‘prison art’ that was defined by Prinzhorn at the start of the twentieth
century. Soap has long been a popular material for sculpting due to its
relatively easy accessibility and its malleable properties. Daniel Ashcroft from
HMP Garth has carefully sculpted a man fishing in Japanese Pleasures.
Similarly, matchsticks have featured highly in arts and crafts production by
prisoners. Gradually replaced by prison-issue lighters, and potentially due to
the recent downturn in the numbers of Britons who smoke, the match is less
readily available in such large quantities. However, the value of tradition has
been sustained in the Koestler Trust developing a separate award category for
Matchstick Models. Matchsticks certainly convey a sense of time in the
number of hours taken to construct even the smallest piece. This category
features the likes of Solitaire Game, where the details of the playing pieces
would have required countless hours to achieve the meticulous detail; or the
real-life sized shark head of The Great White Shark, where sheer scale dictated
the length of such workmanship.
However, whether it is the extreme detail incorporated into the art-
work, or the content itself, it is clear that time plays an important role in
the prisoner artwork:
Everyone likes the finer things in life but they come at a cost and for me
it’s time; time away from my wife, time away from my family, time
away from my real life, dead time. (David Franklin, HMP Lowdham
Grange)
David Franklin’s piece Dead Time uses mixed media and depicts a
multi-coloured skull overlaid upon a collage of many different images
of watches. The caption provided by the author himself alludes not
144 J. Turner
only to the significance of the temporal divide between prisoner and

the outside but also alludes to his belief that the life of the prisoner is
somehow fabricated, unlike his ‘real life’ on the outside. Sparks et al.
note that ‘time is the basic structuring dimension of prison life’ (1996,
250). Moran argues that these varying attitudes and experiences of
time are particular to the specific relationship that prisoners enact with
the spaces of incarceration that they occupy. She considers particularly
the embodied relationship between prisoners and time-space (Moran
2012b). Furthermore, prisoners often reveal different senses of time
within prison (Moran 2012a). These are, namely, stasis (with time
seeming to stand still), flow (with time seeming to pass more quickly
than on the outside) or biology (through their own physical deteriora-
tion). Other scholars focusing on migrants and detained individuals
have also noted the significant bearing that their liminal status man-
ifests a sense of waiting that can have upon the performance of every-
day lives (Conlon 2011; Gray 2011; Hyndman and Giles 2011;
Mountz 2011; Schuster 2011).
Another area of interest lies in the reliance in some artworks upon
the creation of parody. The creator of Bend, Squat, Leave has used
acrylic paint to capture a bar of soap on a shower floor. The soap lies
on the tiles in a pool of water with the lather gathering around it as its
owner has no apparent desire to bend down to retrieve it from the
floor of the shower. This is based upon the outsider joke about the
dangers of ‘dropping the soap’, but the reality of the painting – and
its inference of sexual violence – for a prisoner is much more serious.
Other pieces parody famous artwork to produce intertextuality
(Shurmer-Smith 2002) with other media images. In this case, inter-
textuality refers to the complex relationship between a text and other
text or object, with the relationship necessary to generate an attach-
ment and meaning in order for it to be interpreted. For example, No
Chips, again! is a parody of Munch’s The Scream. Whilst it is clear
that Pedro Murray’s colourful acrylic portrait of a man screaming is
supposed to be a joke, it also reflects the exaggerated response that
can occur when things that are taken for granted on the outside, such
as choice and quality of food, shape daily life within a prison.
Other inmates focus concentration on important occasions within the

daily life and running of the prison. The anonymous artist of U Got
Mail explains his reasoning behind capturing the event of a prisoner
receiving and reading his mail:
The intense moment when I read my letters is one in which I feel a direct
connection to the sender of the letter. Sometimes each word feels like it is
being branded onto my skin. This is expressed by the post mark of my
local area across the figure in the painting.8
The Visit (Fig. 6.2) pays particular attention to the importance of

prison visits by illustrating the variety of activities that take place during
this time. As we might expect, in the foreground two people appear to be
chatting and drinking hot drinks. However, one man has covered his
mouth with a hand, perhaps trying to conceal the conversation or the
transfer of contraband. He is observed intensely by one prison officer,
who is carrying off another inmate, who perhaps has already been caught.
Another inmate carries a sandwich and a couple embrace in front of a
suited man – perhaps a lawyer – waving desperately to be seen amongst
the chaos. For the artist, a visit can be hectic and multi-purpose, where
relationships are often controlled and strained by constant surveillance.
This binary opposition is apparent in many features of this artwork.
For example, in The Dallery the solitary figure representing the lonely
prisoner is painted in monochrome, with the landscape outside vividly
coloured. This displays what can be recognised as an intertextual refer-
ence to the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Whilst Dorothy is in Kansas, at
a home she considers boring, black and white film is used. Once she
escapes over the rainbow, colour film is used. The inside/outside bound-
ary is also reinforced by direct juxtaposition within the images them-
selves. The Lost and Forgotten links the title to an image of a sombre,
8
Curator and artist quotes were displayed alongside selected pieces during the exhibition. It is not
clear whether artists were interviewed following the selection of their pieces for the exhibition, as
the award application form does not facilitate any comments on the work.
146 J. Turner
Fig. 6.2 The Visit Anon. (HMP Shepton Mallet), Paul Hamlyn Foundation
Bronze Award for Oil or Acrylic
yearning figure staring out of a cell door peep-hole, denoting how the
artists believes the outside world views prisoners.
The 2011 exhibition, as described, encompasses a range of artwork
demonstrating a variety of themes and mediums. As I have discussed,
many of the themes, such as prisoners’ depiction of time or the
binary opposition between prison and outside, resonate with work
currently ongoing within carceral geography and by prison-art scho-
lars. However, for the remainder of this chapter, I turn attention to
the consequences of this type of production – both in terms of the
prisoner as a useful, creative individual and upon the relationship
that inmates create with the world outside. In the following section,
I attend to the way in which this prisoner artwork acts as a type of
production: first in an economic relationship with the outside world,
and, second, as a means for prisoners to produce themselves as
creative individuals.
(Self)production of a ‘Creative’
and ‘Useful’ Individual
The Koestler Trust also gives award-entrants the opportunity to sell
their pieces to members of the public. Entrants to the competition
usually receive modest sums of between £20 and £30 for their art-
work.9 Sometimes, a piece of artwork of considerable size or quality
may raise a larger sum. For example, My World was advertised for sale
for £300 and Alpha Wing for £360. Koestler has some distinct reasons
for vindicating the sale of artwork. 25 per cent of the sale price goes to
the Koestler Trust themselves, and 25 per cent to Victim Support –
specifically helping those who have been victims of crime. From the
point of view of the inmate, the benefits are numerous. Fifty per cent
of the sale of artwork goes to the artist. It is paid into ‘private cash’
that is held for each inmate by their governor.10 In this case, the
prison managers will decide what to do with the money. One out-
come is to open a savings account for when the offender is released.
Another is to use some of the money for materials for the prison-art
room. Other entrants donate their proceeds to the Koestler Trust.
The sale of prisoner ‘products’ is not new. In the US, prison craft shops
offer inmates opportunities to showcase their art, or build up a form of
business for themselves (Gussak and Evelyn 2004). Schrift (2006, 2008)
9
Scottish prisons and some specialist hospitals have a No Sales Policy.
10
‘Private cash’ can contain any amount and is held by the governor. A prisoner’s weekly spend
entitlement varies depending on whether they are sentenced/convicted or on remand and also
what regime they are subject to, e.g. basic, standard or enhanced. Allowing inmates to have access
to more cash per week arguably contributes to systems of supply, demand and exchange that exist
as an informal economy within the prison – a clear subversion of the normative positive
associations with neoliberal markets.
148 J. Turner
details the Angola Prison Arts and Crafts Festival, through which inmates
can sell their crafts to visiting members of the public (though they remain
behind a fence with a trustee carrying out the transaction). Whilst the
officials plan the festival, the types of art on sale range from formal pieces
constructed with traditional art materials, to prison ‘waste’ products such
as bird houses made from worn-out prison-issue boots or purses made
from empty cigarette packets. Here, hobbies done to pass time, or using
by-products of the regime, result in purposeful crafts with a re-sale value.
The unique nature of where the item is produced can contribute to their
appeal. A 2012 Channel 4 documentary Gordon Behind Bars saw televi-
sion-chef Gordon Ramsey try and seduce the British consumer with the
trials and tribulations of the HMP Brixton, UK inmates who produced
his baked goods to be sold on the ‘outside’. According to the Koestler
Trust (2012b), allowing the sale of this artwork is justified by the prison
authorities for several reasons. First, they claim that it is an extra incentive
to participate in the arts. Second, although income is generally modest,
the extra spends are extremely valuable and allow prisoners to purchase
items within prison such as toiletries and snacks that they might other-
wise rely upon relatives to fund their personal account to pay for. Finally,
there are also other skills that can simultaneously be developed. For
example, inmates learn to focus on the audience, developing marketable
skills: what kinds of people might buy their work? What kind of content
and techniques sell well? The most interesting point on the manifesto
surrounds the desire to facilitate ‘bringing offenders’ artwork to the
attention of the wider public – and into people’s homes’ (Koestler Trust
2012a, no page, emphasis added). Here, the production of the prisoner as
a viable economic citizen is promoted. Prisoners who participate in these
kinds of activity generate rewards for themselves inside prison, but also
access skills that might be useful to them when seeking employment upon
release.
For others, it is the creativity and not the economic potential of the
artwork that alludes to the creation of a prosperous future in both the
immediate prison surroundings and the outside world. Richard Gordon
from HMP Lindholme comments: ‘I find comfort in my art and it’s the
only thing that gets me through’ (artist comment alongside exhibition
piece). Another prisoner admitted that ‘art saved me from myself, gave
me a direction and purpose to live again. I was getting a new buzz

without the aid of drugs or alcohol’ (artist comment alongside exhibition
piece). This kind of possibility is embodied by an award-winning
entrant, who writes:
I have been very lucky over the years at the Koestler Awards. Apart from
selling almost all of my work I have also received the full range of
awards . . . You know it has been great winning awards and selling my
work but the event gave me more than that, it provided me with some-
thing positive to talk about with my family and another stepping stone to
help me through my sentence. Who knows what will happen with my art
when I get out? (Koestler Trust 2012d, no page)
Former prisoner Erwin James highlights the significance of the Koestler

Award, and other outside feedback on pieces, recognising that ‘in prison,
a little praise goes a long way’ (James 2010, no page). For some, just
having their work seen or read by others is reward enough:
It let me know my voice had been heard, someone had valued my opinion
and contribution, and made me feel less alone and afraid and hopeful that
perhaps there is still a place for me in society. (Brine 2011, 7)
For others, creating an art-focused future for themselves is important. In

a report by the Institute of Education at the University of London, Hurry
et al. concluded that ‘recognition from outside bodies for work achieved,
such as the Koestler Trust, all act as motivating factors for the learner’
(2012, 26). Indeed, a former detainee highlights the impact of the scheme
in creating new avenues of possibility in his creative repertoire:
Without Koestler . . . I would never have exhibited or been bought by

influential people, never reviewed or written up. (Peter Cameron (Koestler
Trust 2012a, no page))
Such a practice is predicated upon the individual’s ability to harness

productive change. Foucault defines these as ‘technologies of the self’,
which encompass methods that individuals may, either through their
150 J. Turner
own means or with the help of others, operate their thoughts, actions,
bodies and souls to transform themselves in order to attain certain
desires. For Foucault (1988), that might be happiness, purity, wisdom,
perfection or immortality. However, this self-production problemati-
cally involves individuals recognising the self as flawed or incomplete,
and identifying potential areas for transformation (Maguire and Stanway
2008). As such, this transformation becomes a do-it-yourself project
(Hitzler 1988 cited in Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002, 3).
However, attempts are also made, where possible, to give written feed-
back to entrants to the Koestler Awards. Judges are often experts in each
artistic field, and make comments about style, content and technique. The
number of pieces appreciated for their ‘great technical ability’ is vast
(personal correspondence, prison sculpture class facilitator, 18 November
2011). Behind Me (Self Portrait) (Fig. 6.3) reflects some of the exceptional
quality of prisoner artwork. The portrait expresses the artist naked and free
on a beach, perhaps portraying how he desires himself to be. The oil
painting captures an incredibly life-like expression of its subject, in parti-
cular in the depiction of the facial expression, and tone of the skin and
muscles. Through the Funnels, by an anonymous artist from HMP
Wandsworth, has been commended for its proficiency in the use of water-
colour as a medium. It depicts a historical view of the infamous ocean liner
HMS Titanic with a flawless appreciation of perspective and depth of tone.
Sixty-eight per cent of those responding to a 2010 entrant survey received
feedback. On average, 94 per cent of those who received written feedback
found it either helpful or very helpful, which clearly demonstrates the value
of feedback being provided (Brine 2011, 4):
Seeing people’s reaction to my work was amazing. (Anonymous artist,

HMP Whatton)
I cried when I won a Koestler Award. It was the first time in my life I’d
been told I’d done something really well. (Inmate of HMP Whatton
(Elliott 2012, no page))
Some of the prisoners seem to express distinct emotive reasons for

selecting the content of their artwork. The portrayals often represent a
Fig. 6.3 Behind Me (Self Portrait) Anon. (HMP Lowdham Grange), The Co-
operative Chair’s Platinum Award 2011
possibility of gaining access to an outside world where they transform

themselves into more successful individuals. For some, this world is in
the past. A selection of the artwork appears to suggest a longing for
happier times, and the reliving of past happy memories. For example,
Family at the cottage is a pastel drawing of a man, woman and two small
children. In the composition, the couple are walking through woodland
152 J. Turner
towards a cottage with the children skipping around them. The piece
leaves the observer to wonder whether this scene is one that the inmate
conjured from a wealth of bygone experience. Similarly, Bridge over
troubled water uses acrylic to paint a rich red sunset behind a silhouette
of a pier. Its creator, Lee Colin Edwards, writes in his comment along-
side his piece:
This piece was meant to be Blackpool Pier with a bit of night life going on and
the calm and peaceful drifting ocean. If I could capture a moment in time this
would be it. When I see the picture it reminds me of an open free place.
Edwards’ comment also captures this certain ambiguity. Does this art-
work allow prisoners to generate attachment to ‘what has gone before’, or
is this a fabrication of ‘what might be’? Thus, we can question whether
these two artists have projected their idealised experiences. The pieces can
display a tangible representation of a different space and time where
identities and emotions are also different. For example, Hope! is an
intriguing piece. It depicts an ultrasound image of a foetus marked out
using coloured pencils on a black background. One of the exhibition’s
curators, Mary Brodrick writes: ‘this piece resonates with me particularly
because I have just heard that my first grandchild has been born’ (curator
comment alongside exhibition piece). A new baby is hope, and this image
may suggest the joy that an artist may feel about the approaching birth of a
child, but the analogy extends further than this. The identifying label next
to the image of the ultrasound tells us that the subject is a male, of category
C status, with 9 months remaining on his sentence. Perhaps this artwork
symbolises artist Richard Carew’s hope that he may be reborn as a new
(‘law-abiding’) person or for his re-birth as a father once he is released
from prison. These ideas corroborate with the work of Gooding-Brown
(2000) who explored similar transformative properties of art when she
investigated how students were able to use art in an educational setting as
a means of appreciating different cultures and produce themselves as
empowered individuals.
Identity formation is a life-long process and much literature sur-
rounds the significance of how self-production is linked to people’s
affinity with particular types of ‘ideal’ identities (Cherrier and Murray
2007). Certainly, as Maguire and Stanway note, ‘self-production is the

mundane work of everyday life’ (2008, 76). In this way, it often becomes
taken for granted and the complexities of it are rarely explored.
Furthermore, as Cherrier explains, the key reference point for identity
construction comes from both the inside (the self) and those on the
outside (collective identity) (2007, 323). This relationship has direct
consequences for prisoners. It is the collective construction of the ‘ideal’
prisoner-citizen that shapes rehabilitation programmes designed to rein-
tegrate offenders into outside society. In their desire to produce them-
selves as valuable members of a creative community, prisoners also
exhibit a certain relationship with the world outside of prison. This
performs a certain type of interaction with the boundary between prison
and non-prison. As such, I therefore use the final section of this chapter
to attend to the ways in which this artwork facilitates the construction of
a more tangible relationship for prison inmates with the world outside of
prison. In doing so, I consider that notions of touch and hapticality
provide a useful framework for understanding relationships of purpose
and creativity in new ways.
Touching the Outside

It may well be the first prize an inmate has ever won, and the annual Award
exhibition offers a chance to reach out beyond the walls of his incarcera-
tion, to be seen and judged by the public and to sell work in an open
market. That, for many, is the greatest prize of all. The works . . . are seen
and purchased by a discerning public: they form a link, presumably a bond
of empathy, between maker and buyer. And they communicate the artist’s
vision, whether bleak or elegiac, to the wider world. (Bankes 2004, 60)
Touch is arguably a reciprocal action that relies on a physical relation-

ship between two objects. As Rodaway suggests, ‘touch is above all the
most intimate sense, limited by the reach of the body, and . . . to touch is
always to be touched’ (1994, 41). There is a greater complexity to this
literature when we consider it in direct relation to the prison environ-
ment. Processes of developing spatial connections are no doubt
154 J. Turner
problematic for those who are incarcerated. ‘Touch’ is frowned upon

within the prison environment, particularly as it may be associated with
homosexuality or sexual abuse, and can be a threat to masculinist self-
image (Houston 2009, 97–98). Prisons have traditionally existed on the
periphery of society, creating a literal distance and as such force a more
metaphorical attention to the concept of ‘touch’. Inmates themselves
may be considered to be ‘out of touch’ with society. This ‘taboo’ renders
prisoners untouchable. Yet the importance of for prisoners of ‘keeping in
touch’ with family and friends is massive. Farida Anderson illustrates
how literacy becomes a problem for maintaining communications, and
there is ‘the price of keeping in touch’; with monies needed by prisoners
to fund telephone calls and extra stamps, and by prisoners’ families for
transport to visitations (1992, 21–23).
Touching has the propensity to make things proximate, dissolving
these boundary productions (Irigaray 1990). Beyond that, following a
combination of contact of the skin with an environment (and a bodily
perception of motion) touch generates a specific relationship with the
environment, in which the distinction between subject and object is
blurred. Following a similar argument, resting on Anderson’s examina-
tion of the affective qualities of music and spaces of boredom (2004a, b,
2006), Adey also posits that, because of the attention to mobility, ‘affect
does not reside in an object or a body, but surfaces from somewhere in-
between’ (2008, 439). Thus, I argue that emotions, feelings and sensa-
tions are equally mutable, particularly in the concept of imagined touch.
Levinas (1981) considers touch as an affective involvement with others.
In this case, if prisoners can generate emotional attachment, by defini-
tion they can ‘touch’ or reach spaces outside of their physical proximity.
It has indeed been argued that touch is a combination of two faculties of
the body: the contact of the skin with the environment, and
Kinaesthesis, the ability of the body to perceive its own motion
(Rodaway 1994, 42). However, if the body can engage with this ‘per-
ceptual domain’ (Vasseleu 1998, 98), it may perceive motion, and tactile
receptivity can therefore still arguably occur. The knowledge of that the
artwork may be ‘touched’ by the outside, can help simulate Kinaesthesis
– prisoners can perceive a motion of the body (through art as an act of
the body) across the prison boundary.
For many artists, images are clearly fabrications from memory, or

idealised constructions of the ‘outside’ that attempt to touch or reach
into a peripheral world that they can no longer belong to. For example,
the artist of Disaster/Famine expresses an awareness of suffering other than
the prisoner’s own in their watercolour painting of an African family in
despair. Indeed, Kornfeld found a certain amount of ‘artistic license’ in her
study of prisoner art. As ‘prison is the opposite of colourful’, she writes
‘artists have been able to travel so far from the realities of their ugly world
that they fairly explode with vivid imaginings’ (1997, 44). Yet, without
being too harsh a critic to the prisoner artists, this ‘awareness’ could have
simply been a copy of a photograph from the National Geographic. The
challenges of grasping outside knowledge and even materials for an art
project are exemplified here by the piece entitled Crime or Just Punishment,
depicting a court room with the defendant mounted Jesus-like on a cross
instead of sitting in the dock. The artist states:
The original concept for the piece was based on Shakespeare’s Merchant of
Venice. I developed it including my own experience of the judicial system.
I built up a library of pictures from papers donated to me by other inmates.
A prison officer helped me to translate my title into Latin so I could include
it in the composition. (Artist comment alongside exhibition piece)
Here, we can draw upon the work of scholars who attend to the
importance of touch as a powerful vehicle to material memories.
Describing the ‘motility’ of touch, Stewart explains how bodily move-
ment ‘transverses the boundary between interiority and externality and
reciprocally returns to the agent of touching’ (1999, 35). This is because
touch is more than simply making contact between the hands and
fingers and a surface. Touch involves the whole body reaching out to
things, or that environment having contact with the body itself (Boring
1942, in Rodaway 1994, 44). In this way, tactility is fundamentally
based on the ability of objects to act as ‘anchor’ points – particularly
when related to memory (Krasner 2005). For example, Rowles (1978)
explains how the ability of the elderly to physically touch often becomes
diminished, so photographs and other keepsakes become ever more
important prompts for memories that instil a sense of self. This is the
156 J. Turner
same for prisoners, who often create keepsakes of the outside from the
most unlikely of objects, such as empty toiletry bottles (Baer 2005).
This generates interesting ideas surrounding the physical relationship
between the body and the art materials. Bingley (2003) claims that sensory
experience is an important element of perception. For example, a child’s
simple sand play is tactile. We must not ignore the importance for prison
inmates of touching items that have come from the outside. Following
Bingley, interaction with these materials allows for a perception and
experience of the outside world. Jane Samuels (2008) exemplifies a pro-
gramme where The British Museum brought items to exhibit at the chapel
in Pentonville Prison. Describing the enthusiasm of prisoners who com-
monly spent up to 23 hours a day in their cells, she writes:
this multisensory dimension to the project was key to achieving its

objectives . . . touch is a powerful medium, and in this context the use of
objects and other equipment helped the prisoners to open up and com-
municate with one another. (Samuels 2008, 259–260)11
Similarly, Phyllis Kornfeld describes the occasions where she brought

everyday items into art class:
Simple things, so easily available on the outside, could produce rare magic.
Someone living for years in prison, whose choice of fabric is either white
cotton, khaki, or blue denim, whose array of things to look at consists of a
bar of soap, a hairbrush, and a shampoo bottle, can be intensely moved by a
tangible reminder of the world beyond the walls. I brought shells, fresh from
the beach, still sandy and smelling of the sea. I remember greedy hands
pouncing on a table strewn with autumn leaves and somebody said, ‘Jesus,
I haven’t seen a leaf close up in years.’ More than one inmate became dizzy
and almost fainted at the scent of a sprig of lilac or honeysuckle. (1997, 5)
The skin is the main interface between a person and the world around
them. Touch is an ‘exploratory sense’, meaning that sensations felt by
11
For a more detailed analysis of the exhibition tour in the UK, including details about the period
at Pentonville Prison, see also Holden (2005).
the skin can have strong motivational properties – stimulating behaviour

or activating memories (Critchley 2008, 61). More than this, what is
termed ‘hapticality’ refers to something which encompasses more than
touch; a sensuous experience that also involves orientation, balance, and
movement. For Dixon and Straughan, this allows a ‘re-enchanting’ of
the everyday – a renewed focus upon the mundane hapticality of inter-
actions with everyday objects (2010, 454). Reactions to such items
include studies on handling tourist souvenirs (Ramsay 2009) or family
photographs (Rose 2004). In the latter, the tactile process not only
allows a sense of self but that of family ‘togetherness’ (2004, 558).
As well as receiving written comments about the work, many artists
choose not to sell their pieces and asked for them to be returned to them.
However, 18 per cent of respondents criticised the handling of their artwork
during its submission for competition, gallery display and return to prison
(Brine 2011, 9). As well as indicating the pride felt for their personal
masterpieces ‘which entrants often see as valuable or irreplaceable belongings’
(Brine 2011, 14), it may allude to a desire to see items returned to their
private collections in the knowledge that they have been viewed and admired
by the outside world. In the same vein, Moran (2013) notes the significance
of tangible interactions with objects brought from the ‘outside’ into prison.
In this way, the artists are free to view them as visitors to the exhibit may
have, or handle them in the same way that the judges did.
Interestingly, although I have mentioned the process in which prisoners
‘touch’ the materials and provide a tangible link to the outside, we as
visitors to the exhibition are not allowed to do the same to the materials
(see Fig. 6.4). With the exhibits kept behind glass, cordoned off or bound
by the unwritten rules of gallery spaces, they continue to remain ‘untouch-
able’. Although the argument could be made that most visitors to any art
gallery would be unable to touch the pieces, there is an increasing trend
that questions the ocularcentric bias of museum spaces – particularly for
blind visitors, for example (Candlin 2004). For Candlin, changes in the
way visitors engage with exhibits enable museums to prioritise engagement,
learning and expertise above preservation. This bias is compounded when
we consider the exhibition of artwork produced by inmates as it replicates
the inability of non-prisoners to ‘touch’ prison spaces themselves. This
places a greater emphasis on the need for artists to connect with the
158 J. Turner
Fig. 6.4 ‘Please do not touch’ sign alongside exhibits at the Art by Offenders
exhibition
Source: Author’s Collection
audience by other means – whether this is emotionally, using empathy, or

other kinds of metaphors. Promoting an emotional response to the work is
one way in which artists can achieve ‘reach’ inside the bodily surface of the
viewer. Physical tangibility between artist and viewer is beyond the capabil-
ities of the prisoner. Indeed for most people, a literal connectedness to other
people and places is infrequent, with most people ‘keeping in touch’ via
letter, telephone, or nowadays more commonly, social media. Thus, what
Rodaway (1994) conceptualises as ‘imagined touch’ seems more fitting to

describe the processes at work in the relationship between artist and spectator
to produce a richer, more tangible experience of prison space. For Rodaway,
this is a kind of haptic experience based on memory and/or expectation. In
this way, what he defines as a ‘rich touch imagination’ permits an intimacy
with people and places which may be a great distance from our present
location, in time and/or space, or which we have never actually experienced,
such as the evocation of tactile experiences in dreams or when reading.
(Rodaway 1994, 54)
However, in following these definitions, it may be argued that ‘ima-
gined touch’ rests on a shared experience or expectation. How does the
recognition that most gallery viewers will never have experienced prison
complicate matters? Offender-artists present the prison world in new
and unexpected ways, but ultimately they attempt to exhibit a co-
belonging. If then, an artist can develop a certain sense of similarity
with the observer prison is reachable, readable, and similar. Visual
images stir empathy and emotion, which drag the spectator across the
boundary into prison – the journey itself being of notable interest to the
academic too.
Attempting to incorporate images of prison into the mainstream is
more successful if they are combined with some kind of emotional
familiarity. For example, rappers 50 Cent and Eminem highlight how
influential prison art can be, with the inclusion of that style on their
album covers and in the content of their tattoos. Clothing companies
Affliction and Tap Out have also created prison style screen printed
images for use on their items. However, in this case, the consumer
must find themselves emotively drawn to either the celebrity or the
desire for the latest fashion – and not the prison emblems – in order
to find common ground.
Curator Helen Lloyd writes of They Still Wear Suits Like This, Don’t
They? (Fig 6.5):
A subtle portrayal of the challenges and emotions that a long-term

prisoner may experience on release. The artist has captures a flicker of
anxiety combined with a hint of vanity, evoking the desire to integrate
into the outside world.
160 J. Turner
Fig. 6.5 They Still Wear Suits Like This, Don’t They? Anon. (HMP Shepton
Mallet), Victor Roberts Highly Commended Award for Portraits
Generating an empathetic response from those viewing the artwork,

in this case an acknowledgement of vulnerability helps those on the
inside to reach the audience, hoping that they will find common
ground in their affective response. However, in doing so, this chapter
deals with an undeniable tension between the humanising and more
neoliberal aspects of the charity work of the Koestler Trust. The
awards scheme, on the one hand, demonstrates an ethos of respect,
compassion, positivity and individual care; yet, at the same time, the
manifestation of such work is dependent upon selling the art pro-
duced and awarding/rewarding success. In terms of the latter, this is
underpinned by notions that are not necessarily charitable but rather
may be recognised as neoliberal and capitalist. Indeed, the rewarding
of ‘time’ put into an art object, exaggerated responses displayed in art,
the use of found materials within the prison, and the omission of
‘risky’ emotions dictate that Koestler and prisoners clearly continu-
ously operate within the existing framework of art worlds in neolib-
eral capitalist contexts. In this way, the empathy generated within
these contexts may express both integration into society but also
reproduces the ideal prisoner as a carceral subject (both in and out
of prison). However, complicating this tension is the ability of art-
work to produce relations of ‘touch’ between the inside and outside
of prison. In spite of a process of creativity and exchange, an ethical
connection is fostered that disrupts all these functions – bringing
prison, charity and art-viewer together in more empathetic
relationships.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I explored the 2011 Koestler Awards as a mechanism
through which prisoners are encouraged to produce art for potential
scrutiny by both competition judges and members of the public visit-
ing an exhibition of selected pieces. As I have illustrated, allowing
‘outsiders’ to interact with this artwork has a number of important
162 J. Turner
purposes. Prisoners engaging with artwork have managed to achieve a

variety of successes. By offering artwork for sale, prisoners are able to
contribute to a system of production and economic exchange that
allows them to supplement their meagre prison earnings, reducing
their reliance on informal welfare networks. Furthermore, both the
accreditation and pleasure that prisoners have derived from producing
artwork has allowed them to work on transforming themselves into
more creative individuals. The properties associated with this are much
valued in their potential to encourage individuals to aim for a prosper-
ous future both within and outside of prison. In exploring this, what is
also revealed is a complex relationship between the artwork as a ‘useful’
production for prisoners, but a method through which they can ‘touch’
or consume the world outside of prison.
It is clear that ‘touch’ is important, but for many it is much more
than that – it is vital to our sense of self. Following the work of Tuan
(1974), Rodaway explains that to lose touch (or to have it denied) ‘is
to lose a world and, in effect, our sense of identity, even awareness of
being’ (1994, 44). However, for philosopher Emmanuel Levinas
(1981), touch need not be physical; it can be, rather, an ethical
relation between the self and the other. Re-conceptualising tradi-
tional ‘touch’ allows for a different understanding of how individuals
and objects experiencing a proximate distance may still be within
reach. In the latter half of the chapter, I have attempted to highlight
ways in which prisoner artists develop connections to the ‘outside’
through the creation of empathy, content and the common ground of
‘imagined touch’. In my fieldwork diary, I noted,
All of a sudden, prisoners scribbling on foraged scraps of paper in their

cells represent more than a freedom of expression. Here, they are not just
free to give their own impression of the penal world, but gain access to the
outside one. (Fieldwork diary entry, 11 October 2011)
This particular artwork, exhibited by the Koestler Trust, allows prisoners

to symbolically climb over the prison walls, moving boundless in the
world around them.
Acknowledgements I would like to extend my thanks to Fiona Curran,

Director of Arts at the Koestler Trust who dedicated much time and effort to
contacting artists and gaining permissions in relation to the artwork used in this
chapter. My thanks also go to the anonymous reviewer and collection editors
for their helpful suggestions in strengthening this chapter.
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Doing Cultural Geography, edited by Pamela Shurmer-Smith, 41–52.
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Design and Evocation, edited by Christopher Breward, Jeremy Aynsle, and
Marius Kwint, 17–36. Oxford: Berg.
168 J. Turner
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http://www.koestlertrust.org.uk/pages/stories.html.
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www.koestlertrust.org.uk/pages/buyart.html.
Trust, Koestler. 2012c. ‘Awards.’ Koestler Trust. Accessed 17 August. http://
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Jennifer Turner is Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of

Liverpool. Her research focuses upon spaces and practices of incarceration,
past and present. Most recently, she has interrogated prison architecture,
design, technology and their potential to impact upon rehabilitation. Other
interests include penal tourism, articulations of the prison boundary and
conceptualisations of carceral space. She has published widely in the fields of
carceral geography and criminology. She is the author of The Prison Boundary:
Between Society and Carceral Space (2016, Palgrave Macmillan) and co-editor of
Carceral Mobilities: Interrogating Movement in Incarceration (2017, Routledge).
7
Exploring ‘Betwixt and Between’
in a Prison Visitors’ Centre
and Beyond
Rebecca Foster
Introduction
In order to maintain relationships, family members will often spend
a great deal of time (as well as expense and emotional labour)
visiting their loved one in prison. When visiting inside the prison,
visitors occupy the liminal space of the visit room. Though technical
outsiders and legally free, they must accede to the institution’s
demands; they are in a position of being neither free nor prisoner,
but are somewhere in between. As Moran (2013) observed, others
have referred to this ‘state of in-between-ness’ in carceral space,
albeit using different terminology. For example, Comfort described
the visiting suite as being the ‘border region of the prison where
outsiders first enter the institution and come under its gaze’ (2003,
80), and Arditti described the visiting room as a ‘portal’ (2003, 116).
R. Foster (*)
Doctoral Researcher, Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research,
University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland
e-mail: r.foster.1@research.gla.ac.uk

170 R. Foster
Whereas this prior work has considered in some detail the liminality
of the visit room in a variety of penal establishments, the limited
range of work on liminal carceral spaces beyond the prison has
tended to focus on the experience of these spaces by prisoners (e.g.
Moran et al. (2013) on prison transport, and Allspach (2010) on
transcarceral spaces for released prisoners). Very little consideration
has been given to the liminal nature of spaces beyond the prison and
their experience by non-prisoners, despite the fact that these are
spaces intimately connected to the prison and often geographically
proximate to it, yet also, simultaneously, separate. This chapter
addresses this lack by focussing on the spaces of prison visitors’
centres, described by Breen as ‘bridging the gap between two very
different worlds’ (1995, 99). Whilst research has hinted at the
liminality of these spaces, as yet, they lack critical exploration – an
oversight perhaps attributable to the inconsistency of their provision.
The chapter opens with discussion of the ‘total’ institution, its applica-
tion to the prison and its critique. A lens of liminality is then applied,
allowing focus on the in-between, to briefly explore how the prison is
experienced by prisoners, before analysis centres on the experience of
prisoners’ families. In discussing prison visitors’ centres as liminal spaces,
the chapter outlines the nature of visitors’ centres in general in the UK and
Scotland, before focussing on one in particular – the visitors’ centre at
HMP Edinburgh (henceforth ‘the Centre’) which was the site of the
underpinning research. Through an exploration of the spatial organisation
of the visit room and the Centre, it suggests that the affective dimensions of
these spaces for the families who use them contribute to their experience as
liminal or in-between. Situating this space-specific between-ness in the
context of prisoners’ families’ experiences when spatially and temporally
distant from the Centre, the chapter proposes that prisoners’ families
experience multiple liminal states during their loved ones’ incarceration.
Having first outlined its dual theoretical framing, the chapter dis-
cusses the role and provision of prison visitors’ centres, before describing
research methodology and context. The substantive body of the chapter
then covers the multiple liminalities identified through qualitative and
ethnographic fieldwork with prison visitors.
7 ‘Betwixt and Between’ in prison visiting 171
From ‘Total Institution’ to Liminality

Total Institution
Goffman suggested that the total institution is a ‘place of residence or work

where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from their wider
society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed,
formally administered round of life’ (1991 [1961], 11). Inmates’ daily
activities are tightly scheduled around strict clock time; their movements
are carefully monitored by staff (Goffman 1991 [1961]). Moreover, a total
institution’s ‘encompassing or total character is symbolised by the barrier
to social intercourse with the outside and to departure that is often built
right into the physical plant, such as locked doors, high walls, barbed wire,
cliffs, water, forests, or moors’ (Goffman 1991 [1961], 15). Thus, these
spatial barriers also signal an exclusion of interaction with the outside
world. Prisons provide a ‘clear example’ (Goffman 1991 [1961], 11) of
total institutions, but army camps, concentration camps, psychiatric insti-
tutions, among others, can also be deemed total institutions.
In recent years, this notion of the prison as a total institution has been
subject to both scrutiny and challenge. Increasingly, scholars argue that the
boundary between the prison (the inside) and the outside is blurred, and
that instead, there is an ‘inter-penetration’ between inside and outside
(Farrington 1992). Farrington argued that when prisons are considered
in their broader social settings, what emerges is a complex web of ‘transac-
tions, exchanges and relationships’ that bind the prison to not only the
‘immediate host community’ but also to society more generally
(Farrington 1992, 7). For example, a wide range of external or ‘non-prison’
workers enter and leave the prison; family members and friends visit and
often bring in money and items of personal property from the ‘outside
world’; prisoners make phone calls and send letters out of the prison; most
prisoners eventually leave the prison and return to the outside world; and
some prisoners, caught up in the so-called revolving door of offending1 will
1
A term used to describe how some offenders are caught up in a cycle of offending which is
difficult to ‘break’.
172 R. Foster
enter and leave the institution many times. This is a rather simplistic
summary, but it offers a glimpse into the reasons why the prison’s walls
are now considered porous.
However, as recently argued by Schliehe (2016) in her rich re-engage-
ment with Goffman’s Asylums, Goffman’s theory has in some respects
been taken too literally; Goffman himself recognised the ‘semi-perme-
able’ nature of these spaces. Schliehe argues that the mounting critique
of his theory tends to present an exaggerated version of it, one which
bears little resemblance to his detailed micro-analyses on these closed
spaces. She accordingly suggests we look much more closely at
Goffman’s underlying analysis rather than dwell on the chosen term,
since Goffman himself acknowledged its limitations (Schliehe 2016).
Indeed, closer inspection of the text does suggest a more nuanced picture
of the institution’s ‘totality’. Moreover, the text itself offers rich insights
into prison life, insights which continue to resonate with the contem-
porary prison experience.
Despite this, the view of the prison as ‘total’ lingers, even dominates,
in certain spheres. Arguably, a commonly held public view of the prison
involves the offender being both literally and metaphorically ‘cast out’
from society, forcibly held in a hermetically sealed space. Criminologists
have argued that in recent years we have seen a rise in ‘populist puni-
tiveness’ or ‘penal populism’2; the idea that members of the public are
supportive of more severe criminal justice policies and sanctions (e.g.
lengthy custodial sentences). Public attitudes to punishment are highly
complex (Matthews 2005), with some evidence suggesting that the
public are selectively, rather than consistently, punitive (Green 2006);
other evidence indicates the malleability of these attitudes and suggests
that these can be tempered through the provision of more accurate
information about crime and punishment (Hutton 2005).
Nonetheless, it is arguable that both a literal and symbolic ostracism of
the ‘offender’ for members of the public is a fully expected, and in some
cases desired, consequence of state-imposed punishment. Indeed,
2
Though it can be argued that there are nuanced differences between these two terms, they
essentially describe the same phenomenon as noted by Pratt (2007, 2)
Farrington (1992) suggested that this was the prevailing image of the
prison in the twentieth-century USA, and offered various reasons for
why this image was never dislodged. One reason suggested was the
intuitive appeal of the idea that society’s most dangerous persons were
locked away until such time as they were deemed sufficiently safe for
release, if this time ever came (Farrington 1992). Whilst the prevailing
societal view may be of the offender cast out and confined with limited
contact with the outside, this is not the lived experience of imprison-
ment for the families in this study.
Although the prevalence of this view of prisoners as ‘outcasts’ cannot be
blamed on Goffman, the prevalence of the concept is problematic. If the
prison is completely sealed-off from wider society, its harmful effects would
be inflicted ‘only’ on the incarcerated. However, when we appreciate the
permeable nature of the prison walls and when we situate the prison in its
broader social context, we can see, as Crewe (2001, 5) noted, both how
‘external forces’ flow into the prison and affect prisoners, and also how these
forces ‘flow out’ to deliver the myriad social consequences of imprisonment –
far-reaching and pernicious effects of punishment. These ‘collateral conse-
quences’ (Hagan and Dinowitzer 1999) are for the most part deeply harmful
and unevenly distributed; they disproportionately impact disadvantaged
communities from which the prison population in many jurisdictions,
including the UK (Murray 2007) and within the UK, in Scotland, is largely
drawn (Houchin 2005). Therefore, it is important from not only a theore-
tical viewpoint but also from a penal reform perspective that we appreciate
the permeability of the ‘not so total’ prison (Farrington 1992).
Liminality
Although by no means a panacea to the difficulties of conceptualising

the character of the prison, liminality is a useful concept here; like the
total institution, it is at risk of being so widely applied to such a broad
range of experiences that it is in danger of meaning very little.
Van Gennep (2010 [1960]) initially introduced the concept of limin-
ality to anthropology, reflecting on the distinct stages of ritual experi-
ence, and their attendant rites of passage. In such rites of passage, the
174 R. Foster
liminal is the middle stage of transformation, between the beginning of a

transformation (the ‘pre-liminal’) and before the transformation’s com-
pletion (the ‘post-liminal’). In this post-liminal period, ‘transformed’
individuals re-integrate into society with their newly ascribed status
(Moran 2013). In van Gennep’s version, the liminal stage can be fleeting
or lasting, but it is not permanent; there is an expectation that the
liminal period will come to an end, to be succeeded by another state
in the same way that the pre-liminal stage preceded the liminal.
Turner (1967) reworked van Gennep’s theory, focussing his attention
specifically on the liminal stage (Thomassen 2009). For Turner, transi-
tional or liminal beings were ‘neither one thing nor another, or may be
both; or may even be neither, and are at the very least betwixt and
between’ (1967, 48). Liminal beings can be individuals, entire social
groups and societies; there can also be liminal spaces and liminal periods;
liminality can be applied to both space and time (Thomassen 2009).
Each of these liminal ‘conditions’ share one important characteristic: all
are in between one thing and another; between one place and another; or
between one identity and another. As Thomassen notes, the ‘key feature’
of liminality is transition (2009, 15).
Since van Gennep and Turner, the concept of liminality has contin-
ued to develop, and it has been posited that in some cases, transition
either cannot or does not manifest. Criminologists and carceral geogra-
phers have used liminality to shed light both on prisoners’ experiences of
imprisonment and on specific prison environments. By virtue of their
incarceration, prisoners are excluded from society, but at the same time
they remain part of it. Turney (2015) described prisoners as being
‘betwixt and between’ given their current separation and isolation
from families, yet anticipated reunion upon release. Jewkes (2005)
compared the experience of a life sentence with chronic or terminal
illness, in that both experiences can be characterised as near-permanent
liminal states. In her exploration of liminality in prison visit rooms,
Moran (2013) identified a stasis of liminality, with individuals ‘stuck’ for
some time, having repeated encounters with the liminal space of the visit
room. Although for these prisoners and visitors there was no immediate
post-liminal ‘transformation’, she argued that there could be a ‘cumula-
tively transformative effect’ of these repeated encounters, even if this
took a significant period of time to manifest. Thus, even where there is

stasis, there is still some movement in the form of repeated and poten-
tially transformative encounters. In her discussion, Moran noted that
visits could have a transformative effect for both prisoners and visitors
(though as we will see, the binary of ‘prisoner’ and ‘prisoner’s family’ is
not always appropriate). For prisoners, visits provide (sometimes literal)
tastes of home that remind them of pre-liminal life. They also help them
focus on a future post-liminal life of return to the home (Moran 2013,
348) and can thus contribute to ‘transformation’ from a rehabilitative
perspective. When they enter the prison, visitors experience a ‘pre-
liminal detachment’ from life outside, experience the liminality of the
visit itself and then have a post-liminal experience of return to their
outside life; this cumulative transformation can be a negative one:
repeated and sustained encounters with the prison impose a form of
prisonisation: time spent inside can harm visiting families (Moran 2013,
348; Comfort 2008, 28).
The negative effect on prisoners’ families of repeated contact with the
prison can be characterised as the ‘secondary prisonisation’ familiar
within criminological enquiry. Moran (2013) discussed the distinct
liminal spaces of prison visit rooms, exploring how ‘inside’ and ‘outside’
meet, with prisoners coming ‘face to face with persons and objects
originating in and representing their lives on the outside’, and visitors
also experiencing the institutionalisation of the ‘inside’’ (343). This
institutionalisation essentially denotes ‘prisonisation’ (Clemmer 1958);
the processes by which prisoners adapt to, and become part of, the
particular prison subculture. Visitors experience a diluted but still potent
version of this prisonisation or institutionalisation, termed by Comfort
‘secondary prisonisation’ (2008, emphasis added).
Comfort described the partners of prisoners as simultaneously both
captive and free, being ‘quasi inmates’ (2008, 15). Codd also made reference
to this liminal state when she commented that partners, whilst being
‘technically and legally free and autonomous’ are ‘enmeshed in the power
of the penal system’ and so ‘exist somewhere between the two’ (2003, 18).
Though Comfort’s study was in the USA, and Codd’s in the UK, each with
its distinct penal culture, the observed experience of secondary prisonisation
was also prominent in the Scottish context of the study for this chapter.
176 R. Foster
Incarceration, as Turney (2015) pointed out ‘is liminality par excel-

lence’. Using liminality in the prison context allows us to see how
imprisonment disrupts prisoners’ lives and identities. However, it also
enables a better understanding of interactions across the prison wall, and
shows that imprisonment also inflicts a liminal state on prisoners’
families. Prisoners’ families are not a homogenous group: their experi-
ence of imprisonment is as varied as is the prisoner’s. Given the hetero-
geneity both of families and experiences of imprisonment, the liminal
states discussed here are neither exhaustive, nor mutually exclusive.
Visitors’ Centres
Although jurisdictions vary, in general, prison visits take place in desig-
nated ‘visiting rooms’ within prisons. In contrast to visit rooms, visitors’
centres are those facilities in which visitors stow belongings prohibited
from entry to the prison itself, wait prior to entering the prison for their
visit, and in which they may ‘decompress’ as they collect their belongings
after the visit ends (Families Outside 2010).
Visitors’ centres themselves vary greatly: some are little more than ‘add-
ons’ to prisons both in terms of their architecture and their role; some
simply offer a waiting space, whilst others carry out basic administrative
functions, as required by the prison they serve (Mills and Codd 2007;
Woodall et al. 2012) such as booking in visitors. Others, like the Centre at
HMP Edinburgh, are purpose-built, aiming to provide an array of services
to visitors (Loucks 2002; Mills and Codd 2007). In the UK, visitors’
centres tend to be run by voluntary sector organisations, often those that
specifically support prisoners’ families (e.g. Pact in England and Wales, and
Families Outside3 in Scotland). Staffing arrangements differ between visi-
tors’ centres, each with different compositions of paid staff and volunteers
(Families Outside 2010), and centres’ operational budgets also vary con-
siderably (Mills and Codd 2007).
3
Families Outside is Scotland’s national charity which aims to provide support to families affected
by the criminal justice system, particularly imprisonment
There is no legal requirement for a UK prison to have a visitors’

centre. However, visitors’ centres’ potential to support families both
through imprisonment, and in other ways (signposting relevant ser-
vices), is now increasingly recognised (Loucks 2002). With prison visits
considered the ‘lynchpin of continued contact’ (Scott and Codd 2010,
153) between prisoners and their families, visitors’ centres are credited
with helping to ensure that this contact is positive, not only from the
perspective of families but also prisoners and prison staff (Woodall et al.
2009). The growing recognition of the importance and potential of
visitors’ centres in Scotland is reflected in the recent creation of a
National Prison Visitor Centre Steering Group (NPVCSG) whose pur-
pose is to develop a strategy for the establishment and support of a
visitors’ centre for all prisons in Scotland, and the announcement in
November 2015 of a Scottish Government (2015) award of £1.8m to
visitors’ centres in Scotland to support their work.
Currently, 7 of Scotland’s 15 prisons have a visitors’ centre. All are
managed by voluntary sector organisations, working in partnership with
the Scottish Prison Service (SPS).4 At the time of the research for this
chapter, the visitors’ centre at HMP Edinburgh was managed by the
Salvation Army, on behalf of the Onward Trust.5
Research Context and Methodology

The research for this chapter explored the experience of imprisonment for
prisoners’ families, and focussed particularly on how families experience
prison visiting. Fieldwork conducted within the Centre at HMP Edinburgh
explored the dynamics and experiences of visiting through extensive ethno-
graphic observation over a 9-month period, supplemented with semi-
structured interviews with eight members of staff who worked at the
Centre, and 12 adult family members who used it. Interviews were
4
With the slight exception of the visitors’ centre at HMP Addiewell: HMP Addiewell is one of
two prisons in Scotland (the other is HMP Kilmarnock) which is managed by a private sector
company under contract to the SPS.
5
In January 2016, Barnardo’s replaced the Salvation Army.
178 R. Foster
audio recorded, transcribed and coded for analysis. In order to elicit visiting
children’s distinct experiences, the creative method of drawing was
deployed. As with all creative and visual methods, drawing is considered
to be appropriate for the ‘cognitive and communicative skills’ associated
with being a child (Mitchell 2008, 70) since unlike more traditional
methods it does not place too great a reliance on verbal and written
communication skills. Yet such methods are not inherently ‘child-centric’
and issues of power, authority and difference need to be integrated into
both the analysis and the process itself, where possible (Mitchell 2008).
Moreover, there are a number of specific considerations relating to drawing;
for example, drawing is often undertaken at school, making it difficult to
cast out sometimes problematic connotations, such as children feeling
pressured to ‘draw well’. However, of all the methods available, drawing
appeared both the most sensitive to children’s needs and competencies, and
the most feasible given the research parameters and the research setting.
Seven children participated in my research by sharing their views and
experiences in this way. I provided blank white A4 card and a variety of
coloured pens and pencils, asked them to draw the visitors’ centre and/or
the visit room, and as they were drawing, encouraged them to talk me
through “the good bits”, “the bad bits” and “the alright bits” of each
space. Although it is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the
drawings, methods and attendant practical and ethical considerations in
as much depth as they deserve, a small sample of the children’s drawings
is provided and briefly discussed.6
The Visitors’ Centre at HMP Edinburgh

HMP Edinburgh, managed by the SPS, is a large (capacity 870) prison
located on the outskirts of the city of Edinburgh. The prison primarily
accommodates convicted and remanded adult men,7 but also a small
6
These methods provided rich data on families’ experiences, and although only a small extract is
discussed in this chapter, there are more examples in Foster (forthcoming PhD).
7
Remanded prisoners are prisoners who are either awaiting trial or awaiting sentence. Adult
prisoners in Scotland are those aged 21 years and over.
number of adult women; prisoners are serving long-term and short-term

sentences, life sentences, and some have received an Order for Life Long
Restriction (an OLR).8
As outlined in its Mission Statement for the Centre,9 the Salvation
Army as operator aims to provide a ‘supportive, friendly and non-
judgemental environment’, and to support visitors at ‘their point of
need.’ Located within the prison environs; the Centre sits directly in
front of the prison and next to the car park, but is geographically
separate from the prison itself, with no connecting tubes or tunnels. It
is architecturally distinct from its prison neighbour, built as a later
addition to the prison complex, by architects addressing a brief which
requested a ‘comfortable welcoming building located out-with the
prison gates where visitors (mostly women and children) could prepare
for and recover from their visits’. The distinction between these two
spaces was intended to make clear the independence of the Centre from
the prison (Hoskins Architects 2016).
Internally, the visitors’ centre is large, bright and open. The strong
emphasis on families in the architects’ brief is manifest in two separate
areas for children; a children’s soft-play area and an outdoor play area.
Centre staff were equally committed to this and also created the
‘Children’s Corner’, decorated with educational posters and children’s art
work, with ‘child size’ tables and chairs and children’s books, and converted
an un-used room into a play room. There is also a large office used by Centre
staff, by Families Outside staff and for meetings; and a canteen (offering
refreshments to all Centre users and staff), as well as areas of seating arranged
in both café style (tables and chairs) and booth styles, affording greater
privacy. The Centre offers visiting families a comfortable and versatile space.
Although the Salvation Army has its own ethos and aims, it works in
partnership with SPS staff at HMP Edinburgh. This is best demonstrated by
8
Long term sentences are custodial sentences of 4 years and over. Short term sentences are
custodial sentences of fewer than 4 years. The Order for Lifelong Restriction (the OLR)
constitutes a sentence of imprisonment, or as the case may be detention, for an indeterminate
period (Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 Section 210F). These orders are imposed for
those offenders deemed to be very ‘high risk’.
9
At the time of fieldwork (pre Barnardo’s takeover), the Salvation Army’s Mission Statement was
displayed on various posters located in the Centre.
180 R. Foster
the ‘booking in’ of visitors carried out on behalf of the prison; visitors are
asked to report to the Centre at least 30 minutes before their booked visit, to
allow sufficient time for their details to be processed, and for them to go
through security checks within the prison and then make the short walk to
the visit room. The Centre itself must follow the prison security rules, such as
ensuring that visitors store valuables in the lockers provided, and checking
approved forms of identification. When visitors first arrive at the Centre, a
staff member checks that they are on the list for the relevant visit session.
This information is then relayed to SPS staff at the prison reception desk,
and approximately 15 minutes prior to official start time of the visit, a Centre
staff member makes a tannoy announcement calling the visitors through to
the prison. With visitors often keen to arrive early enough to ensure that they
can start their visit on time, this process inevitably requires some waiting,
which visitors may do inside the Centre, or outside in the car park. Although
one might expect that visitors would find the waiting onerous, both this
research and a recent inspection of HMP Edinburgh (HMIPS 2013) suggest
that many do not mind having to wait. Many family members reported that
they enjoyed the social elements of waiting, and that this time had a tangible
benefit, which may lessen some of the burdens of imprisonment. However,
the act of waiting, and particularly unavoidable waiting in the prison context,
is inextricably linked to lack of power and agency (Gasparini 1995; Griffiths
2014) that must be critically reflected upon; indeed, I have begun to do this
elsewhere (Foster 2016).
Multiple (Spatial) Liminalities

By paying attention to the different spatial contexts of liminality, we can
observe both its multiplicity and the differences in its spatial expression.
In this section, by considering the different spaces in which prison
visitors experience secondary prisonisation – interpreted here to be an
indicator of liminality that breaks down the binary distinction between
that which is ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of the prison – we can trace the
spatially contingent nature of these experiences. We thus consider first
the visit room, within the prison proper, and then the visitors’ centre,
before widening our spatial lens to encompass a broader range of liminal

experiences beyond the environs of the prison.
Both visit room and visitors’ centre are liminal spaces, but each with
different degrees of inside and outside presence and convergence – it is
to these two spaces that we now turn.
The Visit Room
Perhaps the most tangible and keenly felt liminal experiences pertained
to the visit room within the prison itself, and were due in part to its
spatiality. Prisoners’ and visitors’ movements within the visit room are
strictly controlled, and thus affect both how they occupy the space and
interact within it. Describing the visit room as ‘horrible’, one visitor
referred to the restrictive seating arrangements which inhibited physical
contact and prevented private conversations; an experience powerfully
conveyed in children’s drawings, which demonstrated the contrast
between the visitors’ centre and the visit room (Figs. 7.1–7.3):
In Fig. 7.1, Pryha has drawn the circular tables and chairs in the visitors’
centre. The tables and chairs can be moved around and placed in any desired
configuration, allowing families to occupy, move around within, and use the
space as they wish. In Figs. 7.2 and 7.3, Pryha and Amy have drawn the
tables and chairs in the visit room itself. In both drawings, the separation
between family and prisoner is indicated by the seating arrangement; three
fixed seats for the family are separated from the prisoner’s single seat by a
large, more rectangular table, with a number on it (Fig. 7.2). Physical
interaction and movement between family and prisoner are both limited
and controlled; where seating arrangements were discussed, all family mem-
bers including children, complained about these restrictions.10
10
However, HMP Edinburgh offers, in collaboration with the visitors’ centre, designated
‘Children’s Visits’ to qualifying families (e.g. there are child protection criteria that must be
fulfilled) twice weekly. In these family-oriented visits, both family members and prisoners can
move around freely (even though the tables and chairs remain fixed). Moreover, the visit centres
on an activity the families can do and share together, such as doing arts and crafts. Families,
including children, enthusiastically discussed these visits.
182 R. Foster
Fig. 7.1 Pryha, Visitors’ Centre
In the visit room, visitors are compelled to obey prison rules, even those
they view as needlessly stringent or superfluous; for example, Jake lamented
the fact that he was not permitted to share a chocolate bar with his
imprisoned son: ‘It just seems so silly’. Visitors accede to the demands of
prison officers and accept that (even subtle) self-regulation of appearance
may be required. Visitors are subject to and subjects of, the surveillance of
the prison, where the ‘slightest movements are supervised’ and ‘all events
recorded’ (Foucault 1995 [1977], 197). They are forced into a ‘position of
subservience in relation to the prison’ (Codd 2003, 7).
Visiting her imprisoned mother, Jane gave a particularly vivid account
of her quasi-prisoner status in the visit room:
You just know you’re being listened to. Mum says, they’ll [the prison
officers] lip read. They’ll have you on camera . . . some of them just stand
with their arms crossed and just kind of gaze about. Not a lot of them
pace. They’re normally at their stations and that’s where they stand . . .
Fig. 7.2 Pryha, Visit Room
Jane described one situation where this status was acutely felt: ‘I mean
one time I had my legs crossed. So I was told to uncross my legs. Which
I feel like saying . . . ’ No! I’m not the one in a purple jumper [worn by
women prisoners at HMP Edinburgh to identify them during visits]
184 R. Foster
Fig. 7.3 Amy, Visit Room
here! I have my freedom so, I’m not concealing anything’. Yet she did
not verbally express this, fearing that even such small act of resistance
would have negative repercussions for her mother.
The Centre
Although the visit room perhaps manifests as the most constrained and
restrictive, prison-like liminal space encountered by visitors, with prison
staff and their rules ever-present, this convergence of inside and outside
is also clearly demonstrated in the Centre, and specifically by the
individuals present within it. Whilst the Centre predominantly caters
to visiting families, their use is by no means exclusive; although serving
prisoners, the most obvious ‘insiders’ do not enter the Centre, SPS
uniformed staff use it on a regular basis, and there are other visual and
aural portents of the neighbouring ‘inside’: lockers for prohibited items;
formal tannoy announcements; legal and health workers waiting to enter
the prison to cater for prisoners; and SPS notices outlining prison rules.
Perhaps most conspicuous of all, at least to the knowledgeable eye, is the
presence of newly liberated (‘libbed’) prisoners, who upon release are
encouraged by SPS staff to go to the Centre in order to make a phone
call to arrange a lift home; they then wait until someone arrives to collect
them. Families thus reunited sometimes share a snack or light meal in
the Centre, before making their way home together. Although libbed
prisoners usually made their status known to members of staff, it was,
quite poignantly, immediately apparent: HMP Edinburgh’s practice of
giving libbed prisoners clear plastic bags for their personal belongings
enables their immediate identification.11
These overt markers of the ‘inside’ of the prison – SPS staff, signage
and libbed prisoners, are balanced in the Centre by very visible markers
of its ‘outside’ status. These include the presence of non-uniformed
Salvation Army staff in civilian clothes, children’s play facilities and
artwork, non-SPS information boards offering help and advice, and a
small café offering fresh and nutritious snacks and meals. Moreover,
there is an active and concerted ‘bringing in’ of the outside. The Centre
interprets its remit of providing support to families very broadly, pro-
viding formal and informal support through dedicated Parents and
Children’s’ Support Workers (intended to facilitate positive and mean-
ingful family contact), arts and crafts sessional workers (providing activ-
ities for children whilst they wait for visits), ‘Meet the Police’ and ‘Meet
the Fire Brigade’12 events for children, two Families Outside charity
workers, and through their everyday interactions.
11
The most recent inspection of HMP Addiewell, another Scottish prison, outlines that prisoners
are given a ‘discreet rucksack’ rather than a plastic bag for this purpose (HMIPS 2015, 73).
12
Members of Centre staff invite members of the Police Force and Fire Service respectively to the
Centre for an afternoon. Police officers and fire fighters show the children what their jobs involve
interactively (e.g. children are invited into police cars and to put the siren on, and to meet police
dogs), and help with activities centred on these themes. These include completing worksheets,
drawing police officers and their dogs, and icing cupcakes.
186 R. Foster
Although these more formal interventions still represent institutions

such as the police which may, for some families, be uncomfortably
reminiscent of the prison service, families described the Centre as ‘feel-
ing’ very different to the prison visit room. Many likened it to a
community centre, and attributed to this to the atmosphere and the
friendly, non-judgemental and supportive staff. Another visitor made an
overt distinction between the Centre and the visit room: ‘It doesn’t feel
like a prison here’. The Centre’s environment and atmosphere, as well as
its focus on families and children and fostering positive interactions,
contrasts starkly with the prison visit room (though examples of good
practice exist); this suggests that a degree of separation between the
prison and the Centre has been achieved.
Yet this separation is by no means complete. The institutional mar-
kers described blur the inside-outside distinction; a direct reference to
liminality was explicitly made by a member of Centre staff: ‘ . . . we try
and make it as easy a transition as possible into the prison, and we have
this sort of liminal space here where they’re coming in from the outside,
and they wait here to get ready for their visit, and then they go into the
prison itself . . . ’ Physically separate from the prison but within its
environs, and managed by a voluntary sector organisation in partnership
with the SPS, the Centre occupies an in-between position in multiple
ways, as a gateway to the prison (and exit from it). Free to move around
within the Centre, booked-in visitors risk forfeiting their visit if they
leave the prison environs. Institutional markers remind them of their
rights and responsibilities in the spaces they are about to enter.
So far, this analysis has mirrored scholarship which has tended to see
the liminality experienced in connection with imprisonment as exclu-
sively spatially encountered within the prison and its immediate envir-
ons. Although these demarcated experiences are experienced by some
families (and prisoners), they do not exhaust the range of liminalities
encountered by prisoners’ families, in particular. Some prisoners’
families’ lives are characterised by perpetual, and sometimes even per-
manent experience of liminality, with families not only occupying
liminal spatial sites – visitor centres and visit rooms – but also having
lives marked by (periods of) between-ness, connected to the imprison-
ment of their loved ones. Visiting families experience liminality not only
in explicitly bounded spatial terms when visiting the prison, but also in
ways which are more spatially fluid: through in-between relationships,
identities and lives.
The Home
Comfort rightly looks beyond in-prison experiences, to uncover the ways

in which prison interferes with and disrupts life in the home. She notes
that even when partners of prisoners are not within the confines of the
prison, they are ‘subjected to secondary prisonisation via institutional
management and exploitation’; partly because the methods for staying in
touch ‘require surrendering the private domicile as an extended site of
penal control’ (Comfort 2008, 97).
In the case at hand, many families explained that on the days that they
visited the prison, the full day could be taken up with planning, travel-
ling, waiting, the visit itself and then the return journey home. For
example, Zoe explained: ‘Like half the time if I’m coming here, I don’t
do anything for the rest of the day. Like obviously, getting him [her two
year old son] ready, and then getting the two buses from town into here,
it’s quite hectic’. This one vignette demonstrates both the now well-
documented sacrifices, strains and ‘inherent obstacles’ (Tewksbury and
DeMichele 2005, 308) of prison visiting, and how families arrange and
re-arrange family life around the unbending prison timetable. Moreover,
it demonstrates how quasi-prisoner status transcends the prison wall,
and imposes itself on families’ homes and lives beyond it.
Phone calls to the prison also exemplify this point. As with most
prisons in Scotland and elsewhere, since prisoners do not have (legal)
access to mobile phones, they make calls home at phones situated in
their respective communal hall. Visitor Dee recounted the numerous
problems with the phone-call policy. The first issue is that she cannot
initiate a call herself: ‘You have to wait ‘til they phone you’. The second
is that she has little or no control over when (or whether) a call is made:
‘Then if they can’t get access to a phone, they don’t phone you, because
you know, there’s lots of people trying to get on these phones . . . ’ The
last is being unable call back to add to the conversation with another
188 R. Foster
anecdote or piece of news that had been temporarily forgotten, or to

resolve an argument: ‘ . . . if you fall out, you can’t phone and say what
you think or . . . if they hang up . . . you can’t do anything, so it’s all
kinda left . . . ’ This enforced waiting, and in some cases forced confine-
ment in the home in order to wait for the (sometimes long-overdue) call,
impacts upon families’ daily activities, which to Comfort’s mind signals
the extended reach of the penitentiary into the home (2007).
The experience of domestic spaces rendered liminal by the extended
reach of the prison, and punctuated by encounters with the prison visit
room and visitors’ centre, brings into focus the shifts in identities and
relationships which accompany a period of imprisonment. For many
families, imprisonment does not end family relationships (Fishman
1988). However, by its very nature, it disrupts and changes the relation-
ships prisoners have with those on the outside. Visitor Katie remarked:
‘You know it’s very hard with your partner being in prison. You can’t have
much of a relationship. Well you can . . . but you know what I’m saying.
Not a proper one, as a man and woman would have outside of prison . . . ’
Relationships change, and they may remain in that altered state until
release, whereupon they may return to their pre-imprisonment form.
Codd (2003) discussed the way in which prisoners’ identities are (re)
negotiated, with aspects of their ‘inside’ identities taken on, and aspects
of their ‘outside’ identities denied. She argues that prisoners’ partners
(and this could be extended to others with whom they have relation-
ships) also (re)negotiate their identities. Codd focusses on women part-
ners’ identities as the archetypal ‘good’ wives and mothers, and notes
that imprisonment disrupts this identity, making the care-giving asso-
ciated with these roles much more difficult to provide. There are known
problems with the concept of identity (Brubaker and Cooper 2000), but
the changing of relationships and associated roles as highlighted by
Codd (2003) is important to note.
Families visit prisoners for a whole host of reasons, but one of the
most common to emerge in this study was to show that they cared for
the prisoner, and convey that he or she had not been abandoned.
Serenity explained: ‘You cannae leave them there [in prison] with
nothing; you just cannae dae it’, which meant that she continued to
visit frequently, despite the considerable time and effort she had to exert
in order to do this. Jake told me that in addition to enjoying spending

time with his imprisoned son, he also visited ‘out of a sense of duty as a
father’. He elaborated, ‘I don’t want him to have sort of games playing in
his mind where he thinks that nobody cares. I want him to think that we
are kind of with him, as it were, and support him as much as we can’.
Other ways of demonstrating care and of fulfilling care-giving roles are
in the handing-in of money and property to support the prisoner; these
are carried out on a regular basis by virtually all of the families encoun-
tered during this research. These material gifts often represented family
members’ own material sacrifices (Christian et al. 2006). Relationships
enter liminal states, before often problematic attempts to resume pre-
vious relationships and roles upon release.
Permanent Liminality
Although for some a prisoner’s release promises the possibility of a post-

liminal transformation from the limbo state of separation, for others
such a prospect is either distant or even beyond reach. As Jewkes (2005)
has noted, prisoners serving life sentences, with no known release date,
are in a (near) permanent liminal state. Given that many prisoners
maintain relationships with those on the outside their families too are
arguably in this state. For example, prison visitor Judy is in a relationship
with Patrick, a prisoner who has been given an OLR. Neither knows if
Patrick will ever be released, and even if he is, he would be subject to the
strictest monitoring. Despite their frequent visits and contact, the OLR
leaves Judy and Patrick stuck in their respective liminal states.
For other families, rather than the prospect of an indefinite prison
sentence, it is the pattern of persistent offending and repeated incarcera-
tion which delivers a permanent or near-permanent liminal state. With
the ‘revolving door’ of reoffending and associated prison ‘churn’, many
individuals repeatedly switch status between ‘prisoner’ and ‘free’, and
their families’ statuses also switch between ‘prisoner’s family’, and ‘for-
mer-prisoner’s family’. For some, the frequency and repetition with
which they experience this alternation of identity renders their status
effectively liminal. Their attainment of a post-liminal state is repeatedly
190 R. Foster
thwarted by either actual custodial sentences or recalls,13 and by the

constant anticipation of them.
Fieldwork for this chapter showed that some family members were
(almost) certain that their imprisoned loved one would not re-offend:
‘he’s learned his lesson’ or, ‘he’s learned his lesson . . . this time’. Yet
many more expected incarceration to recur, and many families were
witnessed who, having met a libbed prisoner on release, were returning
to visit their loved one serving a subsequent sentence or following recall.
Whilst some fully expected to return to the Centre, others resolved that
if another custodial sentence was imposed, they would not visit again,
suggesting that some relationships were conditional, and featured ulti-
matums. Serenity said: ‘ . . . But if he [her partner] comes back in [to
prison], no way am I coming back. That’s it’.
The continual presence of the prison for some families could scarcely
have been more pronounced. Sophie recounted: ‘ . . . I’ve been coming
for 20-odd years here. Now there you go, there’s my life. All my life is
coming to prisons. And it wisnae always my husband. It was my twins,
I’ve got twins that are 20 year old, and it was their dad at the time.’
Serenity, interviewed whilst visiting her partner, said ‘ . . . I spent a lot of
time visiting jails when I was a kid. I spent my eighteenth birthday in a
jail visiting my dad; I had a big badge on . . . ’ She had also visited her
older brother in prison, and previous partners. Judy, partner to Patrick
with an OLR, poignantly reflected:
Even if he did end up having to go back inside again, it wouldn’t faze me

as much, because I’ve had the prior practice with my brother [also a
former prisoner]. So in a way, I think that’s why it doesn’t bother me so
much that he’s in there. Because I’ve been so many times to visit for when
my brother was in here.
The adage goes that practice makes perfect; practice equips Judy with the
skills to deal with the imprisonment of a loved one.
13
A prisoner may be recalled to prison for a number of reasons. This may be for breach of a
condition of licence, or the commission of another crime.
A full exploration of the nuance of these experiences is beyond the

scope of this chapter, but it is clear that such accounts are not uncom-
mon; they pepper ethnographic field-notes, for example:
A mother and father with their two children are sitting in the Centre.
[Centre staff member] recognises the man and wonders where she knows
him from. It then dawns on her that she knows him from the Children’s
Visits: ‘He must have gotten out!’ She tells me that they are a really nice
wee family and that he is good with the children.
Three weeks later the mother was back in the Centre; her partner had
returned to HMP Edinburgh. Such moving examples help to explain
why so many of the visitors, when staff wished them well in their last
visit, replied: ‘I’ll be back’.
For these individuals, the experience of incarceration reaches into
their domestic homes and into the very substance of their lives, some-
times over an extended period. Yet, in their narratives, they return over
and over again to the experience of the prison and its closely associated
spaces to express the nature of that connection. In other words, although
the experience of secondary prisonisation may be dispersed and distrib-
uted, it is narrated through discussion and description of encounters
with the prison – or with the prison-like spaces with which visitors come
into contact – the visit room and the visitors’ centre. For these families,
there is a sense of weary acceptance that since imprisonment and prison
visiting has long been a central part of their lives, there is no reason to
believe that the future will be different.
However, the growing familiarity with these spaces – the notions of
being practised, of being un-fazed by them – speaks to an emergent
critique of the dominant discourse in prisoners’ families literature that
prison is a ‘monolithically negative force in the lives of inmates and their
families’ (Comfort 2008, 9); a critique which I explore and advance in
Foster (forthcoming). These narratives support the work of Morris who,
in her influential study with the wives of male prisoners in 1960s
England, found that families’ experience of imprisonment was diverse,
and not all families experienced it traumatically (Morris 1965). There
are a number of reasons for this, including a suggestion that
192 R. Foster
imprisonment becomes a normal or routine feature of many families’

lives within communities; and, more ominously, that the negative effects
of incarceration are difficult to distinguish from the multiple disadvan-
tages already experienced by many families.
Layered Liminalities
The preceding passages have discussed the multiple liminalities that

characterise visitors’ (and prisoners’) encounters with what has been
termed the ‘total institution’, operating in relation to different spatial
contexts such as the visit room, the visitors’ centre, the domestic home
and so on. Through this broadening spatial lens, it has become clear that
differently nuanced forms of liminality are experienced by these indivi-
duals as they encounter these different spaces, and as the prison differ-
entially penetrates and colours them, rendering practices, feelings and
even lives as liminal in various ways.
Throughout, though, there has been a sense in which the designations
of prisoner and visitor, or prisoner and prisoner’s family, are unproble-
matic. Real life is, of course, much messier than this, and the fact that
some prison visitors have also served prison sentences complicates the
nature of liminality in each of these spatial contexts. For example,
Sophie, well rehearsed in the role of prison visitor, was also a former
prisoner who has found it difficult to fully escape her past. She described
her face as a ‘face that matches a criminal face’, elaborating:
I’ve got a thyroid problem. And my mum said to me, all the junkies wear
their hair doon like that, try and dae that [moves her hair forward to cover
her ears] and it makes me . . . I’m no on drugs. And I’ve got a sweat
tablet . . . I’ve got a dry mouth, and it’s because it’s my thyroid making
me sweat. . . . I feel like I always get picked oot. It’s unfair.
In her eyes, her hairstyle, her dry mouth and her sweating give her the
physical appearance of someone with a drug problem, which, as she sees
it, invites an assumption of criminality, making her more likely to be
searched by prison staff.
Another visitor gave near-daily accounts of what she perceived as

persecution when visiting due to a past which included custodial sen-
tences, and having more recently been caught attempting to ‘pass’ drugs
during a visit.14 In her view, these two issues compounded each other,
bringing closer surveillance and more negative treatment from prison
officers. Although her custodial sentences were served some time ago, to
her this was immaterial: she suspected that these tales about her past had
been spread.
Considering these examples, it may be the case that liminality is a
status that applies not only to spaces (such as visit rooms) and life
circumstances (such as awaiting a loved one’s release) but also to indi-
viduals, in that some individuals are in a liminal state of being between
free and prisoner, unable, in their encounters with liminal prison spaces,
to shake off their past. Researchers have highlighted how the well-
recognised stigma of imprisonment attaches to the families of prisoners
as well as to prisoners themselves (Lopoo and Western 2005; May
2000). Sophie’s account begs parallels with Moran’s research with
women prisoners in Russia, in which the carceral experience is embo-
died, and thus goes beyond the experience of being confined in the
literal and spatial sense (Moran 2014). The former-prisoner family
members who experience this type of liminal state, are ‘marked’ by
prior periods of custody, preventing them from re-integrating into
society even as prison visitors stigmatised-by-association, and further
cementing the continued ‘penetration of the criminal justice system’
(Comfort 2007, 272) in their lives, through their family members’
persistent entanglement in it.
Conclusion
This chapter has lent support to the idea that the prison has porous walls
which allow the outside to enter, the inside to exit, and inside and
outside to meet. By deploying in concert the theories of the total
14
Prison slang; term used to describe the passing of prison contraband (e.g. illegal drugs) between
visitors and prisoners, and between prisoners themselves.
194 R. Foster
institution (acknowledging both Goffman’s insights and subsequent

engagements and critiques) and of liminality (after van Gennep and
Turner), it has explored the permeability of the prison wall, and how the
experience of imprisonment for both families and prisoners is or can be
liminal.
If a prison visit room is acknowledged to be a liminal space between
inside and outside, the chapter argues that a prison visitors’ centre is also
liminal, albeit with a different and nuanced sense of between-ness. By
exploring the spatial and affective dimensions of both Centre and visit
room, we see that visiting families traverse multiple liminal spaces,
between the prison and the outside world during their visiting experi-
ences. These spatially bounded forms of liminality within discrete and
delineated spaces are characterised by different modes of intersection
between inside and outside, different visual and aural cues and symbo-
lism, and different rules and restrictions.
More broadly, however, there are a number of different liminal states
families can experience as a result of a loved ones’ imprisonment(s),
which bring the domestic home within the reach of the prison, through
the everyday practices of facilitating visiting, waiting for phone calls,
making sacrifices in order to support an imprisoned family member, and
so on. Whilst families are not prisoners, neither are they entirely free –
even when far away from the prison gates. Imprisonment means that
families’ relationships and roles change into a liminal or ‘limbo’ state
that for some may change back again, but for others, will become a
permanent state of liminal stasis, with loved ones seemingly always doing
time. Finally, some family members’ experience of these multiple limin-
alities is further complicated by their own experience of imprisonment.
The concept of liminality is often applied to spaces and sites.
However, this chapter suggests that it can also be applied to people,
and to periods of time, exploring how different and multiple liminalities
are experienced by prisoners’ families. The ‘pains of imprisonment’
(Sykes 1958, 63) for both prisoners and their families are now well
recognised, and in many respects, these empirical data verify both the
existence and the harm of these particular pains. However, they have also
begun to show that experiencing this between-ness itself is a complex,
spatially contingent process, and that liminality extends beyond the
conventional spaces in which it has thus far been observed. Accordingly,

in order to better understand the pains of between-ness, further atten-
tion needs to be paid to the complexity and nuance of the experience of
prison visitation.
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Woodall, James, Rachael Dixey, and Karina Kinsella. 2012. An Evaluation of
Jigsaw Visitors’ Centre. Leeds: Leeds Metropolitan University, Institute for
Health and Wellbeing.
Rebecca Foster is a doctoral researcher at the Scottish Centre for Crime and
Justice Research (SCCJR), based at the University of Glasgow. Her project
explores the ‘pains of imprisonment’ experienced by the families of prisoners,
and in particular how these are experienced in the process of visiting. This fits
with Rebecca’s broader research interests in crime and justice, which she has
applied to a number of research projects in this area.
Part III
Imagining Beyond Carceral Spaces
8
Tracing Memories in Border-Space
Clemens Bernardt, Bettina van Hoven
and Paulus Huigen
Introduction
As Jones and Garde-Hansen noted, ‘Memories well up out of the depths
of the unconscious and/or work away as (dis)enabling background. They
are not static information, but are reworked in the light of current
practice, and at the same time shape that practice’ (2012, 161). This
chapter critically discusses the impact of memory practices in the context
of the asylum procedure on an asylum seeker’s identity work.
Until a decision is made concerning his or her asylum request, a
stranger, seeking asylum in the Netherlands, is required to go through
a series of procedures that aim to establish his or her individual right of
asylum. As part of this procedure, an asylum seeker is transferred
through a series of locations. Together, these locations form a more
or less confined border-space, ‘set aside’ (Philo 2011, 4) within Dutch
C. Bernardt (*) B. Hoven P. Huigen

Department of Cultural Geography, University of Groningen, Groningen,
The Netherlands
e-mail: bernardt@home.nl; b.van.hoven@rug.nl; p.p.p.huigen@rug.nl

202 C. Bernardt et al.
territory to ‘establish [and secure] clear boundaries’ (Philo 2011) ‘between

citizens and strangers’ (Ricoeur 2010, 41). The Asylum Seekers’ Residence
Centre (ASRC), a location where asylum seekers are obliged to wait for
the outcome of the ‘extended’ asylum procedure, is part of this border-
space. The extended procedure, in which a stranger’s asylum request is
extensively scrutinized by the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization
Service (IND), takes at least half a year. During this term, an asylum seeker
is free to leave the ASRC, except for the obligation to register once a week
by giving fingerprints. However, as we show in this chapter, despite its
relatively open boundaries, the ASRC may capture an asylum seeker in
memory practices that question his or her sufferings.
Drawing on ethnographic data collected over five years in a Dutch
ASRC, we show how materialities and temporalities constituting this, at
least partially confined centre, create and aggravate painful confronta-
tions with an asylum seeker’s past experiences.
We deconstruct the asylum procedure in order to explore how
material and non-material elements frame memory practices that
are central to the asylum procedure. Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s
writings, we highlight the way in which embodied experiences of
traumatized asylum seekers are largely neglected as a result of such
framing and propose the relevance of ‘witnessing’ these experiences.
Although the material presented does not offer ready-made solutions,
our objective is to advocate a stronger ethics of care as a part of the
asylum procedure.
Bauman states that an asylum seeker may be considered an ‘under-
defined, under-determined’ other (1995, 181). S/he, who is unable to find
protection against unjust persecution in his or her native country, is
entitled to request asylum in another country. However, his or her status
as a refugee needs to be determined, in order to make a positive decision
concerning the asylum request. During the asylum procedure, the Dutch
Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) aims to verify if an asylum
seeker’s story ‘meets the appropriate [asylum]criteria’ (Ricoeur 2010, 45).
Memories that provide testimony of asylum seekers’ identities and past
trajectories are assembled, questioned and scrutinized by officials. In this
chapter, we refer to the practices involved in bringing these memories to
light as ‘memory practices’.
As Jones (2011, 876) points out, ‘[g]eographical work is emerging’,

that explores ‘memory’s role in the affective, performative practices of
everyday life’ that mediate in the ongoing construction of the self. This
work, he argues, addresses the self as an ill-defined construction
entangled in past as well as present spatial relationships. People engage
in memory practices, van Dijck (2004) argues, in order to define them-
selves, ‘to make sense of their lives in relation to the lives of others and to
their cultural context’. Memory practices, deployed in the context of the
Dutch asylum procedure, are a means to make sense of the other, to
define the other’s identity, trajectory and sufferings in order to judge his
or her asylum request. In a context of increased ‘suspicion towards
asylum seekers’, Fassin and d’Halluin (2007, 302) assert, ‘the quest for
evidence [of endured violence and persecution] has intensified’. It is
important to note that an asylum seeker’s stories may to a large degree
be unreflected, unspoken and repressed. In order to unveil these stories,
painful or even traumatic memories are welled up ‘out of the depths of
[an asylum seeker’s] unconscious’ (Jones and Garde-Hansen 2012, 161).
Telling stories that testify to one’s identity, itinerary and sufferings
comprises an important part of everyday life in border-space. In our
analysis of border-space, we follow Massey (2005, 9) in understanding
space as ‘a simultaneity of stories-so-far’. Space emerges where and
whenever the unique stories, involved in human and nonhuman trajec-
tories, temporarily touch upon and affect each other. Space, Massey
argues, is relational; its production is ‘necessarily embedded in material
practices’ (2005). In a similar way, border-space is produced in a range
of practices, material and non-material, that capture, yet simultaneously
interrupt and deviate an asylum seeker’s trajectories. While dwelling in
this space, an asylum seeker is prevented from accomplishing his or her
trajectories, and from having a future in the Netherlands, as s/he is
continuously thrown back on his or her memories.
Following his or her asylum request, an asylum seeker is transferred
through a series of locations. In each subsequent location, s/he faces
new authorities, procedures and practices that recollect and scrutinize
his or her stories; judge his or her right of asylum or prepare for his or
her repatriation and departure. Until his or her ‘true story’ is estab-
lished and verified by these authorities, an asylum seeker remains
Fig. 8.1 An outward view from within semi-confined space at the gallery of
housing block C
Source: by Bernardt.
immersed in memory practices. At the ASRC, these practices take place

in a range of formal and informal ways. An asylum seeker’s memories
may be triggered while discussing his or her asylum procedure in a
meeting room at the Dutch Council for Refugees (DCR); while
following the news of his or her native country in one of the recreation
rooms; while smelling the food, prepared by a fellow countryman in
the communal living room of the apartment.
Fig. 8.1 Continued
Embedded in everyday materialities and temporalities, memory prac-

tices in the context of the asylum procedure aim to produce a formal set of
statements. Required statements concern an asylum seeker’s identity, place
of origin, itinerary and the persecution s/he endured, or may expect to
endure, if s/he returns to his or her native country. As we elaborate further
below, memory practices consist of ‘a series of activities’ (Van Dijck 2004,
263, emphasis in original) concerning the questioning, recollection, word-
ing, translation, interpretation, entextualization and verification of an
asylum seeker’s memories. These activities are mediated by material and
non-material elements; by objects, people, technologies as well as norms

and ‘social conventions’ (Van Dijck 2004, 263) that frame an asylum
seeker’s memory work. The people involved in these memory practices are,
among others, asylum seekers, officials of the Dutch Immigration and
Naturalisation Service (IND) as well as sworn translators, asylum lawyers,
and social workers of the DCR. Their activities take place in a framework
of procedures, distinguished by delimited locations and terms.
If the IND estimates that an asylum request cannot be judged carefully
within the general, eight-day asylum procedure, an asylum seeker is staged in
the extended procedure. The Dutch extended procedure provides the IND
officials with the opportunity to judge an asylum request within a maximum
term of half a year. If his or her asylum request is denied, an asylum seeker
may appeal the decision by the IND. For the duration of the extended asylum
procedure, an asylum seeker is required to remain in an ASRC (Fig. 8.1). The
centre consists of temporary housing blocks; recreational and educational
areas; medical services; meeting rooms and office-spaces, occupied by a range
of agencies and organizations involved in managing the centre and attending
its inhabitants. As the ASRC is inaccessible to the general public, little is
known about practices taking place within its compound.
The empirical data for this chapter were collected during nearly five
years of participant observation at an ASRC in the Netherlands. Clemens
volunteered for the DCR one day per week. The DCR is a non-govern-
mental organization that helps asylum seekers to understand, and to a
certain extent control, their own asylum procedure. At the DCR, the many
legal documents, involved in the generally lengthy asylum procedure, are
explained and discussed, in dialogue with an asylum seeker’s lawyer. Work
at the DCR involves the analysis and discussion of an asylum seeker’s
hearing reports. Volunteers and asylum seekers are involved in a range of
memory practices: helping asylum seekers to clarify possible contradictions
in their life stories, finding ways to substantiate these stories and shedding
light on neglected aspects of these stories that may enhance their chances to
be granted asylum. Moreover, this work involves listening, and trying to
help asylum seekers to cope with the many uncertainties and anxieties,
bound up with the procedure. When at the ASRC, Clemens focused on his
role as practitioner. After work, his observations were elaborated in a
research diary and in ethnographic sketches.
It is important to note that the Central Agency for the Reception of

Asylum Seekers (COA) prohibits us to take photographs and to conduct
interviews within the compound of the ASRC. These rules are imposed,
COA argues, in order to prevent increasing asylum seekers’ feelings of
stress and confusion, and to warrant their privacy. Both the DCR and
COA were informed about the research. The final draft of this article
was submitted to the DCR before being published. We feel strongly that
it is important to disclose and discuss the daily precarious practices of
tracing asylum seekers’ painful, or even traumatic memories, as a key
part of their asylum procedure and their daily life in the ASRC. In order
to do so, we will present and discuss research diary fragments, concern-
ing two asylum seekers, attended during the voluntary work for the
DCR. However, attending asylum seekers in their sensitive procedures
demands a high degree of confidentiality. The places and dates, men-
tioned in the subjoined diary fragments, are, therefore, anonimized. The
names of the asylum seekers, Laurent and Alice, are pseudonyms.
In the following paragraphs, we first explore the theoretical context
that informs our analysis. We specifically discuss the framing of an
asylum seeker’s identities in border-space, problems and obstructions
related to remembering a traumatic event, the conflictual nature of
identity work and the procedure’s tendency to neglect an asylum seeker’s
pre-verbal language. In our analysis, we draw on selected excerpts of
these research notes. The excerpts focus on two asylum seekers, who are
considered to be victims of post-traumatic stress disorder. From the
analyses of excerpts, we derive insights concerning the impact of mem-
ory practices on an asylum seeker’s identity work. Based on these
insights, we raise ethical considerations regarding these practices.
Becoming an Asylum Seeker

In confinement, Moran (2012) argues, ‘the work of memory’ stretches
each ‘passing moment’ into an ‘extended present’; an in-between, filled
with a sense of time, space and becoming. This work, that is bound up
with everyday practices, is ‘fundamental to becoming’ (Jones and
Garde-Hansen 2012, 8).
By stating ‘I request asylum’, a stranger becomes entangled in the

practices, regulations, terms, locations and materialities, involved in the
asylum procedure. Together, these comprise the material and non-
material context in which the memory practices central to this chapter
are placed. In this paragraph, we trace the asylum procedure in more
detail and explore the role of the material and non-material elements
mentioned earlier that frame memory practices. The asylum procedure
relies heavily on the thought, spoken and written word. As we will show,
virtually all attention goes to the narrated part of the self, whilst its
embodied dimension tends to be ruled out. We apply Julia Kristeva’s
writings to draw attention to the role and relevance of the embodied
dimension of identity work, of ‘becoming an asylum seeker’. Kristeva
(1996) views identity as inconsistent, relational and contingent. She
stresses the situational becoming of identity. The becoming of identity,
Kristeva argues, is a conflictual process that takes place in-between an
individual’s explicit narrated self and his or her more or less implicit and
embodied sense of self. One’s narrated self is permanently contested by
unspoken or repressed embodied experiences.
Demanding asylum seekers to construct a factual, unambiguous and
coherent narrated self based on memories loaded with extreme fear,
shame or guilt seems problematic in itself. However, as Herlihy and
Turner (2007) point out, a considerable number of asylum seekers
suffering from PTSD are obstructed in recollecting and wording the
memories of their sufferings; memories that may severely disrupt their
sense of self. In the following discussion, we pay particular attention to
PTSD as this pertains to at least some of the asylum seekers Clemens
encountered in this study, and the excerpts we analyze also refer to
asylum seekers who the Dutch Council for Refugees considered to
suffer from PTSD.
Framing Identity in Border-Space
The chance of being granted asylum is mainly based on the ability ‘to
recount a coherent, consistent narrative’ (Herlihy and Turner 2007,
268). In order to establish this narrative, an asylum seeker is questioned
during two intensive hearings, in the presence of an official of the IND

and a sworn translator. Each hearing may last a whole day. Although the
space of the hearing rooms, as shown in Fig. 8.2, aims to evoke a sense of
simplicity and humanity, spatial arrangements during and in-between
the interviews nevertheless confirm the power asymmetry between inter-
viewer and interviewee. Exemplary of the interviewee’s subordination
during the interview is the dominant position of the computer screen in
the hearing room. Turned away from the asylum seeker, the screen
articulates the interviewee’s lack of control of the interpretation and
entextualization of his or her personal memories in the official’s account.
During the hearings, asylum seekers are required to provide evidence
concerning their family, clan and ethnicity; their place and country of
origin; their journey to the Netherlands; and the violent events, leading
to the flight from their native country. The aim of these hearings is to
produce a detailed, factual, coherent, consistent and relevant set of
statements concerning the asylum seeker’s victimization; statements
that allow the IND official to make a substantiated judgment concerning
the asylum seeker’s need of protection by the Dutch state. In the
Netherlands, the decision to grant or deny an asylum request is made
by the IND. The decision is based on: (1) the validity and authenticity
of the furnished evidence, such as identity and travel documents, and
other documents that may prove the asylum seeker’s unjust persecution
in his or her native country; (2) the supposed truthfulness, coherence
and accuracy of the asylum seeker’s story; (3) the relevance of an asylum
seeker’s sufferings according to the legal criteria, as established in the
Dutch Aliens Act and (4) the information about the safety and human
rights conditions in the asylum seeker’s native country or region as
provided by reports of Ministry of Foreign Affairs concerning the most
troubled countries of origin.
The IND official’s questions, and his or her interpretations of the
asylum seeker’s words, focus on the way the asylum seeker is personally
affected by these conditions: how s/he was affected while living in his or
her native country and how s/he will be affected in case s/he would have
to return. The questions and interpretations frame the asylum seeker’s
personal memories of his or her sufferings and capture these memories in
a set of general rules that evoke and constrain the asylum seeker’s official
Fig. 8.2 A space for memory practices view into A COA meeting room
Source: By Bernardt
identity in border-space. An asylum seeker’s border-space identity is a

framed, discursive identity that arises during the process of questioning,
recollecting, wording, translating, interpreting, entextualizing and ver-
ifying of an asylum seeker’s memories. This identity encompasses those
aspects of an asylum seeker’s narratives that are considered necessary to
recognize his or her illegitimate or inhumane victimization, to judge the
relevance of his or her statements, to verify an asylum seeker’s legal rights
of protection, to determine his or her legal status in border-space and to
decide on his or her asylum request.
The absence of tangible evidence of his or her identity, itinerary and
illegitimate persecution will diminish an asylum seeker’s chances in the
procedure. Yet, few asylum seekers have access to ‘written documenta-
tion of their persecution’ (Shuman and Bohmer 2004, 395). For several
reasons an asylum seeker may be unable to prepare for a documentary
asylum request: often s/he is forced to leave the country of origin in a
hurry and does not have the opportunity to collect identity documents;
documents may get lost or be destroyed during the dangerous journey; s/
he may be compelled to assume a false identity, provided by an illegal
travel agent; and original identity and travel documents may be
demanded by these agents in order to hide their itineraries. The IND
demands a plausible explanation for any supposed lack of evidence. In
case this explanation does not satisfy, the asylum seeker’s narrative of his
or her sufferings, as contained in the hearing report, will be under
intense scrutiny for ‘hiatuses, vague phrases, incomprehensible turns
and contradictories’ (Dutch Council for Refugees 2010, 18). The inter-
pretation of the statements, made in this hearing report, may give rise to
a lengthy legal struggle by asylum seekers, IND officials, asylum lawyers
and judges.
At least to some degree, the statements, entextualized in a hearing
report, provide a selective account of the asylum seeker’s lived experi-
ences. These experiences, Jacquemet (2009) points out, are translated
and interpreted in a legal language unfamiliar to most asylum seekers.
The power asymmetry in the hearings, Jacquement argues, allows the
hearing official to impose a form of conversation; an ‘in-depth inter-
view’ (Jacquemet 2009, 528), that an asylum seeker either is unfamiliar
with, or that may remind of interrogations, persecution and
confinement, endured in his or her native country. The ‘interviewers’

guidelines’ (Jacquemet 2009, 533) involve a conversation that is based
on a range of cultural and bureaucratic assumptions. The official’s
questions, expectations and interpretations are primarily attuned to
the legal context in which the final hearing report ‘is intended to be
read’ (Jacquemet 2009, 529). An asylum seeker may have great diffi-
culties in framing his or her narratives in the ‘legalistic discourse’
(Shuman and Bohmer 2004, 401) of the interview. This may cause
an official to highlight certain aspects of the conversation in the report,
that were not the focus of the asylum seeker’s story, or neglect crucial
aspects or details of the asylum seeker’s lived experiences. Jacquement
(2009, 529) further points to the role of the interpreter, whose transla-
tions may fulfill ‘perceived expectations of the officials in charge’.
Misinterpretations, concerning an asylum seeker’s place of origin and
ethnicity, may occur, as hearing officials and interpreters tend to be
unaware of mixed ‘communicative practices and cultural knowledge’
(Jacquemet 2009, 543), arising from complicated itineraries. Due to
differences in cultural and linguistic practices, the people involved in
the hearing may misinterpret both the specific meaning and the (non)
verbal representation of an asylum seeker’s complex experiences of
violence, pride, guilt and shame. The interview’s transcript may distort
the asylum seeker’s words, or reduce ambiguities to ‘univocal statement[s]’
(Jacquemet 2009, 529).
Remembering a Traumatic Event
‘[F]or many [refugees], neither remembering nor relating some of the

most horrific experiences of their lives is easy’ (Herlihy and Turner 2007,
268). Refugees, they stress, carry an increased risk of being diagnosed
with PTSD, probably ‘as a result of past violence, bereavement and
dislocation’ (Herlihy and Turner 2007). Following Steel et al. (1999),
Silove et al. (1997) and Herlihy and Turner (2007), we argue that the
recollecting, wording and relating of their painful experiences may be
highly troubling for asylum seekers, especially those suffering from
PTSD. The unwilling and unwitting repression of traumatic experiences
may incite ‘dissociative [ . . . ] or conversion reactions’ (Christianson

and Safer 1996, 220). PTSD, Papadopoulos (2002) points out, is ‘a
medical concept’ that charts these embodied reactions. Symptoms of
PTSD are divided into three main categories: (1) reliving traumatic
experiences, (2) avoiding situations that may remind of the traumatic
event and (3) being highly alert and easily aroused. Asylum seekers
suffering from PTSD are likely to face problems related to recollections
of traumatic memories and the integration of these memories into a
coherent and consistent life story. In this paragraph, we discuss the
obstacles an asylum seeker suffering from PTSD may face in disclosing
autobiographical memories such as those required as part of the asylum
request described earlier.
Autobiographical memories are ‘temporary mental representations’,
that are constructed in the process of their recollection (Conway 1996,
67). To retain coherence in people’s life stories, Conway (2005) argues,
these memories ‘may be altered, distorted, even fabricated’. Traumatic
autobiographical memories, Rubin et al. (2011) assert, in many ways
resemble general autobiographical memories. Herlihy and Turner
(2007) point out that some traumatic memories are verbally accessible
while others are only situationally accessible. Verbally accessible memories
of trauma are ‘consciously retrievable and integrated with other autobio-
graphical memories’ (Herlihy and Turner 2007, 269). Situationally acces-
sible memories of trauma, however, are unintegrated. These vivid,
focused, fragmented and unexplicable memories may suddenly reappear
in nightmares or flashbacks, or they may be triggered by associated sensory
experiences, body positions or gestures. A victim may be overwhelmed by
the situated ‘smells, sounds or images’ (Herlihy and Turner 2007) that
constitute these memories, without understanding their meaning. As we
show in our discussion of selected research diary fragments, everyday
objects at the ASRC associated with traumatic events may suddenly take
asylum seekers back to places in their country of origin, bound up with
the fearful, shameful or guilt-ridden memories of these events. Through
remembering the place of a traumatic event, Morrissey (2012, 191–192)
points out, a victim may ‘encounter the fear and the horror’, experienced
at the time of the event. Situationally accessible memories, Herlihy and
Turner (2007, 269) argue, are ‘strongly associated with emotion’.
Conway (2005) points out that intense feelings of guilt, fear or anger,
experienced by a victim of PTSD, may in fact prevent a victim from
understanding the traumatic event s/he went through. S/he may memor-
ize the event from an imaginary, outside perspective. A traumatic event,
Caruth (2001) argues, is experienced ‘one moment too late’. Due to ‘a
lack of preparedness’ (Caruth 2001). At the moment of the event, a victim
is unable to grasp its horrific meaning. Although the event is registered
and stored within his or her body, its meaning continues to elude the
victim’s mind. As Shuman and Bohmer (2004, 396) point out, many
traumatized asylum seekers are not inclined to ‘describe the trauma at all,
or do so only in the most general terms’. Making asylum seekers word a
trauma and grasp its meaning may be painful. Faced with this task, asylum
seekers may unconsciously avoid touching upon those memories that
disrupt their body and mind: their body may prevent them from speaking;
their mind may screen off those experiences that are too painful, or too
shameful, to disclose.
Witnessing the Speaking Body
In the previous paragraphs, we described an asylum seeker’s identity

work in the context of his or her procedure. An asylum seeker’s identity
in border-space, we argued, is a discursive identity. In order to define
this identity, an asylum seeker is made to speak of those sufferings that
are relevant according to a general set of rules established in the Dutch
Aliens Act. His or her ‘speaking position’ (Lechte and Margaroni 2004,
24), however, may be undermined. As described in the previous section,
an asylum seeker’s words and narratives may be troubled or even
obstructed by symptoms of PTSD. Embodied responses, proceeding
from the unconscious repression of traumatic memories, may seize an
asylum seeker from within. Due to such (involuntary) responses his or
her identity work is caught in a state of conflict. In this paragraph, we
focus on an asylum seeker’s conflictual identity work, following
Kristeva’s thoughts on the becoming of identity.
The subject, Julia Kristeva asserts, is emerging. Central to her under-
standing of a subject’s emergence is the ongoing disruption and
reconstruction of identities. Identities, she argues, are fragile narrative

constructions that may be disrupted and affected by unspoken embodied
experiences. Identity work is a conscious as well as an unconscious process.
Although this process takes place in language, it involves the body as well as
the mind. Identity work oscillates in-between two contesting domains of
signification; the symbolic and the semiotic.
The symbolic is a normative domain. Through the symbolic domain,
Kristeva asserts, a subject internalizes and gives voice to social as well as
linguistic rules and conventions. As Oliver (2003, 38) points out, the
symbolic domain is the representational dimension of language, ‘associated
with the grammar or structure of language’. Oliver conceives of the symbolic
as the domain of the law; a law, whose rules and conventions evoke and
constrain a subject’s narrative representations of his or her identities.
The semiotic is an affective domain. Through this domain, that is
secreted in the body, a subject’s unspoken experiences may articulate
themselves in unintended gestures and pre-verbal utterances; articula-
tions that may enforce, interrupt or disturb a subject’s speech and
challenge his or her conscious identity work. ‘[T]he social, speaking
subject’ is marked by ‘experiences of suffering or jouissance’
(Margaroni 2005, 81). Oliver et al. (2003, 38) points out that the
semiotic is the embodied dimension of language, ‘associated with [ . . . ]
rhythm and tone’. Although semiotic articulations are pre-verbal and
embodied, they are meaningful; through these articulations a subject’s
unspoken experiences may be traced.
Identity work involves the pre-verbal as well as the verbal dimension
of language; an identity emerges in-between a subject’s narrated self and
his or her embodied expressions. Kristeva stresses that the emergence of
identity is ongoing and conflictual. In order to explain the violent
processes that are at work in-between the semiotic and the symbolic
domain, Kristeva introduces the concept of negativity. Kramer (2013)
defines negativity as a force that opens passages in-between the semiotic
and the symbolic domain and passages that expose a subject’s narrated
self to his or her unspoken and potential painful embodied experiences.
Even when these experiences themselves remain hidden from a subject’s
conscious mind, they may incite violent embodied responses; responses
that disrupt his or her speaking position.
Lechte and Margaroni (2004, 27) deploy Matisse’s painting of the

sword swallower to illustrate the violent nature of negativity. They define
the swallowed sword as ‘an instrument of [ . . . ] “negativity”’ that tears
open a subject’s emotional wounds and exposes him or her to the
embodied responses springing from these wounds. Memory practices,
deployed in the context of the Dutch asylum procedure, may be con-
ceived as instruments of negativity that urge asylum seeker to face
experiences that ‘have remained unspeakably close to [the] body’
(Smith 2003, 135); subject asylum seekers to fierce embodied responses,
caused by the repression of these experiences; disrupt their words and
narratives and persist to question their identities.
Although these memory practices aim to expose an asylum seeker’s
autobiographical experiences, the officials, lawyers, interpreters and
social workers involved in these practices, seem to be in no position to
witness the non-verbal traces of these experiences.
Reflecting on her observations in clinical practices for survivors of
political violence, McKinney (2007) points out that a traumatized
individual has a need to be heard. In order to start a healing process,
it is of vital importance to break ‘the collective silence’ (McKinney
2007, 275) surrounding a trauma; a silence that is ‘complicit with
violence’ (McKinney 2007). The collective denial of a traumatic
experience, she argues, may well lead to secondary traumatization.
Although a traumatized asylum seeker may be unable to verbalize a
traumatic experience, s/he may leave traces of this experience in his or
her gestures, tears and speech. The body, Kristeva argues, speaks in an
emotional, pre-verbal language. Its ‘pulses, impressions, sufferings and
ecstacies’ (Kristeva 1999, 65, authors’ translation) leave traces that
testify to unspoken memories. A traumatized asylum seeker,
McKinney (2007) stresses, is in need of a witness who follows and
interprets these ambiguous pre-verbal traces; someone who may help
an asylum seeker to create a living, evolving testimony that integrates
the verbal and pre-verbal manifestations of his or her experiences and
condemns the injustice and harm that was done.
Officials of the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service
(IND), entrusted with the task of producing an unequivocal report
concerning an asylum seeker’s victimization, tend to be far from
equipped and in no position to fulfill this need. In particular asylum

cases, Fassin and d’Halluin (2007, 305) point out, the pre-verbal traces
of an asylum seeker’s traumatic experiences are rarely recognized as
‘reliable proof’. An IND official has no choice but to question an
asylum seeker’s words and narratives over and over again until the
asylum seeker’s border-space identity is established in a factual, con-
sistent, coherent and objective report; a report, however, that may
silence an asylum seeker’s speaking body and sacrifice the trauma
that urged this body to speak.
Disturbing Practices
The following analyses are based on entries to the research diary. The
excerpts concern separate meetings in the context of Clemens’ partici-
pant observation with two asylum seekers; Alice and Laurent, at the
DCR. The excerpts focus on critical moments during these meetings;
moments in which painful memories are evoked. The inter-related
analyses aim to provide insights into the ways Alice’s and Laurent’s
identity work is affected by memory practices, deployed in the context
of the Dutch extended asylum procedure. In order to structure the
analyses, we developed five themes. These themes are highly personal
and specific. They are based on entries to the research diary that reflect
our personal interpretations of Clemens’ meetings with Alice and
Laurent; excerpts that focus on Alice’s and Laurent’s narratives,
recounted in the specific context of a Dutch ASRC. By grounding
these analyses in theories concerning the spatial and psychological
impact of memory practices as well as in the professional framework
of Clemens’ longstanding work at the DCR, important insights are
obtained. At least to some degree, these findings may be transferable in
order to understand the very personal and potentially vehement impact
of memory practices, applied in border-space.
The analyses are structured around the following themes:
• Relive discusses the sudden intrusions of traumatic experiences, evoked

by everyday materialities in the context of the ASRC; intrusions that
may disturb a traumatized asylum seeker’s sense of ‘self-coherence’

(Barclay 1996, 97);
• Isolate discusses the predominance of traumatic experiences in an
asylum seeker’s memories and life expectancies, invigorated by the
procedure’s tendency to place these experiences at the very heart of his
or her border-space identity;
• Seek refuge discusses oppressive circumstances in the ASRC that urge
a traumatized asylum seeker to seek a temporary physical or imaginary
refuge; circumstances that are amplified by symptoms of PTSD;
• Interrupt discusses embodied responses to memory practices in
the context of the ASRC; responses that disrupt a traumatized
asylum seeker’s ability to speak of painful experiences s/he went
through;
• Rule out discusses the exclusion of a traumatized asylum seeker’s pre-
verbal language, pointing at embodied experiences of violence and
persecution, from the written hearing reports and the judgments on
asylum requests, based on these reports.
Before elaborating on these themes, we introduce Alice and Laurent

in the context of their life in the ASRC as a part of the extended asylum
procedure. As noted earlier, for reasons of confidentiality, names, dates,
places and specific contents of Alice’s and Laurent’s sufferings are
anonymized.
Laurent (pseudonym) is a young male asylum seeker from Central
Africa. As his deceased father used be a clergyman, Laurent grew up in
a religious family. During his stay in the Netherlands, Laurent found a
way to continue his religious practices. On Sundays, he often takes the
bus to a nearby village in order to follow a divine service. Laurent
speaks Dutch. When he arrived in the Netherlands, he was categorized
as an ‘Unaccompanied Minor Foreign National’, meaning that he was
received in a special accommodation for underaged asylum seekers, and
was allowed to go to school. Two years before the meetings described
in the research diary, when Laurent’s first asylum request was denied,
the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) demanded that he
would return to his native country. Laurent refused and made a second
request. From the moment Laurent turned 18, he lost his right of
education. He was staged in the extended asylum procedure and

transferred to an ASRC. Here, Laurent lives in an apartment together
with three male fellow countrymen. Laurent is diagnosed with PTSD.
He tends to forget appointments, as he often lies awake until three or
four o’clock in the night and wakes up at two o’clock in the afternoon.
Usually Laurent and Clemens met in a consulting room of the DCR
(see Fig. 8.3), located within the compound of the ASRC in order to
discuss his asylum procedure. An asylum seeker, who intends to make a
repeated asylum request, is required to put forward ‘new facts and
circumstances’ (Dutch Council for Refugees 2010, 113), concerning
his or her asylum case. In his second asylum request, Laurent put forward
a letter from the governor of his native province and a statement from his
psychologist. The two documents validate Laurent’s diagnosis of PTSD,
confirm his traumatic memories of the riots that led to his father’s death
and frame these riots in the political context of his native country. Based
on these documents, his lawyer stated that Laurent proves to be person-
ally affected by the deficient safety- and human rights conditions in his
native country, and that it would be profoundly inhumane to send him
back. At the moment of the meetings described in the research diary,
Laurent’s second asylum request is denied by the IND. The negative
decision states that Laurent’s second asylum request does not contain any
new facts and circumstances that would make them review their earlier
negative decision. As Laurent refused to return to his native country
previously, the IND intends to impose a two year entry ban. Soon he will
be invited by the Service of Repatriation and Departure, in order to
discuss the preparations for his departure to his country of origin. If he
decides to cooperate, Laurent will be transferred to a centre with
restricted movement. If, however, he will state that he does not intend
to return, Laurent will lose his right of residence, as well as his weekly
allowance. In that case, it will be a matter of weeks before he will be
evicted from the ASRC, or transferred to a removal centre. In the research
diary, Clemens describes eight meetings, taking place in a period of three
months. During these meetings Laurent appears to be very tired of his
year-long legal struggle with the IND. Yet, he repeatedly makes it clear to
both his lawyer and Clemens that he is not going to give up the fight for
the acknowledgment of his need of protection.
Fig. 8.3 Identity stored away in closets and drawers at the counter of the
DCR
Source: By Bernardt
Alice (pseudonym) is a female West African asylum seeker. She is a

young mother. Together with her child, Alice fled the maltreatments
she endured at her husband’s house in her native country. As she
expected no legal protection for her husband’s violence, Alice decided
to leave the country with the aid of an illegal travel agent. As she was
unable to take her young child with her on her desperate flight, Alice
secretly entrusted her child in the care of a friend. Until Clemens’
meetings at the DCR, she has no idea how to contact this friend in
her native country. For half a year she has lived in uncertainty about
her child’s well-being. Although she was able to request asylum in the
Netherlands, her likelihood of obtaining a residence permit is small.
Unable to present the appropriate identity documents, her motiva-
tions to request asylum are ‘under intense scrutiny’ (Dutch Council
for Refugees 2010, 18) by the IND. The eight meetings with Alice,
described in the research diary, cover a period of two-and-a-half
months. During this period Alice lives in an apartment in the
ASRC, together with seven, mainly East African women. As the
meetings with Alice take place at the early beginning of Clemens’
work for the Dutch Council of Refugees, he is accompanied during
some of these meetings by Ria (pseudonym), an experienced collea-
gue. Our conversations, taking place at the DCR, are informed by
Alice’s asylum procedure. Yet, as a result of the traumatic experiences,
Alice has been going through, for example, in her husband’s house,
during her journey to the Netherlands and in her apartment in the
ASRC, the conversations focus on her physical and psychological
well-being. Central to Alice’s psychological problems is the involun-
tary and indeterminate separation from her child. Martin (2012)
points out that an asylum seeker, who had no choice but to leave a
close relative behind during his or her flight, may nevertheless be ‘left
with significant guilt at being the one rescued’. Although, at the time
of our meetings, Alice is not officially diagnosed with PTSD by a
health professional, Ria suspects her to be a victim of trauma. During
one of our meetings, Ria proposes that Alice should complete a
standard questionnaire, called Medical Assistance for Psychological
Problems, used by the DCR to monitor psychological problems.
Alice’s answers to the very direct questions on this ‘early monitoring
list’, concerning among others: depression, heart problems, night-

mares, suppressed memories and suicidal thoughts, seem to confirm
Ria’s expectation. When asked what is still important in her life, Alice
answers that it is only the thought of her child is keeping her upright.
Relive
Relive describes the potential of everyday objects in the context of the

ASRC to mediate in-between Laurent’s and Alice’s past and present.
The following excerpts describe the impact of a letter that announces
Laurent’s forthcoming meeting with the Aliens Police in order to discuss
his eviction from the ASRC; and a stick in the hands of Alice’s house-
mate. Both objects trigger Laurent and Alice to relive painful experi-
ences. The analysis discusses the disturbance of a traumatized asylum
seeker’s sense of ‘self-coherence’ (Barclay 1996, 97), evoked by the
sudden intrusion of these experiences.
Laurent shows me a letter. It’s an invitation for a meeting with the Aliens
Police. ‘I’m afraid of the police’, Laurent says. He rises and pulls up his
jersey, showing the scar on his stomach, close to his belly button. In his
country of origin, he saw with his own eyes how a man got stabbed in his
upper arm, Laurent tells me, while swinging his right hand to his left arm.
(Excerpt from research diary)
Alice starts to cry when she tries to tell me what happened this week.
While Alice used the communal bathroom, her housemate, who has
threatened her before, called her impatiently from the corridor leading
to Alice’s bedroom. The moment Alice left the bathroom and stepped into
the corridor she was hit with a stick. She managed to escape the apartment
and ran to the central reception area, only wearing a bath towel, feeling
terribly ashamed. (Excerpt from research diary)
The letter from the aliens police seems to evoke a chain of bodily
gestures and associations. The moment he shows this letter, Laurent lifts
his jersey and draws attention to the scar on his stomach. The scar, in
turn, seems to arouse Laurent to relive a violent event, that he witnessed
in his native country. He seems to internalize this event by swinging his
arm and stabbing himself with an imaginary knife. The letter, the scar
and the knife are ‘actants’ (Latour 2005, 54) that mediate between
Laurent’s past experiences of violence, his current life in the ASRC,
and the expectations concerning his immediate future. The violent
memories and anxieties, tied up with these different actants, seem to
coincide in his gestures and associations. Together, they cast a shadow
on Laurent’s experience of the present.
The excerpt from the research diary shows that, in the blink of an eye,
a victim of trauma may be carried back to a traumatic event, and to the
emotions tied up with this event. S/he may be confronted with unin-
tegrated, situationally accessible memories. As Herlihy and Turner
(2007, 269) point out, these memories are ‘strongly associated with
emotion’. An everyday object, confronting a victim in his or her current
environment, may trigger ‘intrusive highly detailed episodic memories’
(Conway 2005, 619). Like the letter, the scar and the knife affect
Laurent, the stick in the hands of Alice’s female housemate is capable
of opening a passage in-between two episodes in Alice’s life; her life in
her apartment at the ASRC and her life ‘at home’ in her native country.
The present experience of this object is charged with memories. It
mediates between anxious, fearful, perhaps even shameful events, taking
place during both these episodes. One’s lived experience of the present,
Wetherell (2012, 85) argues, may not match ‘the active chronological
moment’. The present, she suggests, may be lived and experienced as an
extended moment. In lived experience, the ‘tiny segments’ (Wetherell
2012, 85) of chronological time are imbued with memories, expecta-
tions and emotions. Each lived moment comprises flows of memorized
and expected events, associated in ways that transcend their chronolo-
gical succession.
‘Lived moments’, Jones and Garde-Hansen (2012, 10) argue,
‘interact’. Moments, experienced within the seemingly confined
time-space of the ASRC, may interact with painful or traumatic
moments, experienced in an asylum seeker’s native country, or during
his or her troubled journey. These interactions, taking place within the
extended present, tend to be both unpredictable and inexplicable for a
victim of trauma. Barclay (1996) argues that a victim’s inability to
evaluate and understand the traumatic event s/he went through, evokes
‘a lack of self-coherence’. A traumatized victim, Barclay points out, may

develop ‘a sense of two selves’ (Barclay 1996, 120). The research diary
excerpts indicate how, within one and the same extended moment Alice
and Laurent may move back and forth: in between past experiences of
guilt or violence and current experiences of life in the ASRC; in-between
their coherent narrative selves and their unconveyable embodied experi-
ences; in-between current sensory experiences and the sounds, images or
smells, tied up to their traumatic experiences; in-between living and
reliving.
Isolate
Isolate describes Laurent’s feeling of loss and desolation, evoked by the

announcement of the Service of Repatriation and Departure that he has
to leave the ASRC. This announcement seems to disturb his life expec-
tancies and throw him back to the traumatic loss of his parents. The
following analysis discusses the predominance of traumatic experiences
in an asylum seeker’s memories and life expectancies, invigorated by the
procedure’s tendency to place these experiences at the very heart of his or
her identity work.
‘I have no father or mother anymore’, Laurent says, ‘nobody. I can leave

any moment, not here, from the centre, or from this country, but . . . ’. He
waves his hands. (Excerpt from research diary)
Showing the scar on his stomach, Laurent states that he is victi-

mized by the failed attempt on the life of his father. The violent string
of events, following this attempt, tore Laurent away from his every-
day life and the life expectancies, that belonged to, and to some
degree made up his familiar context. The disruption of an asylum
seeker’s everyday life and the uncertainties concerning his or life
expectancies, Martin (2012) points out, may evoke a sense of ‘loss
of identity and cultural context, along with experiences engendering
helplessness and hopelessness’.
By nature a traumatic event is unexpected and far reaching. It is an

excess in a victim’s everyday life that tends ‘to violate’ (Berntsen and
Rubin 2007, 417) his or her life course. Berntsen and Rubin (2007)
suggest that a trauma may be experienced as a ‘central turning point’
(420) in a victim’s life course. The experience of a traumatic event is
likely to affect a victim’s memories and expectations of life, to the
extent that these memories and expectations seem to revolve around
the event. The experience of a trauma as a turning point in life may
urge a victim to identify entirely with his or her trauma. Berntsen and
Rubin argue that the more radically this turning point deviates a
victim’s life course, the more a trauma victim may feel alienated from
his or her social context. A trauma, experienced this way, may arouse
feelings of ‘social isolation and stigmatization’ and urge a victim to
adopt ‘the social role of being a trauma victim’ (Berntsen and Rubin
2007). An asylum seeker’s ‘feelings of alienation and isolation’, Silove
et al. (1997, 356) point out, may aggravate ‘ongoing PTSD symp-
toms’. Going through these feelings is a form of secondary
victimization.
Laurent’s words; I am victim (excerpt from research diary), express pain
and despair. His words reflect his current state in-between primary and
secondary victimization; torn between the pain in his stomach that
reminds him of his deceased father and his feelings of isolation. On
the one hand Laurent’s words express his personal and traumatic experi-
ence of being victimized by the poison that was meant for his father. On
the other hand Laurent is making a statement. He desperately reasserts
his claim to be acknowledged as a refugee; as a victim of extreme and
arbitrary violence. ‘Portraying’ oneself as a victim, Shuman and Bohmer
(2004, 403) argue, ‘is the necessary price of asylum’. In order to be
acknowledged as a refugee, Laurent is urged to focus his memories and
his expectations on the traumatic episode that transformed his life.
However, by focusing on the horrific loss he experienced, Laurent
alienates himself from what is left of his social context. Without the
presence of his father and mother, he seems convinced there is no one
that could dissuade him from leaving this world. The more the IND
questions his need of protection; the more Laurent internalizes his role
as a victim of trauma; the more he seems to isolate himself.
Seek Refuge
Seek Refuge discusses oppressive circumstances in the ASRC that may

urge a traumatized asylum seeker to seek refuge in a fragile physical
sanctuary within the compound of the ASRC or to retreat to a ‘sanc-
tioned space’ (Papadopoulos 2002, 33), made up of stories belonging
to a victim’s sense of home and identity. The paragraph below
describes Alice’s withdrawal to her bedroom in the apartment at the
ASRC and Laurent’s withdrawal to his religious identity. In the fol-
lowing analysis, we discuss the reliving, avoidance and arousal symp-
toms of PTSD that amplify the impact of oppressive circumstances in
the ASRC and urge a traumatized asylum seeker to seek a temporary
physical or imaginary space of refuge.
Alice tells us that her house is continuously full of East African people. She
fears them and stays in her room as much as possible. [ . . . ] She has fled
her country as she didn’t feel safe at home. Now here, in the Netherlands,
she has to confront these fears yet again. (Excerpt from research diary)
Instead of a therapeutic environment that would offer Alice a sense

of ‘safety, peace, hope, healing or rest’ (Bondi and Fewell 2003, 541),
Alice’s living conditions in the ASRC arouse feelings of anxiety and
fear. Her basic need of a safe refuge is undermined by her East African
housemates, who may be unaware of the full impact of their threats
and maltreatments. The symptoms, related to Alice’s suffering of
PTSD, may amplify this impact.
Rubin et al. (2011, 841) point out that the three basic categories of
symptoms of PTSD concern the unvoluntary reliving of traumatic
experiences; the avoidance of ‘thoughts, conversations, or situations’
that evoke the reliving of these experiences; and arousal, triggered by
situations that may seem unrelated to the original traumatic experi-
ence. As Rubin et al. point out, the arousal symptoms involve ‘hyper-
vigilance’ and ‘increased startle responses’ (Rubin et al. 2011). Due to
these arousal symptoms, related to her psychological sufferings, Alice
may be strongly affected by the presence of her housemates. By seeking
refuge in her bedroom, Alice not only seems to avoid the threats and
maltreatments of her housemates, she may also try to avoid reliving

the fearful experiences that led to her trauma. Her refuge, however,
is a fragile one. Like most asylum seekers living in the ASRC, Alice
shares her bedroom. The spatial layout of the apartment makes it
hard to avoid confrontations with her housemates. As we showed
earlier, Alice has to cross the corridor on her way from the commu-
nal bathroom to her bedroom, leaving her exposed to the violence of
these housemates.
PTSD, Papadopoulos (2002) argues, is ‘a medical concept [that]
focuses on the symptoms of one individual’. He stresses that the cause
of an asylum seeker’s trauma cannot be reduced to one isolated trau-
matic event. Instead, the wounds that cause these symptoms tend to be
inflicted by a complex string of events that covers a victim’s anticipation
of violence; his or her actual experience of violence; the uncertainty s/he
is going through during the asylum procedure and the ‘adjustment [ . . . ]
to a new life in the receiving country’ (Papadopoulos 2002, 27). By
tearing an asylum seeker away from his or home, family and community,
this string of events undermines his or her sense of belonging. The
absence of a sense of belonging, Papadopoulos argues, evokes feelings
of disorientation, as ‘people lose something they were not aware they
had’ (Papadopoulos 2002, 18). The complex string of events, that
caused Alice’s trauma, has torn Alice’s self-evident connection with her
child. Longing for her child Alice seems trapped in her troubled refuge.
Under his brown leather jacket, Laurent wears a chainlet with wooden
beads and a small wooden cross. [ . . . ] ‘My father was a clergyman’,
Laurent says. ‘Sometimes I read in the bible’. He points to his head,
saying: ‘Only God knows what is going on in my heart and my mind’.
‘You have to go’, Laurent is told. While his confrontations with the
Aliens Police incite vivid recollections of traumatic experiences in his
native country, his meetings with the Service of Repatriation and
Departure bear the threat of being forced to return to this country.
He is captured in-between the traumatic experiences, that he went
through in his country of origin, and the ever-looming revival of these
experiences at the ASRC. Laurent has no idea where to go. Having lost
any sense of belonging, Laurent puts his trust in God.
The healing process of an asylum seeker, suffering from trauma, may start
with recreating ‘primary conditions of home’ (Papadopoulos 2002, 34).
These conditions, Papadopoulos suggests, may be found in an asylum
seeker’s community stories and family narratives. Around these stories and
narratives, he argues, a traumatic victim may develop a ‘sanctioned space’
(Papadopoulos 2002, 33). This imaginary space may provide a ‘vantage
point’ (Papadopoulos 2002) from which a traumatic victim may direct all his
or her energy to ‘digest the impact of [his or her] losses’; ‘to mourn the dead’;
‘reassess’ life (Papadopoulos 2002); and to regain a sense of belonging.
Laurent’s identities seem to revolve around the loss of his loved ones.
In order to cope with the unspeakable emptiness in his life, Laurent
seems to seek refuge in his religious identity. A religious identity, Mercer
(2002) asserts, may temporarily help a person, going through feelings of
loss and abandonment, to go on living. His religious identity may
provide Laurent with indispensable support in order to regain, or re-
establish a sense of home. By wearing his chainlet and reading stories in
the bible, Laurent seems to recreate a sanctioned space. He seems to
withdraw into a refuge that allows him to connect with God and his
father, who was a clergyman. To Laurent, this connection is pure,
truthful and real. His religious identity allows him to share his most
intimate and terrifying thoughts. It gives him strength and a sense of self.
Interrupt
Interrupt describes Alice’s associations and fierce embodied responses to

questions posed during our meetings at the Dutch Council for Refugees
(DCR). The subsequent analysis discusses embodied responses to mem-
ory practices in the context of the ASRC; responses that disrupt a
traumatized asylum seeker’s ability to speak of painful experiences s/he
went through.
I ask Alice if there is any possibility to contact a relative or a friend in her

native country; someone who could send her the identity documents she
left at home during her flight. She really needs these documents in order
to have a chance in the asylum procedure. Alice starts to cry. She tells me
that she is afraid of her husband. [ . . . ] ‘“When I have to go back they will
kill me”’, she says. (Excerpt from research diary)
When she is posed a question about the father of her child, Alice starts to
sob. Then she breaks out in cries, now and then pointing at her chest.
Five of the eight meetings with Alice are interrupted at moments when
she finds it difficult to talk; when she gets tears in her eyes and starts to cry.
Two interruptions occur when Alice is urged to contact family or friends in
her native country, in order to obtain the identity documents she left at
home during her escape. Both of these interruptions seem to be associated
with vehement memories and anxieties; with her deep concern for the well-
being of her child; and with her ongoing fear of her husband. One
interruption is related to Alice’s health problems, frequent nightmares
and sleeplessness. The two other interruptions concern the fearful, and
sometimes shameful events, taking place at her apartment in the ASRC.
Alice’s sudden ‘changes of mood’ (Rubin et al. 2011, 841) during these five
meetings; her tears and the pain in her chest, seem to be connected to
‘reliving symptoms’ of PTSD; symptoms that are invigorated by memory
practices in the context of the ASRC as a part of the asylum procedure.
These memory practices, we argue, may be conceived of instruments
of negativity. Kristeva’s understanding of the concept of negativity,
Lechte and Margaroni (2004) point out, explains interactions between
two contesting domains of signification; the semiotic and the symbolic.
A subject’s symbolic representations; his or her words and narratives,
they argue, may be violently affected by experiences that are secreted
deep in his or her body. Touching upon these experiences may incite
fierce embodied reactions.
The DCR’s advice to obtain the ‘necessary’ identity documents, left in
the house of her violent husband, and the threats and maltreatments of her
housemates seem to touch upon partly unspoken, embodied experiences,
related to Alice’s child, her horrific journey and her life ‘at home’. Alice’s
efforts to remember, word and relate these experiences seem to be cut off by
violent ‘dissociative’ and ‘conversion reactions’ (Christianson and Safer

1996, 220); embodied reactions that interrupt Alice’s ability to speak.
Rule Out
Rule Out describes Laurent’s pre-verbal expressions of his traumatic

experiences. The analysis discusses the exclusion of these embodied
traces of an asylum seeker’s traumatic experiences from the written
hearing reports and the judgments on asylum requests, based on these
reports.
Laurent rises. He pulls up his jersey and shows me a scar on his stomach.
‘My intestines are ruined’, he says, ‘I drank the poisoned water that was
meant for my father’. He moves vehemently and seems to point at his
native country. Then he shrinks and points with two hands to his chest. ‘I
am victim’, he says. ‘The Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND)
isn’t interested in my health problems. They just follow the rules.’
Although Laurent speaks Dutch, he does not understand the reasons

for the denial of his second asylum request. He is frustrated, as the
IND decision, concerning this request, does not seem to recognize the
violence faced by his family and himself. Laurent’s struggle for the
acknowledgment of his need of protection is fought by means of legal
statements and counter-statements. As Jacquemet (2009) points out,
the words that these statements are made of show few traces of an
asylum seeker’s own embodied experiences. Laurent is confronted with
a standardized and normative symbolic order, ‘where symbols have
been detached from affect, where the meaning of words has been
detached from the meaning of life, from what matters’ (Oliver 2003,
41). What matters for Laurent is his trauma. The scar on his stomach
symbolizes the loss of his father. Yet, the trauma that underlies this scar
cannot really be represented in the symbolic order of legal statements.
All Laurent can do is to point toward the sources of his grief; far away
in his native country, and deep in his own body. While trying to
signify these sources, Laurent gets stuck. His passionate gestures speak
of his trauma. Yet, he is unable to word the gestures of his speaking
body. Laurent’s utterings get stuck in a threshold; in-between the pre-
verbal and verbal signification of his traumatic experiences.
Speaking, Kristeva (1999) argues, is an embodied, as well as a mental
activity. The body possesses an emotional language that is considered
both intimate and strange. It is a pre-verbal language that leaves traces of
repressed experiences, articulates these experiences and gives them a
provisional meaning that is immediately felt as necessary, precious and
truthful. However, understanding and wording this pre-verbal language
is, to a large degree, beyond a traumatized victim’s own control. In order
to know and understand a traumatic event, a traumatized victim needs a
witness; someone who may ‘listen’ to his or her speaking body and may
help the victim to give personal meaning to the event. McKinney (2007)
states that a trauma story alone cannot reflect the past experiences that
constitute a trauma. She argues that only by carefully witnessing a
victim’s pre-verbal language, may the significance of the victim’s story
be grasped.
As long as the asylum procedure’s rules and regulations fail to enable
IND officials to grasp a traumatized asylum seeker’s pre-verbal language,
to allow these officials to include this language in their written hearing
reports and to recognize the ‘marks left in the depths of the psyche’
(Fassin and d’Halluin 2007, 304) as legitimate proof, apparently frag-
mented, irrelevant, incoherent and inconsistent stories of the asylum
seeker’s sufferings may be unjustly ruled out.
Discussion
In the previous paragraphs we showed: (1) that fierce intrusions of
fragmented traumatic experiences may be evoked by everyday materi-
alities in the context of the ASRC. We argued that the stick in the
hands of Alice’s housemate may open a passage in-between her apart-
ment at the ASRC and the house of her violent husband, and that the
letter, inviting Laurent to visit the office of the aliens police in the
ASRC, seems to make him relive a vehement experience of police
violence in his native country; (2) that the predominance of traumatic

experiences in an asylum seeker’s memories and uncertain life expec-
tancies may be invigorated by the procedure’s tendency to place these
experiences at the very heart of his or her border-space identity; (3) that
oppressive circumstances in the context of the ASRC, amplified by
symptoms of PTSD, may coerce an asylum seeker to withdraw to a
physical space of refuge or to retreat to an imaginary, ‘sanctioned space’
(Papadopoulos 2002, 33) made up of community stories, family nar-
ratives and memories of home; (4) that a traumatized asylum seeker’s
ability to speak of his or her sufferings may be disrupted by embodied
responses to questions posed as part of these memory practices; and (5)
that a traumatized asylum seeker’s pre-verbal language, pointing at
embodied experiences of violence and persecution, tends to be excluded
from an asylum seeker’s border-space identity.
Tracing a traumatized asylum seeker’s memories, we conclude, may
vehemently disturb his or her identity work, undermine efforts to regain
a sense of self and aggravate an asylum seeker’s existential loss of ‘home
and safety’ (Martin 2012, 19). For this reason, we argue that current
memory practices require a stronger ethics of care. Among others, these
ethics involve an ongoing ‘attentiveness’ (Martin 2012) to the power
hierarchies and the cultural and bureaucratic assumptions in border-
space that effectuate the framing of an asylum seeker’s identities, as well
as an ongoing ‘responsiveness’ (Martin 2012) to an asylum seeker’s need
to give meaning to the unspoken, embodied traces that speak of his or
her traumatic experiences.
In the remainder of this chapter, we will build upon Julia Kristeva’s
realm of thought in order to open a discussion on these ethics and their
implications for memory practices as part of the Dutch asylum proce-
dure, in the knowledge that these ethics require continuous negotiation
in the everyday context of border-space.
Kristeva (1996, 50) associates the difficult process of retracing ‘a mem-
ory buried in the unconscious’ with an ‘anamnesis’. Instead of conceiving
this process as a recollection; as a ‘simple repetition of what has taken place’
(Kristeva 1996), she stresses the importance of a traumatized victim’s open-
minded search for a thorough, new and personal perspective on his or her
memories. The mental and embodied resignification of these memories
may be the start of a long and difficult healing process; a process that
eventually may lead to a victim’s ‘rebirth’ (Kristeva 1996, 51).
Building on Bondi and Fewell (2003), we argue that a traumatized
asylum seeker should, at least to some degree, be allowed to control the
terms of his or her healing process. Instead of capturing an asylum seeker
in a confined space of painful and unspeakable memories and continu-
ously throwing him or her back on these memories, an asylum seeker
should be enabled to control the space and pace in which s/he needs to
come to terms with his or her memories, to negotiate the limits to which
s/he will voice them and to integrate the ‘physical and mental, outer and
inner, rational and emotional, [fantasized and real]’ (Bondi and Fewell
2003, 543) aspects of these memories. In order to integrate these
different aspects, a traumatized asylum seeker is in need of a witness;
someone who enables the asylum seeker to regain a sense of self by
following the pre-verbal and verbal traces of these memories.
As noted in the introduction, the ASRC is a border-space, ‘set aside’
(Philo 2011, 4) to throw up boundaries between ‘citizens and strangers’
(Ricoeur 2010, 41). Traumatized asylum seekers, we argue, are in need of
citizens who are willing and able to cross these boundaries and create a
‘caring, giving space’ (Darling 2011, 410), by sharing the burden of facing
these asylum seekers’ painful memories and giving them new meaning.
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Clemens Bernardt is a doctoral research candidate at the department of

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defends the rights of refugees to a fair asylum procedure.
Bettina van Hoven is Associate Professor of Cultural Geography at the

University of Groningen (Netherlands). Her research, broadly speaking, addresses
how people connect to places, and how places affect people. She is particularly
interested in processes and experiences of inclusion and exclusion and how these
affect people’s everyday lives and identities. Her publications include those in
Environment and Planning D, Area, Journal of Rural Studies and Geoforum.
Paulus Huigen is Professor of Cultural Geography at the Faculty of Spatial

Sciences of Groningen University, the Netherlands. His research interests
include: rural areas, tourism geographies, nature-culture relations as well as
geographies of identities and belonging.
9
Disavowing ‘the’ Prison
Sarah Armstrong and Andrew M. Jefferson
Resisting ‘the’ Prison

This chapter confronts the idea of ‘the’ prison, that is, prison as a fixed
entity. However hard we, that is, prison scholars including ourselves, seek
to deconstruct and critique specific aspects of confinement, there is a
tendency to slip into a default position that envisions the prison as some-
thing given and pre-understood. When it comes to prison our imagina-
tion seems to clog up. It is the political solution to its own failure, and the
We are grateful to Editor Anna Schliehe for useful comments and insights that informed the final
drafting of this chapter, though its limitations remain the responsibility of the authors.
S. Armstrong (*)
Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, University of Glasgow,
Glasgow, Scotland
e-mail: sarah.armstrong@glasgow.ac.uk
A.M. Jefferson
DIGNITY – Danish Institute Against Torture
e-mail: amj@dignityinstitute.dk

238 S. Armstrong and A.M. Jefferson
preferred metaphor for its own representation. In this chapter, we reflect

on this state of affairs, and argue in light of this for a disavowal of ‘the’
prison. We attempt also to practise this disavowal by developing new
angles of critical engagement. We hope the chapter might create space
through which to dissolve the hegemonic and universalising idea of ‘the’
prison. We aim to illustrate some of the problems of representing the
prison, in which taken-for-granted aspects of its description pre-empt and
co-opt critique, trapping us in the conundrum that Stan Cohen lamented:
‘Every attempt I ever made to distance myself from the subject, to criticize
it, even to question its very right to exist, has only got me more involved in
its inner life’ (1988; quoted in Rhodes 2001, 70).
The chapter is framed around two main questions. First, what holds the
prison in place? What conceptual, material, representational and political
practices constitute and entrench a particular prison-as-we-know-it? And
second, what moves the prison out of place? That is, what alternative
conceptualisations, political moves and materialities are required to move
beyond the prison as an empirical institution and a hegemonic conceptual
frame? This is an experimental piece, in which both of us move away from
our comfort zones of focusing on our empirical research on and in prisons.
Instead, we draw on some of these experiences but for another purpose, as
an opportunity to reflect on our own sense of feeling pulled into particular
ways of understanding and talking about ‘the’ prison, and to suggest some
routes out of this. But we recognise that in a book bringing together a range
of chapters on specific and concrete research projects that all in different
ways speak to the themes of carceral geography, this offering sits as a more
speculative and theoretical contribution.
We organise the discussion as follows. First, we share a selection of
our own experiences as researchers to suggest how ‘the’ prison colonises
more than bodies and more than minds confined within its walls; it
appropriates the outsider’s very ability to imagine and critique it. This
begins to clarify why a project of disavowal is called for. Then, we
relate the project of disavowal to the emergent sub-disciplinary cate-
gory of carceral geography itself, using this as an opportunity to begin
engaging our first question – what holds the prison in place? Here, we
propose that it is the way researchers engage with prisons that holds
part of the answer. Various and recent approaches to the carceral have
attempted to gain new traction on a critical examination of carceral

space. And yet the creation of new disciplinary frameworks, which aim
to organise and focus critical efforts at the same time risk entrenching
‘the’ prison. This risk, for us, necessitates a more radical project of
disavowal. To develop this, we introduce a core concept – erasure – as a
means of clearing the ground we find ourselves stuck in. The notion of
erasure, as it was developed by Heidegger and Derrida, addresses the
fundamental tension of needing both to acknowledge and ignore a
thing simultaneously. It offers the possibility for one to recognise the
existence of prison while rejecting ‘the’ prison, to engage in a form of
critique that does not simply extend and reify a particular embodiment
or understanding of an object. Empowered by the notion of erasure, we
then scrutinise three dominant themes of contemporary prison analysis
and critique, namely, agency, authority and mobility/control. These
three themes, we argue, are core aspects of how ‘the’ prison is under-
stood and engaged, and therefore also the sites we target for erasure.
Getting into Prison: Personal Entry Points

Andrew: My interest in prisons is political and analytical and involves a
problematising approach, a desire to understand and explain their
workings and their position and a desire to question, question and
question again. In contrast to my activist colleagues in the torture
prevention business I am interested in prison practices and
dynamics as they are rather than as they ought to be. Most of my
work has focused on prisons in African countries and other non-
western settings where normative externally-driven critiques are the
norm and there is little by way of systematically-gathered emic
knowledge. My work has questioned standardised responses to
prisons in the South (human rights training, naming and shaming
etc.) more than it has questioned prisons themselves. It was during
fieldwork in Sierra Leone that I first realised the degree to which the
prison metaphor dominated my thinking. Here, I saw the structural
oppression and degradation of lives lived in poor urban neighbour-
hoods as a form of confinement neither more or less reprehensible
than the physical confinement in prison that occupants of the slum
were also periodically subjected to. Similarly, I recall discussions

with a colleague as she began research on life in poor urban
neighbourhoods in Delhi, India, originally envisaged as part of a
research programme on sites of confinement. Our early exchanges
featured a degree of mutual misunderstanding as I sought to impose
the prison and the prisons literature as a way of thinking about
confinement more generally and she respectfully resisted. Even
though I was cognizant of the multiplicity and variation of cultures
and sites of confinement (Jefferson et al. under review; Dikötter and
Brown 2007) my grounding in prison studies and my obsession
with the prison clouded my ability to see these other sites of
confinement outside of the terms typically dominating prison stu-
dies and the frame of my own fieldwork. In hindsight I recognise
this as something more than a simple blind spot. It would seem to
have something to do with the power of the prison – as an institu-
tion, idea and representation. The prison captures.
Sarah: I research prisons and am particularly interested in sites of penal
culture, which for me encompass not only the immediate spaces
and experiences of the confined but also the places where such
spaces are planned, debated, regulated and budgeted. What this
means in practice is that I spend a lot of time in offices. My office, a
prison governor’s office, conference halls and seminar rooms. A
recent meeting with a prison official (trying to secure support for a
piece of research I was hoping to do) took place at prison admin-
istration headquarters, one anonymous office building among
others in a bland commercial park on the edge of town. Inside, I
was led through an open plan office space full of people typing,
reading and talking. Some will be working on the routine business
of every work place, processing a payroll or updating a health and
safety notice. Others will be preparing work specific to punishment,
assembling a lifer’s parole file or totting up the annual report on
incidents of assault across the prison system. The prisoners in their
cells will have little awareness of the staff beyond the prison who are
organising their lives and aggregating their experiences. But it is
through the work of these staff that the prison becomes visible to
those in power – the senior managers who craft business plans, the
policy makers who read their reports, the researchers who use their
statistics. They produce penal reality and experience.
On reflection I came to recognize this ordinary, generic office

setting and the conversation within it as prison, too, and not in
the metaphorical sense that work and its spaces can feel like
punishment or confinement. It is in these settings that ‘the’ prison
and its prisoners as objects for analysis and control are partly
constituted. Contestable claims about the nature of prisoners
and prisons are buried as these are turned into taken for granted
assumptions and recapitulated endlessly through banal bureau-
cratic practices. Without the work that happens in these unthrea-
tening rooms, the part of the prison that consists of bars and cells
and bodies could not exist. As we discussed in our meeting on the
proposed research, we engaged in a kind of dance. Both sides
attempted to coordinate their interests in and understandings of
the prison with the other. Each side kept talking, drawing in more
and more of the vocabulary of the other in order that what each
was trying to say could be legible to and harmonized with the
partner. Together we were talking the prison into existence.
The bureaucratic spaces and discourses of punishment rarely
are visible in prisons research and we know little about how
their power, dynamic and scale interact with immediate set-
tings of confinement. These are the places where the dramas on
the wing are processed and documented and addressed through
policies and reports. The unprecedented expansion of prison
populations in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has been
cause for concern, activism and study. But the concomitant
growth in bureaucratic and research infrastructures dedicated
to prisons has largely gone unnoticed and unexamined. The
prison hides itself. This raises the question: What other spaces,
relationships and concepts – beyond immediate settings of
confinement – are part of prison, what else holds it together?
Carceralising Geographies
The detention, confinement, incarceration or quarantine of human
beings is always a political practice, an expression of power with real
and symbolic effects, reflecting deep-seated beliefs about the very foun-
dations of social life. Scholarly attention given to sites of confinement
continues to expand. This attention can be observed within and across a
variety of disciplines and is evidenced in academic journals, networks,

websites, blogs and so on (e.g. EASA’s anthropology of confinement
network http://easaonline.org/networks/confinementnet/index.shtml;
http://bordercriminologies.law.ox.ac.uk/ and www.carceralgeography.
com). Operating within a highly politicised field these projects arguably
are a response to an increasingly urgent demand to make sense of
changing ‘governscapes’ and changing articulations of ‘sovereign prac-
tice’ (Stepputat 2013) of which confining practices seem an unques-
tioned, sometimes even unquestionable, part.
Of course, prisons have always been of significance to the social sciences
because they represent the expression of power and vividly express social
relations of domination and subordination as well as the relation between
state and subject. However, while Foucault’s connection of scientific and
carceral disciplines has long been recognised and accepted, this connection
rarely is reflected on and investigated in prison studies. If the organisation
of the knowledge disciplines is partly what produces the disciplinary
subject of the prison(er) (the deviant and the other), then a core part of
research on the prison ought to be into how the social sciences are part of
what holds these relations of power in place. Resonating with Foucault’s
ideas about the productivity of power knowledge, Law and Urry (2004,
391) argue that the social sciences ‘do not simply describe the world as it is,
but also enact it’. They give the example of public opinion as a social
phenomenon that did not exist before the tool used to measure it – the
public opinion survey (2004, 393). Following this line of thinking, the
methods of studying prisons and prisoners participate in creating not only
a social but a concrete material reality. One of us (Armstrong 2013) has
written that the effect of forecasting prison populations is the construction
of prisoners as natural, empirical phenomena such as hurricanes or cancer,
which in turn positions prisoners as something that the state needs to
respond to – by building adequate carceral space – rather than something
that the state makes, and can unmake, at will. The more social sciences try
to engage the prison, to understand its influence and growth, the more it
risks reifying and facilitating these.
One neglected consequence of the increasing amounts of knowledge
of the prison has been the construction of an iron cage in which
particular grooves of both description and critique are so deeply
established it is hard to etch lines of inquiry that elude these. It is hard to

know, engage or counter the prison in alternative and transformational
ways. The iron cage surrounding ‘the’ prison has created the ironic
situation of an object of inquiry evading its own unpacking and inter-
rogation (Brown 2013). The more we know about and challenge the
prison, the less ‘it’ needs to be described as it becomes naturalised as
something that always was and will be this way. Latour writes of objects
that have been ‘sociologized’ (1999, 110), rendered legible through
dominant modes of social explanation, asserting that this is a process
that has one of two results, ‘either it destroys its object, or it ignores it
altogether’ (111). By destruction he does not mean erasure, but the
destruction of the ability to engage the object in particular ways: ‘for
many sociologists, to provide a social explanation of something means to
destroy this object, to debunk the false beliefs that ordinary people
entertain about them, and then to replace the idols by a true object of
science’ (1999, 110). The true object thus instantiated by social science
thus pathologises other attempts at description, classification and
understanding.
We are not the only ones desiring to escape the (al)lure of ‘the’ prison. As
might be familiar to many readers of this collection, geographers represent
one group of scholars attempting to relinquish fixed understandings of
prisons as static and separate, emphasising instead fluidity and mobility:
Carceral geography has tended towards an interpretation of prisons as

fluid, geographically-anchored sites of connections and relations, both
connected to each other and articulated with wider social processes
through and via mobile and embodied practices. Hence the focus on
experience, performance and mutability of prison space, the porous
prison boundary, mobility within and between institutions, and the
ways in which meanings and significations are manifest within fluid
and ever-becoming carceral landscapes. (Moran 2015, 150)
Notions of governance and control are at the heart of geographies of the

carceral (Moran 2015, 14). A point of departure is relative dissatisfaction
with Foucauldian notions of ‘docile bodies’ on the one hand or
Agamben’s ‘bare life’ on the other (Moran 2015). But while carceral
geographers gesture towards alternative and broader understandings of

the carceral, a prison-centric version of carcerality arguably persists.
Moran’s (2015) introductory text, for example, deals with three themes:
the nature of carceral spaces and experiences in them, spatial geographies
of carceral systems and the relation between the carceral and the state.
Not surprisingly, carcerality is central to each theme. But the meaning of
the notion of ‘the carceral’ remains relatively under-developed. It is
referred to as ‘a social construction existing both within and separate
from physical spaces of incarceration . . . ’ (2015, 87) said to include ‘a
wide range of diverse sites and circumstances “outside” prisons which are
either characterized by the replication of aspects of incarceration, or are
touched in some way by its effects’ (2015, 87). By staking a claim
‘outside’ prison, the prison itself – the prison we seek to disavow –
seems ominously present, however hard it is resisted.
We may be overstating the case since geographers have engaged carceral
questions in diverse ways, with some (e.g. Mitchelson 2012) emphasising
the importance of looking beyond sites of institutional confinement and at
transcarceral spaces and their effects on ‘inscribed bodies’. They advocate
broadening ‘the conceptual and analytic contexts in which imprisonment
is situated’ (Mitchelson 2012, 148; cited in Moran 2015, 66). Sometimes
this has involved moving beyond the inscribed body to focus on prisons as
an expression of a wider context of structural inequality and community
neglect (Bonds 2009; Gilmore 2007; Armstrong 2014), or situating prison
within debates about nature and identity (Che 2005). But, to reiterate, this
is more difficult than it looks. Despite the desire to look beyond the prison,
there appears a luring quality to the prison that draws the analysis back
towards it even in the attempt to escape it.
We welcome the ‘poking, prodding and testing to advance understand-
ings of the complex relationships between mobility, liberty and confine-
ment’ (Mountz 2013, 16) represented by the work of carceral geographers.
But we also wish to push this further, and challenge in a positive spirit the
very notion of a ‘carceral geography’. Is this a loose descriptor of the range
of ways that those working in different disciplines engage with spaces of
confinement? Or might it enact a carceral geography of its own by erecting
borders through research agendas and disciplinary lines demarcating what
does and does not count as part of this?
In Carceral Spaces Moran et al. (2013, 240) refer to Baudrillard’s

throwaway remark: ‘prisons are there to hide that it is the social in its
entirety, in its banal omnipresence, that is carceral’. Prisons give us
something to stare at while distracting us from our own incarceration.
Looking down on the islands and the expanse of water of the carceral
archipelago, we wonder about the relationship between the parts and the
whole, and the difficulty of distinguishing figure and ground. Are prisons
islands – discrete yet connected or might it be more fruitful to think of
water itself as the constraining phenomena? Land or water as preferred
metaphor for confinement? Fixed locations or fluid spaces of between-
ness? (Or the air above them? Or tectonic plates beneath?) Jensen and
Ronsbo (2014) propose the concept of ‘shimmering’ to argue for the
always already givenness of background and foreground. This may be a
productive line of enquiry helping us to hone our thinking and our
political practices of disavowal while resisting traditional dichotomies.
The challenge for prisons research might be to find ways of keeping
background and foreground simultaneously in focus, and to beware
disciplinary moves that maintain ‘the’ prison as a permanent back-
ground. That is, are developments like the emergence of a carceral
geography dependent on the continuation of prison as the universal
reference point for thinking about all kinds and sites of confinement?
Our aim is not to critique carceral geography specifically, but to point
out that even approaches which seem to hold great potential for breaking
down particular intellectual constructions of the prison nevertheless may
be reliant on them. Hence, we move in search of perspectives that allow
for engaging without maintaining the prison.
Erasure
The vignettes above present our own experience of feeling captured
and overwhelmed by prison as it is conceptualised and represented
through research, political discourse and popular culture. Hence, we
express our intent as a disavowal, seeking ways of engaging the prison
without hardening the carapace of its representation. Can the given
terms of debate around prison be turned inside out? Can we talk about
prison, its practice, its consequences, its political and societal influence
outside of current ways of talking about ‘it’? To succeed in this effort
we require new tools of description and new frames of reference. To
clear the space for these, we preface our analysis with the concept of
erasure. The notion of erasure originated with Martin Heidegger
(1958) but was extensively used and popularised via the deconstruc-
tionist philosophy of Jacques Derrida and his project to de-privilege
presence, logos, and being in favour of a perpetual quest to destabilise
concepts and language and emphasise contingency (1997[1967]). He
used Heidegger’s heuristic device of striking out concepts. For exam-
ple, the verb ‘to be’. Instead of ‘I am, You are, It is’ is written ‘I am,
You are, It is, thus de-essentialising static, given notions of being, to
suspend belief in the notion at stake, to allow for its questioning even
while acknowledging the limits of language to think otherwise. As a
device to illustrate our concern to declog the imagination about prisons
this may have some value. Derrida’s deconstruction resonates with our
desire to disavow the prison at the same time as we challenge and
question prison. By striking prison out we seek to imply its absence
and undermine its givenness.
Spivak, in her translator’s preface to Derrida’s Of Grammatology
writes, ‘Since the word is inaccurate, it is crossed out. Since the word
is necessary, it remains legible’ (1998, xiv). This captures the paradox
with which we are concerned. For us the word ‘prison’ is inaccurate
because it is incomplete, indeterminate even. It is insufficient. But it
seems unavoidable. Both as a term and a practice. Erasure as a method
cannot be seen as subtle. For us it is a gesture cognisant of the fact that
the prison often appears fixed as a physical structure, a juridical entity –
the end point of a judicial process – and fixed through its representation
in language. The term itself, prison as noun, detracts from the possibility
of contesting its meaning. Can the prison, we ask, be put under erasure –
not simply as an act of deconstruction but in political terms? Could
prisons ever become il/legible, meaning readable for what they are but
not over-extended and emptied out of all meaning?
By touching on the technique of erasure, we have emphasised our
desire to thoughtfully play with the ways in which notions of the prison
and practices of imprisonment seem inescapable and un-erasable and
pointed forward to ways of challenging the apparent indelibility of

prison as idea and practice.
Agency, Authority and Control

Drawing on experiences of research, particularly Andrew’s on non-
Western prison systems and Sarah’s on the bureaucratic sense-making
of punishment – we consider three core themes of contemporary
prisons analysis: agency, authority and mobility/control. Our posi-
tion is that ‘the’ prison entrenched in scholarly imaginations, the one
that itself is so successful at escaping direct challenge, has been
erected around and held in place through these particular conceptual
pillars. These themes also structure, we argue, the prison visualised in
popular imagination, the one that is represented again and again
particularly through genres like the American prison film. As a
project of disavowal, however, we need to approach these themes
with caution, naming them without adding to their power to fortify
‘the’ prison.
Agency
Analysis of penal agency tends to juxtapose the state as an agent of control (a

theme we have separated and discuss next, under ‘authority’) with the agency
of the prisoner, whose limited autonomy is a subject of much documenta-
tion and critical analysis. In contrast, we hone in on the neglected agency of
prison itself. We see it as fruitful to shift talk about prisons from the
obsession with structure and function towards agency, performativity and
relationships. Instead of thinking about what prisons look like, and what
they are for, a more helpful approach might be to consider what they do:
how they act or are perceived to act and how the occupants of them and the
actors with a stake in them inter-relate. Just for a moment, we bracket the
question of how we define ‘the’ prison, as considering the ways prisons act
and are relational leads on to the ontological question. Through exploring
the ways prison acts, we are able to define the actor.
Of course, prisons have always been thought of as acting on their

occupants, as having effects, to shape and mould those subject to
them. The classic understandings of the purpose of prison all imply
that the prison environment was formative; prisons were never set
up simply to warehouse but always to change people, even when
such a change was imagined as a minimalist move towards making
sure that people recognised their subordinate place in the order of
things. But whether conceived of as for bodies subject to punish-
ment or for souls subject to (self-)discipline, the prison is more
than just a tool for transformation, more than a medium. As
already elaborated, it seems to embody its own rationale in an
imminent, unmediated fashion.
Prisons act on more than prisoners, and shape more than individual
bodies and souls. The agentic nature of prison is far reaching; the effects
of prison extend to society (and to politics) and envelop even the forces
that try to transform them. Jefferson and Gaborit (2015), in their study
of NGO engagement with and influence on prison climates in three
different countries, coined the term institutional agency to talk about
this phenomenon. The point is not to anthropomorphise, that is to treat
institutions as though they were self-conscious individuals but rather to
emphasise the ways in which they have effects and consequences. They
are agentic but in their own peculiarly institutionalised fashion. They
might be referred to as perpetrative institutions, institutions that per-
form, create and imagine their own institutional identities into being
(Douglas 1986).
The move towards encouraging more serious consideration of insti-
tutional agency was for Jefferson and Gaborit partly a reaction to a
one-sided idea that prisons are affected by reformers in a unidirectional
fashion. The comparative analysis of encounters between human rights
NGOs and prisons in three vastly different non-Western countries
demonstrated how prisons affect NGOs, framing the ways in which
interventions are designed and implemented. The three prison systems
invited different forms of intervention; they called forth different types
of critical responses. For example, an NGO that the researchers worked
with and studied in the Philippines (Balay Rehabilitation Centre) was
highly interconnected with some prisoners and prisoner groups but
also, of necessity and by design, cultivated and maintained alliances

with prison authorities, developing close connections to certain offi-
cials sympathetic to their change agendas. Jefferson and Gaborit wrote
about the paradox of ‘Balay’s encounters with the prison inside the
prison perimeter, where staff often become an obstacle to overcome,
and the encounters outside, where joint planning between Balay’s staff
and BJMP (the prison’s) staff can take place at Balay’s office’ (2015,
173). Acts of resistance and opposition were entwined with acts of
cooperation and even partnership. The prison, situated in a particular
institutional and national history, created opportunities for engage-
ment and conflict that shaped how this NGO, as with the others
studied, was able to have influence.
In Kosovo, to give another example, the NGO and the authorities
had a distant, formalised relationship driven on the one hand by the
international community’s desire to promote criminal justice practices
rooted in accountability and transparency (bureaucratic rationalities)
and concomitant prison inspection and monitoring practices, and on
the other by a commitment by both the NGO and the authorities to
the establishment of Kosovo as an acknowledged state (nationalistic
rationalities). The state-in-waiting needed the NGO to help create the
appearance of statehood but needed them to adopt a particular role at a
particular distance. ‘The’ prison in this case pivoted between its role
securing the support (and, therefore, open markets and aid) of Western
liberal democracies in Europe and its role asserting Kosovo’s compe-
tence in statecraft, meriting recognition as an independent nation.
Elsewhere, Andrew (Jefferson Forthcoming; inspired by Halsey
2007; and Jefferson 2014a) has examined the agentic way in which
prisons in Sierra Leone exacerbate already existing deprivation. They
act on bodies – often quite viscerally – but on bodies that also are
historically and materially situated in specific ways, by poverty, by
lack of opportunity and so on. Thus, prisons can be seen to be acting
in and on social processes too, though often invisibly. It is not
accidental that Andrew’s comparative analysis of life in poor urban
neighbourhoods and prisons in Sierra Leone ended up sub-titled
‘prisons and poverty in Sierra Leone’ rather than say, ‘prisons and
slums’. The point is that living in poverty can be thought of as
analytically comparable to living in prison if we suspend for a

moment the idea of prison only as physical site. Poverty is not a
place but a condition for living; so is prison. As argued in that article,
confinement needs to be understood as site, practice and state of
mind.1 The prison ‘acts’, therefore, as part and a reinforcement of a
wider context of limited opportunity.
It also acts ‘back’ (Latour 1999) when it is targeted through reform
projects, hiding its own processes and effects, and engaging in prac-
tices of misdirection. Sarah concluded this from an analysis of policy
documents in which the problems identified in a women’s prison
continually were articulated in terms of problems of the women
prisoners housed in it (Armstrong, under review). The problems of
prison thus became the problem of prisoners, and the harms of
institutions rendered as those of institutionalisation, meaning the
harms of how individuals had responded to institutions. The policy
documents were produced as part of an inquiry into a spate of
suicides in Scotland’s women’s prison during the 1990s (SWSPI
1998). Although the inquiry collected evidence that the conditions
of the prison – bare isolation cells, untrained staff, lack of supervision
and support – played a role in the women’s deaths, these were not
treated as causal. Prison conditions exacerbated but did not create
suicide risk. Instead, investigators gathered extensive evidence of the
dead women’s troubled backgrounds: their histories in care, their
victimisation and their prior instances of self-harm. ‘Many [women
in prison] are vulnerable to suicide attempts, with imprisonment
possibly becoming the final trigger for acts of extreme desperation’,
and ‘the lives of many of these women – more so than for their male
counterparts – are likely to be filled with addiction, abuse, anxiety and
underprivilege’ (Social Work Services and Prison Inspectorates for
1
This contrasts with Wacquant’s (2001) analysis of the symbiosis of ‘ghetto’ and prison, where the
(racialised) poor are circulated back and forth through these. Wacquant emphasises the structures
of racism and poor control underlying circulation between neighbourhood and institution, thus
analytically separating the two as sites. The question of whether different sites of confinement –
prisons, ghettos, re-education camps – are best understood as homologous or part of a continuous
system is raised by Jefferson et al. (in review) as part of a proposed special issue on confinement
and experiences of stuckness.
Scotland (SWSPI) 1998, 48, 49). The prison ‘itself sidesteps causa-
tion; it is simply the last, deeply unpleasant stop of a life always
already constructed as tragedy’ (Armstrong, under review). The exam-
ple might be compared to suicide among troops or in refugee camps –
rather than addressing the violence endemic to particular settings (of
war or large scale population displacement) it was treated as the
property of individuals. Suicide risk among women in prison, came
to be framed as contraband, something authorities needed to be
vigilant of and to search for on admission, just as they would for
drugs or weapons. Recommendations from the inquiry focused on
mental and bodily forms of searching – checking for thoughts or
physical signs of self-harm, investing in more assessment and risk-
screening to excavate a women’s state of mind on entry into prison.
Continual inquiries into women offenders has continued to promote
the narrative of troubled, vulnerable women, but by focusing on the
troubles of inmates, the troubling effects, and acts, of prison itself are
neglected. Instead, such investigations largely have increased the hold
of prison by making the case for more investment (in training,
services, staff) to support damaged inmates. In parallel with the
examples of prison engagement with NGOs in Kosovo and the
Philippines, it is another case of prison re-directing forces seeking to
transform it.
This draws us back to the foundational question of what ‘the’ prison
is and makes clear our performative, relational and praxiographic under-
standing of it. It is enacted, practised and performed not only within and
through the secure perimeter of buildings, but in the acts of others all
around it who analyse, interact with and give it official meaning. The
NGOs that Jefferson and Gaborit studied were drawn into differential
relations with prisons, enacting them as spokes – or even tentacles – of
the prison, drawn into inevitably complicit relationships of which they
were more or less conscious. The shifting relations and visible and
invisible acts of prison further emphasise the need for a processual
account of what ‘it’ is and what ‘it’ makes possible. Prison makes and
re-makes itself continuously through a range of practices and relation-
ships, many of which do not involve the prisoner directly, and which do
not take place in sites of confinement.
Authority
The nature of authority in prison is at the heart of prison sociology

and related critique. The literature on penal authority and (il)legiti-
macy is vast, but we note two common features of it. First, questions
of authority and legitimacy typically are analysed in terms of state
sovereignty, with sovereignty understood specifically (though often
implicitly) in the context of a liberal democratic, Western state.
Second, assessment and critique of prison authority tends to be
organised around some notion of penal order – the ability or failure
of prison to secure order, specifically inside spaces of confinement (e.g.
Sparks et al. 1999). Overall, then, ‘the’ prison premises an under-
standing of authority as organised from the top-down, and from
outside in (though we acknowledge shifts towards more processual
understandings of legitimacy as represented, for example, by the work
of Bottoms and Tankebe (2012) and Tankebe and Liebling (2014)).
Although prison ethnography has shown over and over again that
order (and authority) also is produced through subcultures and sub-
groups within settings of confinement, these generally are analysed
and presented as subversive and resistant sources. Hence, even alter-
native and critical accounts secure, that is hold in place, dominant
explanations of ‘the’ prison, in this case explanations of normal forms
of order and authority.
One move towards disavowal is to challenge (or make a start on
challenging) this way of conceiving, analysing and critiquing prison
authority. Knowledge about non-Western prisons offers a basis to
challenge the hegemony of Western prisons scholarship and these
fundamental beliefs about prisons, their inner workings and their
sources of (appropriate) authority. The default understanding among
Western prison governors and prison reformers is that authority is a
given and, through its balanced application, produces legitimacy. But in
prison systems beyond the Western world, in countries as diverse as
Tunisia, Lebanon, Honduras, Sierra Leone, Uganda, the Philippines,
the Ivory Coast, Rwanda – just to name those that have occasionally
featured in the literature or our own research – authority is distributed
diffusely across prisons and legitimacy is better understood ‘through

analysis of its production in practice’ (Jefferson 2014b, 249).2
Taking into account these prison systems beyond the west reveals a
range of authority models. Authority might be delegated more or less
openly by the authorities to trusted and privileged prisoners in a semi-
organised and semi-transparent fashion. It can be abrogated by powerful
prisoner groups as is common in Latin America. Or, to give a third
example which by no means exhausts different styles of authority in prisons
systems across the world, the prison is divided – whether by intention or
default – into areas where state officials maintain authority and areas where
prisoners effectively self-govern. At a recent high-level meeting that
Andrew attended in Geneva the head of a European prison service listened
aghast to first-hand accounts of prisoner self-governance in Asia. This
reaction encapsulates the extent to which the idea of the state having
authority is a taken-for-granted fact and value of Western prison practice
and scholarship (and in UN norms and minimum standards). But, in fact,
only a minority of prisons globally operate under such a logic. Self-
governance in prisons, where order is produced pluralistically or in ways
that appear disorderly to the Western eye actually is the ‘norm’.
Recognising the extent of these pluralistic forms of penal authority,
assists the process of erasure of ‘the’ prison. They unsettle a singular norm
or model of legitimate order in prison, and moreover, de-couple the issue
of legitimate order from that of moral authority. That is to say, we need
not conclude that alternative forms of prison order and authority are
normatively superior or not. We remain agnostic about this question.
The more important point is that by acknowledging that penal order is
produced in a range of societies, political systems and cultural contexts,
we are able to see the form of authority arising in Western prisons as
contingent and normatively ambiguous.
2
Jefferson (2014b, 249) argues that ‘instead of thinking about legitimacy through the relatively
static terms of power holders and audiences – implying possession and imposition’ that it might be
more fruitful to think of legitimacy ‘as produced, mediated, and diffusely distributed and not as
something to be held or possessed, or intrinsic to a position or a status’. This reorientation echoes
the work of Finn Stepputat (2013) on the concept of ‘sovereign practice’ where sovereign power is
analysed not with reference to its holders or subjects but through its diverse and variegated forms
approached via an ethnographic sensitivity.
Martin et al. (2014) and Jefferson and Martin (2016) develop the
notion of prison ‘climate’ based on ethnographic engagement with
African prisons (and owing some debt to the work of Liebling and
Arnold (2004) on quality of life and moral performance). The notion
of prison climate attends to both the interior dynamics of prison life
and the persisting and mutating historical and societal position of any
given prison. The climate concept was proposed against the backdrop
of a frustration with diagnoses of prison reliant on externally derived
criteria (standards, norms, check lists) and the tendency to characterise
in terms of lacks (lack of space, lack of health provision, lack of food,
lack of justice). Such approaches may contribute more to fixing
prisons than dismantling them, contributing unintentionally to rein-
forcing the non-erasable status of the prison. They maintain as much
as they constrain. And what they maintain is a Westernised ideology of
order that sometimes has the additional effect of pathologising alter-
native, locally situated practices of imprisonment, conflict resolution
or justice.
Hence, Western-sponsored reform initiatives in the global South
arguably do more to authorise the prison than disavow it. A standard
policy response to the problem of prisons beyond ‘the West’ (their
perennial crises of legitimacy; their tendency to violate human rights;
the collateral damage they inflict; their afflictive nature) is to build
better or more prisons, or to improve the way they operate or are
evaluated. Prison legislators, managers and reformers alike, tinker with
the prison complex rarely seriously considering alternatives, or envi-
sioning alternatives that do not ape the failed solutions of the West
(such as expansion of community punishments and the particular, and
particularly technologised, forms of mass control and surveillance
these entail). Those objecting to the deleterious consequences of
imprisonment and the cruel and degrading treatment it so often
involves seek through practices of checks and balances, appeals to
transparency and accountability, and advocacy of external scrutiny,
improved training and more knowledge to contribute towards best or
better practice, where ‘best and better’ are determined by the extent to
which a prison system approximates the envisioned ideal of imprison-
ment in a European liberal democracy.
Part of this is due to a commitment to Western values and models

pursued through the proliferation and spread of legal norms. Analysis
of reform attempts in West Africa suggest that the legal norm-based
paradigm with its deliberate intention to be universal, impartial and a-
contextual carries with it certain risks when attached to concrete
situated attempts to bring about change. The very strengths of the
legal paradigm are its weaknesses when translated into non-legal prac-
tices of attitude and behaviour change. The language of law – and by
extension the language of rights – is neither the best nor the only
language for transforming prisons. As Sally Falk Moore (2000 [1978], 3)
puts it:
A rule-focussed compliance/deviance approach reduces the colorful hur-

lyburly of social life and the dynamic logic it has for the actors to so arid a
pair of pre-selected and pre-interpreted obedience categories, that under-
standing of what is actually going on on the ground may be blocked.
In justice sector development, for example, the institutional and social

conditions and societal structures which allow for the persistence of
injustice – and the persistence of prison – are recognised as the reason or
grounds for intervening in the first place. But as policies and programmes
are developed these situational factors which triggered intervention fade
into the background and are overshadowed by technicalities, institutional
constraints and instrumental compromises (Mosse 2004).
An example worth some extended reflection is the Justice Sector
Development Programme (JSDP) in operation for several years in the
mid-2000s in Sierra Leone. Its goal was:
improved safety, security and access to justice for the people of Sierra
Leone. The purpose is to support the development of an effective and
accountable Justice Sector that is capable of meeting the needs and
interests of the people of Sierra Leone, particularly the poor, the vulner-
able and the marginalised. (JSDP 2004, 4)
The assumption underlying the JSDP strategy was that developing

the justice sector would ultimately benefit Sierra Leone’s poor,
vulnerable and marginalised people. It would allow them access to a

better functioning system. The programme’s attempt to bring formal
institutional justice was many steps removed from the realities of the
suffering people who were to be the ultimate beneficiaries. People in
the ghetto living informal lives at the margins of the state were largely
untouched. Analysis of some of the policy documents of JSDP
illustrates the distance between programme thinking and everyday
mundane realities.
For instance, JSDP’s project memorandum (JSDP 2004) is a good,
clear, efficient description of what they plan to do and how they
plan to do it which ties justice sector reform into a discourse featuring
good governance, democracy and human rights.3 One quote
will suffice to illustrate the distancing logic instantiated in the gram-
mar and syntax but by extension also in the activities of the
programme:
The Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) is committed to restoring the

rule of law, preventing further conflict and improving safety, security
and access to affordable and equitable justice for people, particularly the
poor, the vulnerable and marginalized groups. The Justice Sector
Development Programme (JSDP) will support these aims by helping to
improve the performance of key sector institutions, policies and practices
and by strengthening the justice sector’s ability to create an environment
where grievances can be addressed, economic growth can be stimulated
and poverty reduced. (JSDP 2004, 4, our emphasis)
Note here the level of ambition displayed in the first sentence on behalf
of the Sierra Leonean Government (who are not the authors of the
policy). In turn, the grammar of the second sentence is striking. While
sounding active the sentence is effectively devoid of agency! Imagine a
diagram of concentric rings with the vulnerable subject in the centre.
Each ring represents a different layer of separation implied by the
language. JSDP will ‘support aims’, which in turn will ‘help to
3
See Kjær and Kinnerup (2002) for a useful discussion of these (con)fusions.
improve’. They will strengthen, not the justice sector (and certainly not
the marginalised and vulnerable), but the sector’s ‘ability to create an
environment’. Activities while sounding concrete and immediate are in
actual fact diluted by the grammar into relatively insipid aspirations. In
one sense, this makes them more realisable; in another, it raises the
question of what kind of change is really envisaged. While framed as a
declaration of noble intentions its grammar reveals a paradoxical
neglect of the daily realities of injustice faced by many residents of
Sierra Leone – and the prison stays unmoved and unchanged, its
authority as preferred criminal justice solution unchallenged.
What such interventions have achieved is the proliferation of a univer-
salised kind of penal order and authority, characterised by a neglect of local
context and histories and an almost incontestable but ultimately imaginary
version of reform. It is the order of an arguably neoliberal governance that
glosses over the messy dynamics, the ‘hurly burly of social life’ and the
profound inequalities of a place like Sierra Leone. It is as if the prison, as a
marker of human rights compliance and good governance is necessary to
the liberal reform project in order that improvements over time can be
marked. The abolition of prison or its replacement with some locally
developed form of justice would be translated as the failure of progress,
the loss of authority. We urge, therefore, that both authority of prison as an
empirical reality and an analytical construct ought to be part of a research
agenda that moves ‘the’ prison out of place.
Mobility and Control
Our final core theme of prisons scholarship focuses on mobility and

control dynamics of prison. A distinguishing characteristic of ‘the’ prison
and of penal power is its self-evident ability to immobilise and to control
through physical containment, whether through the individual isolation
of a cell or the social isolation of a security perimeter. However, critical
prison scholarship and emergent lines of analysis (as in the work of
carceral geography noted earlier) have begun to challenge these taken-
for-granted qualities of prison, documenting instead the way prisons are
part of and can orchestrate mobile lives. Words like porosity, liminality,
betweenness, inside-outness and a range of others are now being

employed to challenge and modify claims about prison as a total institu-
tion. While such work aims to challenge and loosen fixed ideas about the
nature of prison space, at the same time, we argue, such characterisations
have the effect of firming up ‘the’ prison. That is, the prison only needs to
be qualified as less total, more liminal, less bounded, more porous when
we have already conceded at some level the givenness of prison – other-
wise why make arguments that the prison is less prison-like in some places
and practices? What remains untouched as well as unexamined is the
essential prisonness against which there are subversions and limited forms
of escape. For example, Moran (2013, 347, and echoing the work of
others writing on prison visiting) identifies conjugal visit areas in prison
as liminal because it is a space where ‘home is “performed” . . . in which a
kind of “normal” life can be performed’ and where ‘material items
brought in from the “outside” . . . accessorise the experience’. What lies
implicit in the discussion is that prison is not home. A familiar binary
descends: prison/community, state-controlled existence/‘natural’ perso-
nal life, inside/outside. Performativity in such accounts seems to play less
of a role in asserting a relational and dynamic model of space than to
observe the out-of-place-ness and even inappropriateness of a concept
like ‘home’ in something called prison. Inmates might play house, but
they are not at home. Accounts of prison’s liminality and porosity
ironically hold prison in place by staking out the territory between here
and there, inside and outside without ultimately challenging the totalis-
ing and discrete qualities ascribed to the prison. In other words, talk
about the way borders are transgressed instantiates rather than dissolves
them.
While rendering ourselves vulnerable to the same critique, we
employ the notion of fluidity, in contrast, to understand prison’s
materiality and effects in terms that are not pre-conceived through
binary oppositions and organised around the inflexibility of prison
buildings and their security regimes. (Recall our allusion earlier to
land/water and the carceral archipelago.) We apply the idea of fluidity
to put ‘the’ prison under erasure while not denying the force and
experience of imprisonment. Let us revisit and challenge the binary
opposition of prison and home, institutionalised and ‘normal’ life. In
our respective work, we have both argued that confinement exists

inside and outside of ‘the’ prison. In Sarah’s case, research she con-
ducted with Beth Weaver (2013) explored people’s experiences of
short-term imprisonment in Scotland. This research documented
that people moved in and out of prison so regularly that:
separating out experiences of punishment from one’s life on the ‘outside’

eventually came to feel like the imposition of an artificial boundary. Being
in and out of prison was, for many participants, akin to the experience of
being in and out of the office, or school; a regular life activity that had to
be balanced with, and which intruded on, time devoted to other needs and
interests. Participants adapted strategies for managing other parts of their
lives around a regular schedule of prison stays. They had better or worse
options for arranging childcare, taking time off work, continuing with
studies and avoiding loss of housing. . . . imprisonment was but one more
obligation to be worked around. (Armstrong and Weaver 2013, 291)
Some of the participants in this research were going to prison three or four
times every year, staying for periods of a week up to several months. These
very short-term prisoners did not experience prison as a total institution or
as a liminal space (compared to the less liminal spaces of long term
prisoners) that was distinguishable from their or an idealised notion of
everyday life. Prison was something they occasionally desired (when
resorted to as detox or as refuge from a particular life crisis) and often
did not desire (in the more typical scenario of being arrested and sen-
tenced), but almost inevitably expected. In this sense, imprisonment was
very much part of one’s normal life, a regular and predictable activity:
But unlike other regular activities that make up significant parts of our
lives, like work, school and family, short prison stays had a severely-
limited potential to develop a person’s capabilities or support networks
and, in fact, often did just the opposite, interfering with or suspending
these. (Armstrong and Weaver 2013, 292)
Rather than separating out the pains of imprisonment into those that
happen inside and those that arise on the edges or after prison, fluidity
gives a name to the process by which prison flows into, through and
around lives without interruption. Imprisonment can be an element of
normal life, one of many places a person stays in over a lifetime, not the
ideal of home, but as much of a home as any number of other
precarious spaces in which the poor find themselves corralled. In this
sense, and echoing our comments above, prison is akin to poverty or
pollution. It is something that certain groups are particularly at risk of
and damaged by but this does not diminish the fact that they are living
meaningful lives through it and with it. Fluidity as a way of describing
prison may assist the researcher in resisting the impulse to ‘other’
prisoners through (often classed and usually implicit) pity or critique,
to avoid becoming complicit with formal institutions in stigmatising
parts of their life experience.
Ethnographic work on women’s imprisonment in India has made a
similar argument (Bandyopadhyay 2010). When women were inter-
viewed about their experiences of imprisonment their narratives were
always attached to stories of their pre-prison experience. For them it
did not make sense to distinguish life in prison from life before prison.
The prison experience only made sense in the light of life trajectories.
Grounds and Jamieson (2003) and Jefferson (2010) also have noted
how the effects of imprisonment can only be understood across long-
itudinal life trajectories where prison is one part of a historical life
process still unfolding even as people traverse multiple sites of confine-
ment. One striking feature of this work is the way in which exit from
prison is not automatically experienced as liberation. The opening of
the gates for release does not signal freedom in a similar fashion to the
way the opening of the gates for entry is often not the first deprivation.
The strongest example of this that we have encountered is
Lawrence Langer’s analysis of video narratives of Holocaust survivors
where he demonstrates quite viscerally that being liberated from
concentration camps was not experienced as freedom. Exit is not
liberation. From Langer we learn that human expressions of suffering
need to be treated seriously as is, as given, as experienced. They
should not be diluted, contained, romanticised/pathologised or
ripped out of history. Our point is that prison is not the only history
that matters to people, nor a history that should automatically be
treated as abnormal, and people’s lives should not be segmented into

the prison’s categories unreflexively: pre-prison, prison, post-prison.
Experiences of prison are fused with other life experiences. The
intertwining of confinement and subjectivity is not limited to the
assumed-to-be-distinctive site of the prison.
Confinement, then, as must surely be clear by now is, in our optic,
not limited to sites. Of course, sites do confine, but so do practices, and
so do states of mind as we are reminded by William Blake’s (2004)
famous reference to ‘mind-forged manacles’.
Employing fluidity to understand and conceptualise confinement
does not diminish the specificity of prison. Instead, it shifts the analysis
of specificity focused on a particular site (a given prison building run
by state actors according to legal rules) towards an understanding of
prison as continuously present in lives and lives continuously present
in spaces of confinement. We believe that fluidity, therefore, assists the
project of continuing to specify and distinguish the particular qualities
of imprisonment (and its meanness, per Christie 1978) as a form of
punishment. Fluidity forces us to follow and trace rather than conflate
diverse forms and sites of confinement. This includes detention or
detention-like confinement of migrating and asylum-seeking people,
civil forms and post-penal confinements (as with those detained on
grounds of being at risk of terror or sexual offences), those with mental
health issues, refugees and more. There may be important continuities
between the detention of migrants, the mentally ill and the criminally
convicted but we question the automatic tendency to place these forms
of confinement on a continuum in which prison sits at one end as the
form of confinement against which the others are compared and
proved more or less unjust or normal.
Fluidity, therefore, is not fluidity between concepts of confinement,
it is a specification of the quality of penal power itself. Deleuze (1992)
writes of ‘circuits’ of control in which the oppressive power of institu-
tions is not in their force as enclosures where the individual is held, but
as way stations that mark individuals for continuous intervention on
particular grounds: the hospital and the patient, the school and the
pupil, the prison and the prisoner. Each untangles flows of populations
into groups who are subject to control processes. Instead of connecting
up various and discontinuous forms of detention, a notion of fluidity

might support disavowal of the prison as it leads us towards neglected
connections to practices that do not look like prison but are bound up
in its flows.
Exit Points: On Disavowal

In this chapter, we have advanced the claim that the prison captures
and the prison hides. It resists resistance, and the idea of its longevity
and inevitability seems fixed in political and even critical scholarly
consciousness. Thus, we have starkly questioned what is so often
taken for granted, namely the prison itself, the prison referred to
with a definite article: ‘the’ prison and its power to represent itself as
such. Further, we have experimented here with writing and thinking
about prison without inadvertently avowing it. We have exemplified
some of the multiple ways in which the prison fixes imagination and
remains fixed in practice at the same time as we have tried to put ‘the’
prison under erasure. We have avoided the obvious clarion calls for
reform and abolition, calling instead for a subtler intellectual and
practical project of disavowal. Disavowal requires us to question not
only buildings with bars but also the bureaucrats and regulatory frame-
works and development projects and think tanks dedicated to
‘humane’ prison systems that hold these in place.
We have begun a process of disavowal by suggesting a re-think of
prison’s agency, its authority and its fluidity. Bringing together our
respective research experience has been productive for exploring how
these factors are part of prison’s hold, and yet might, nevertheless be
questioned through a practice of erasure. In particular, we hope that
research in non-Western prison systems and non-frontline penal spaces
might come to have more than a tokenistic effect on prison studies and
conceptions of penal power. Such research exposes ‘the’ prison that is
fixed in the background of much research as itself a contingent,
cultural anomaly.
To disavow ‘the’ prison is to repudiate, to refuse responsibility and
withhold support for the prison. We hope our attempts to transgress
the limits that notions of ‘the’ prison have set on our own thinking and
critical practice might encourage others in similarly transgressive
directions.
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Sarah Armstrong is Director of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice
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practices that inform and construct them, market and governance forces that
expand and contain them. She has advised governments in the UK and USA on
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author (with Liv Gaborit) of Human Rights in Prisons: Comparing Institutional
Encounters in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and the Philippines (Palgrave Macmillan,
2015).
10
Conclusion: Reflections on Capturing
the Carceral
Anna K. Schliehe and Dominique Moran
This volume has worked towards a diverse and in-depth engagement

with the boundaries of carceral geography. The individual contributions
have provided engaging, innovative and sometimes deeply unsettling
explorations of these borders, extending the field conceptually, metho-
dologically and empirically. Our aim to ‘capture the carceral’ by probing
the boundaries of classic carceral geography has been an exciting and
challenging process in which we had to simultaneously draw on and let
go of what we understand to be ‘core’ carceral geography (Moran et al.,
forthcoming). We fostered an in-depth dialogue across disciplines and
particularly between geographical and criminological work which
pushed us to think deeply about spatialities of confinement and
A.K. Schliehe (*)

D. Moran
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences,
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
e-mail: d.moran@bham.ac.uk

270 A.K. Schliehe and D. Moran
exploring material, symbolic and contextual spaces beyond the prison.

This volume has highlighted how interdisciplinary and international
dialogue contributes new and challenging angles for both carceral geo-
graphy and wider prison research.
The collection of chapters speaks to and expands on various existing
debates around incarceration. Rather than focussing on the bricks and
mortar of the institutional spaces, this volume’s inventive engagements
with ‘thinking through carcerality’ touch on more elusive concepts of
identity, memory and internal as well as physical walls and bars.
Understanding the ‘carceral’ broadly as encompassing more than ‘prison’
provides an umbrella term for a number of ‘closed’ institutional spaces,
such as detention centres (Mountz et al. 2013; Hiemstra 2013), hostels
and half-way houses (Allspach 2010) or secure care units and locked
therapeutic wards (Schliehe 2014), as well as an acute sense for control-
ling institutional practices such as management of parole (Petersilia
2003). With a focus on differences across space and time and between
cultures and jurisdictions, the so-called carceral turn has seen a rise in
research on these institutional spaces and practices. The rise of secur-
itisation (Philo 2012) with strategies of social control and coercion has
led to increasing punitiveness towards the poor (Wacquant 2010) which
in turn has informed more punitive welfare and justice policy.
Characterised by criminal justice systems that confine people to prison
for longer periods of time and observe them more rigorously after
release, the carceral turn has seen increasing numbers of people who
have been affected by punitive state policies. The level of securitisation
extends to confinement of asylum seekers and refugees, increasing uses of
monitoring and technologies of surveillance to control public space and
people’s homes (for example by using electronic tags) and states privatis-
ing and outsourcing imprisonment to other countries.
As a now firmly established subfield within human geography, carc-
eral geography provides a unique lens of spatially informed research on
confinement, and attends closely to these issues. Connecting to past
carceral-geographic work, the chapters in this collection link issues such
as gender (Moran et al. 2009), architecture (Moran et al. 2016), mobi-
lity (Gill 2013) or particular incarcerated sub-groups (Schliehe 2015).
Conceptual underpinnings of ‘classic’ carceral geography research
include Foucault (1991), Agamben (2005) and Goffman (1991) but also
De Certeau (1984), and the concepts of liminality and TimeSpace.
Providing a new angle for wider human geographical debates, carceral
geography shows many broader societal issues on a heightened scale,
providing a background for discussions on security, safety and surveil-
lance. All engaging with the ‘core’ work of carceral geography in differ-
ent ways, the chapters in this collection signal the importance of
extending this field of study further to move beyond institutional con-
fines towards a variety of spaces, concepts and practices.
In the following we revisit key ideas within the three areas of explora-
tory carceral research before highlighting future directions and further
opportunities for research dialogues across borders and disciplines.
First, ‘Mapping Beyond Carceral Identities’ provided novel angles of
engagement with a changing sense of self for different groups of prison-
ers, ranging from fluid masculinities shaped by the prison and life in the
street, to particular struggles of prisoners with learning disability, or
highlighting issues of identity and belonging for young female prisoners
in relation to issues like being transgender, becoming a mother or
upholding relationships behind bars. Second, while much has already
been said about the fluid nature of inside/outside, the chapters on
‘Moving Beyond Carceral Walls’ probed new ways of seeing prison
boundaries through experiences of family members and particularly
children, exchanges of art and the actual building of prison walls by
architects and designers. Third, ‘Imagining Beyond Carceral Spaces’
offered more experimental pieces on inner instead of physical bars that
affect individuals’ sense of self, and memory practices, as well as con-
fronting outright the idea of prison as a fixed entity, and ultimately
challenging the ‘place’ of carceral geography within wider prison
research.
All three parts aimed to capture ‘the carceral’ in different ways – each
presenting a unique perspective that focussed on the ‘beyond’ and
expanded or pushed the boundaries of carceral geography.
This volume highlights the advantages of interdisciplinary research –
integrating the role of space in penal settings into the mostly criminological
work here has meant a constant dialogue across and about carceral space.
Challenging a clear-cut distinction between prison and non-prison spaces,
these chapters sometimes radically alter our understanding of the liminal

‘betwixt and between’ of, for example, the alteration of identity between
prison and street. The socio-spatial relationship between the prison and the
outside world is highlighted by van Blerk’s work on ‘street-connected’
young men in South Africa. Identity formation is here understood in
relation to mobility across space and between places. Aiming to destabilise
the spatial separateness of prison and society, she focusses on the identity
and status implications that both street and prison seem to continually
produce and reproduce, alter and renegotiate. Spatial and temporal fluidity
of these young men’s interactions with the city and their personal connec-
tions shape ideas of manhood and masculinity. The detailed knowledge of
the city and the institution create place-based identities that van Blerk
terms ‘carceral identity mesh’ in which both inside and outside identities
transcend their position and consolidate ‘new’ masculine senses of self.
Taken up recently by criminologists, the issue of being a man and adapting
masculine identities to the particularly restrictive and at the same time
often male-centric environments of prisons (see Sloan 2016) shows the
value of this largely neglected perspective. Van Blerk – by extending the
empirical lens beyond the prison contributes several novel perspectives to
prison research – not least by moving away from the overwhelming focus
on the Global North. Through the focus on identity this chapter questions
the clear-cut distinction between prison and non-prison. Conceptually
building on research about carceral mobility and agency (see Turner and
Peters 2017; Hiemstra 2013) allows us to get a better sense of the symbolic,
social and material relations between prison and street.
The relations of entanglements of carceral/post-carceral identities is
further extended by Gormley who gave us the opportunity to enter the
world of a group of prisoners rarely featuring in prison research, and
particularly new to carceral geography: people with learning disabilities.
Research on people with learning disabilities, one of the most margin-
alised populations in Western society (Hall 2005), remains neglected in
wider geographical and criminological work (Claes et al. 2013) – even
when compared to work on physical disability or mental health issues.
Making up about 20 per cent of the prisoner population this group is
highly under-researched while often being further ostracised through
what Gormley terms ‘trans-carceration’. Physical as well as psycho-
emotional limits shape identity and sense of self in carceral institutions

that are discursively invalidated and marginalised by their ‘non-disabled
imaginary’. Normative expectations of prisoners are to the same standard
across the board which entrenches barriers ‘to doing’ and barriers ‘to
being’ and fundamentally allow vulnerabilities to materialise. The inner
socio-spatial fabric of prisons as well as the geography of information
flows is directly related to prisoners’ reach, mobility and patterns of
dependency. This rare insight into ‘learning disability incarcerated’
offers ground-breaking empirical material as well as highlighting parti-
cular ethical challenges that are valuable to carceral geography and wider
prison research. Extending our current understanding of the carceral by
exploring the identity processes of prisoners with learning disabilities is
only just a starting point of enquiry into the complex world of carceral
identities and connected emotional geographies of carceral spaces
(Crewe et al. 2014).
Similarly, Schliehe’s account of exceptional and exclusionary geo-
graphies of young women’s imprisonment engages with age- and gen-
der-related identity formation. Focussing on their constant struggle
with prescribed, normalised and resistant being merges current feminist
geography (Nelson and Seager 2005) and feminist criminology (Stoller
2003; Chesney-Lind 2006; Burman and Batchelor 2009) with new
empirical angles on issues like transgender prisoners, the particular
pains of imprisonment relating to birth and motherhood and the
contested and constantly re-negotiated identity politics around
homo- and heterosexual relationships in and beyond prison confines.
These largely under-researched themes highlight the importance of
mapping ‘beyond’ carceral identities towards richer conceptual engage-
ments, for example with a potential feminist carceral geography that
challenges traditional representation. The expansion and possible
amending of theories like Agambenian notions of abandonment and
‘bare life’ in a gendered context (Pratt 2005; Masters 2009; Fluri 2012)
or ‘borrowing’ Deleuze and Guattari’s (2008) notion of ‘becoming’ to
understanding female identity formation might be theoretically bold
but considerably push the field of carceral geography both conceptually
and empirically by finding novel ways of representation and interpreta-
tion. The normalisation of not suitably feminised behaviour in carceral
institutions as examined by Dirsuweit (1999) has since seen further

investigation of the gendered practices of control, discipline and resis-
tance. Capturing both gender and age related representations of prison-
ers’ self and identity is crucial for understanding the carceral in its
varied forms beyond mainstream detention.
The relations and dependence between prison and non-prison spaces
(see also Moran et al. 2013) was the focus of the next part which brought
together new imaginary, artistic and conceptual components to move
‘beyond’ the carceral walls. Scheer and Lorne’s essay on utopian ideals in
the planning and building of prisons evokes theoretical imaginary geo-
graphies alongside new insights into the architectural process of actually
‘making’ a prison. Moving between the concept of utopia and dystopia
they manage to highlight aspects of wider debates on securitisation and
urban spaces in close connection with prison buildings which simulta-
neously become more open and porous yet also ever more closed and
secured (see also Hancock and Jewkes 2012). While re-thinking the
prison is a huge ambition, re-design often relies on pre-determined
architecture according to pre-set specification – reminding us of the
global expansion of certain types of prison models. The impassively
planned and assembled prison buildings of the near future legitimise
particular views on penality and state power. The mere assembly of
boxes and architectural elements leaves ethical or social questions unad-
dressed. This account of planning stages and pre-prison development
offers a rare insight into Francophone architectural prison developments
resulting in the dilemma of architects having to ‘reluctantly play Tetris’.
Tying in with a variety of contributions on the architecture of prisons
and detention facilities (Jewkes and Moran 2015; Moran et al. 2016),
Scheer and Lorne highlight the little-known concerns and the rich
symbolic, economic and political implications of prison planning. This
pre-stage to the carceral raises further lines of thought in relation to
institutional identity formation and the relation between imagined/
utopian and actual carceral space.
In a different context, Turner’s work similarly evokes a complicated
notion of creating and designing in a prison context. Based on new
conceptual lenses of hapticality and metaphorical ‘touch’, her project
explores the permeability of prison boundaries in relation to art by
offenders. Understanding ‘touch’ as something more than physical by

creating relationality across prison boundaries makes prisoner art both a
means of refuge and protest. Tangible interaction bring the prison ‘out’
and the outside ‘in’ fostering a bond between the unique nature of where
an item is produced, and a new framework of understanding creativity and
purpose in new ways. Even though the produced art often ‘leaves’ the
prison, the physical landscape of the carceral influences the production’s
content and artistic character. The depiction of aspects like time or inside/
outside dichotomy in the reflected artistic work resonates with current
work in wider prison research around spatial relocation, movement and
inertia (e.g. Armstrong 2015). Showcasing and thus (re-)performing the
symbolic power of the carceral, these art works and their related practices
point out a certain porousness of the prison as well as its embeddedness in
circuits of capital and economies beyond. The novel focus on touch and
hapticality provides a new lens through which to view prison life and the
prisoner’s sense of self. Through the process of producing art, the prisoner
(re-)transforms into a more ‘viable’ citizen tying in with recent debates on
penal consciousness and questions of citizenship. Conceptually under-
standing touch as the most ‘intimate’ sense points towards spatial connec-
tions as complex issues of prison spaces and their ‘beyond’: touch
essentially dissolves boundary production. While the prison can thus
become more familiar and reachable, similarly more uncomfortable aspects
are foregrounded that arise between art’s humanising qualities and neo-
liberalising tendencies. Essentially, however, Turner has managed to con-
nect a charitable carceral institution like the Koestler Trust with more
abstract ideas on touch that are re-directed and interpreted as an important
part of individual sense of identity and awareness of being through crossing
carceral boundaries.
As discussed by Foster in this volume, the visiting area in a prison can be
seen as another form of border-space. Focussing on prisoners’ families and
particularly their children, she adds a new dimension to the theory of
liminality. So far, relatively little geographical research has been conducted
into the visitation experiences of non-prisoners, and using creative and
visual methods, Foster manages to connect with and make sense of certain
permeabilities of prison walls. Multiple liminal states of space-specific
between-ness with both spatial and temporal distance underline on-going
transition as a key feature of visitation. Conceptualising visitors as ‘second-

ary’ prisoners (Codd 2003; Comfort 2008) or ‘quasi’ inmates underlines
the complicated nature boundary crossing – prisoners’ families and part-
ners find themselves enmeshed in the power flows of the penal system
being simultaneously captive and free. By using drawing as a method to
engage with children, their opinions can be included in the overall research
in a way that does not rely on verbal communication. Utilising non-
traditional methods like this opens carceral geography and wider prison
research up to challenging but nonetheless important innovations in how
fieldwork is conducted (borrowing, for example, from more-than-repre-
sentational cultural geographies (Lorimer 2005)). This is particularly valu-
able for hard-to-reach groups like children, young people or indeed people
with learning disabilities who have so far only marginally featured in
carceral-geographic research. Geographically, Foster’s research introduces
new ways of looking at the different degrees of inside/outside presence and
convergence. While being architecturally distinct from the prison itself, the
visitor’s centre functions as a bridge between inside and outside fitting into
the wider flows of power that typically operate within the prison confines.
Focussing on the prisoners’ families, this rather ‘typical’ visitation experi-
ence is transferred to the home adding a distinct and new category to the
way we conceptualise the prison’s reach. Staying in touch with prisoners
requires family to surrender the home as an extended site of penal control.
This includes forced confinement to the home, for example, when waiting
to be contacted, taking control away from families and restricting their
agency. Rendering domestic space liminal, families’ experiences of second-
ary imprisonment are more dispersed and distributed but they are narrated
through descriptions of encounters with the prison, the visit room and the
visitor’s centre. These layered liminalities broaden the spatial lens of how
we ‘do’ and ‘see’ carceral research. Applying to spaces (like visit rooms),
mental states (like waiting) to body spaces (being simultaneously free and
unfree), the experiences of this between-ness is a complex spatially con-
tingent process extending ‘beyond’ carceral walls in which they have so far
been observed.
Imagining ‘beyond’ carceral spaces opens up our imagination of the
carceral as rooted mainly in ‘solid’ bricks and mortar institutions and
moves towards an understanding of converging inner and outer bars. As
depicted in the art work by Jimmy Boyle (Carrell and Laing 1982: 65),
the visible prison bars are not always ‘the ones that count’ – for Boyle the
entangling bars inside are the ones that matter. Bernardt, Van Hoven
and Huigen’s chapter expands the idea of the carceral in several ways by
constructing boundaries, borders and border space as mentally mani-
fested in memory. Discussing the seemingly ‘open’ space of an asylum
seekers centre in the Netherlands, they trace carceral characteristics
through engaging intently with individual stories and the ways in
which they are captured in memory practices. The transferral through
different locations for each individual asylum seeker resembles a more or
less confined border space in which the abstract ‘memory space’ is
particularly important for the construction of self. This memory space
is affected by border enforcement through having to testify one’s iden-
tity, itinerary and sufferings as an everyday practice. Engaging with
Kristeva’s work on identity and ‘becoming of identity’ brings a new
conceptual perspective to the otherwise mainly ‘male’-dominated theory
landscape in carceral geography. While memory and related identity
formation are conflictual processes in and by themselves, the context of
the carceral adds another dimension in which the lack of control over
interpretation and entcontextualisation of personal memory and subse-
quent identity underline an asymmetry of power. Asylum seekers’ stories
and narratives of suffering are placed under intense scrutiny while at the
same time neither the process of remembering nor relating some of the
traumatic experiences of these refugees is easy. Bernardt, van Hoven and
Huigen argue that the accessibility of memory is volatile, and differs
depending on their form: while some are verbally available, others might
only be situationally available. This in turn affects how asylum seekers
like Alice and Laurent whose identities in these border spaces are
discursive and can be fragile narrative constructions. Identity understood
in this way can be disrupted and affected by unspoken embodied
experiences which is referred to as ‘situated memory’.
This geographically tinged form of secondary traumatisation through
exposure to certain environmental factors itself happens in a geographic
space (the asylum centre in this case) which through its spatial design
confirm an imbalance of power. Tapping into the work of emotional
geography (Anderson 2006; Davidson and Milligan 2004), this
understanding of emotional and embodied pre-verbal language adds a

new dimension to carceral-geographic research and wider prison
research. Framing memory as evoked by everyday materialities and
retracing memory that is buried in the unconscious are simultaneously
innovative and blurry. The personal and potentially vehement impact of
memory practices in this particular border space has the potential to
provide a new frame for prisoners’ experiences and probing new ways of
interpreting inside/outside.
Armstrong and Jefferson’s contribution is the most experimental of
the collection, critiquing ‘the’ prison alongside the prison researcher and
the academic discipline behind it, and subsequently confronting the idea
of prison as a fixed entity. The environment, and with it the distance or
closeness to a subject, appropriates the researchers’ ability to imagine and
critique it – for the prison, intent focus means both that it is held in
place, and also at risk of being entrenchment. Jefferson’s explanation
that ‘the prison captures’ creates new traction on a critical examination
of carceral space, while allowing a place for self-reflective review. Trying
to not ‘just’ extend or reify a particular line of argument, the authors
focus on emic knowledge to reflect on sites of penal culture. Their
concern over ‘talking “prison” into existence’ partly rests on their under-
standing of research as enacting – producing material reality and with it
prison as an expression of power relations between subject and state.
Their aim to loosen the prison-centric version of carcerality towards an
understanding of prisons as formative environments in a wider sense is
reflected in recent thinking in carceral geography, and not least in other
contributions to this collection. The method of radically striking out
certainly plays on our perception of its ‘givenness’, and makes it more
possible to imagine its absence in an abstract sense.
With empirical examples ranging from Scotland to the Philippines,
Kosovo and Sierra Leone, Armstrong and Jefferson analyse prison not as
a ‘place’ but as a condition for living. Pointing towards the inherent
paradoxes of prison research – where discourses on the way borders are
transgressed instantiate rather than dissolve the institutions the border
separates – can only be reconciled by understanding prison as both a
fixed location and an assemblage of fluid spaces of between-ness.
Reflecting on their own fragile position as researchers, they detect critical
scholarly consciousness as well as wider political consciousness as reasons

for the prison’s longevity, and its seeming inevitability.
Importantly, they reiterate that confinement and the ‘carceral’ are not
limited to certain sites (exit is not necessarily experienced as liberation),
practices or states of mind, and argue that therefore carceral geography
and wider penal research, need to employ a conceptual fluidity to better
understand the quality of penal power which itself reaches far beyond
the prison gates. The essential questions ‘what holds the prison in place’
and ‘what moves the prison out of place’ have provided a truly challen-
ging thought experiment that probed issues like agency, identity and
boundaries, and provided us to engage deeply with what lies ‘beyond’
the immediate spaces of the carceral.
Carceral geography has moved on from being considered ‘rather
“niche”’ (Moran 2015, 149) into an established subfield within human
geography and criminology. This volume has shown how the field has
developed and grown to be able to accommodate various forms of
boundary crossing, cross-collaboration as well as essentialist critique.
This book is a testament to the field’s engaged and intense dialogue
with criminological scholarship. The emerging transdisciplinary syner-
gies have shown the potential of working towards social transformation
and provide a critical and reflective perspective. In its various chapters,
this collection has pushed beyond core carceral-geographic work and
captured the more elusive elements of the carceral through striving to
understand the underlying carceral processes of such things as memory
or hapticality. These internal carceral states and ‘thinking through’ of
the carceral are not nearly exhausted as avenues for research.
While we included a range of international perspectives, the hypercar-
cerative context of the United States was not one of them, and we are
conscious of the fact that more diverse geographical locations and
approaches deserve closer attention – amongst these as a focus on racialised
carceral practices (Annath 2014; Gilmore 2007). Looking both beyond
Anglophone prison practice and beyond a prison-centric version of carcer-
ality are two potential further avenues of future carceral geography research.
This book, which is essentially a dialogue both across disciplines and
across carceral spaces and states of mind, demonstrated geography’s con-
tribution to carceral studies and the development of important new
directions that emerge from interdisciplinary engagement. Highlighting

innovative conceptual arguments provides new angles on issues like agency,
mobility and control. Many chapters have provided novel methodological
approaches of engaging with under-researched groups of prisoners, and
have probed complex understandings of carceral inside/outside.
This book aimed not only to explore the boundaries of carceral
geography but to push at them, in order to ‘capture’ the ways in
which the carceral is experienced and responded to. The chapters in
this collection have impressively demonstrated the fluid and relational
character of carceral space and provided fresh ideas for emancipatory and
critical engagement with the carceral in these troubled times.
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Prison: Sustaining the Environment or Sustaining the Penal Complex?’
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experiences of spaces of confinement for young women in Scotland. Anna
has published several book chapters and articles in Scottish Geographical
Journal and Geografiska Annaler B: Human Geography.
Dominique Moran is Reader in Carceral Geography at the University of

Birmingham, UK. She has held substantial ESRC funding for research into
prison visitation and recidivism, and prison design. Founder of the Carceral
Geography Lab, she is author of Carceral Geography: Spaces and Practices of
Incarceration (2015) and an editor of Historical Geographies of Prisons:
Unlocking the Usable Carceral Past (2015) and Carceral Spaces: Mobility and
Agency in Imprisonment and Migrant Detention (2013). Her work is transdisci-
plinary, informed by and extending theoretical developments in geography,
criminology and prison sociology, but also interfacing with contemporary
debates over hyperincarceration, recidivism and the advance of the punitive
state. She publishes in leading journals including Transactions of the Institute of
British Geographers, Progress in Human Geography and Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space, and Theoretical Criminology.
Index
A Authority, 25, 178, 239, 247,

Abandonment, 227, 273, See under 252–257, 262
Agamben
Abolition, 120, 257, 262
Activism, 85, 87, 241 B
Affect, 49, 57, 65, 154, 173, 181, Bare life, 104, 243, 273
203, 222, 224, 229, 248, 271 Barriers, 6, 45, 46, 49, 53, 55, 56,
Age, 16, 18, 23, 24, 29, 30, 32, 60, 61, 64, 85, 171, 273
85–89, 96, 98, 273, 274 Belgium, 6, 7, 114, 115, 124, 127
Agency, 65, 75, 82, 114, 180, 206, Bentham, 116
239, 247, 248, 256, 262, 272, Betweenness, 169, 245, 258
276, 279 Biopower, 104
Agamben, Giorgio, 271 Birth, 100, 116, 152, 273
Architecture, of prisons, 7, 114, Body, 44, 48, 51, 64, 76, 77, 79, 80,
115, 121 83, 84, 86, 99, 153–155, 156,
Art, 6, 7, 135–162, 271, 274, 170, 212–216, 228, 230,
275, 277 244, 276
Asylum seekers, 6, 7, 202–208, Bordering, borders, border-space, 2,
210, 211–213, 215–217, 226, 4, 169, 201–231, 242, 244,
270, 277 258, 269, 271, 275, 277, 278

in Prisons and Penology, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56057-5
286 Index
Buildings, 121–124, 127, 128, 140, Disability, disabled prisoners, 6,

251, 258, 262, 274 43–66, 80, 271, 272, 273
Disableism, 7
Distance, 47, 64, 65, 85, 123, 124,
C 129, 154, 159, 238, 249, 256,
Cape Town, 13–36 275, 278
CCTV, 120 Docile bodies and docility, 83,
Cell design, see prison design 99, 243
Children, 6, 7, 14, 15, 18, 27, 30, Dystopia, 114, 119, 120, 121, 274
63, 80, 99, 100, 137, 151, 152,
178, 179, 181, 185, 186, 271,
275, 276
E
Churning, of prison populations,
Electronic monitoring, 270
35, 189
Embodiment, 64, 76, 77, 80,
Citizenship, 275
84, 239
City, prison as, 114
Emic, 239, 278
City of Quartz, 120
Emotional geography, 277
Control, 19, 45, 50, 51, 52, 75, 77,
Erasure, 239, 243, 245–247, 253,
82, 83, 84, 86, 88, 99, 116,
258, 262
120, 122, 124, 187, 205, 208,
Exception (state of), 18, 93
230, 239, 243, 247, 254, 257,
Exhibition, 139, 140, 146, 148, 149,
261, 270, 274, 276, 277
152, 153, 157, 158
Creativity, 7, 122, 128, 139, 148,
Exit, 45, 186, 260, 262, 279
153, 275
Crewe, Ben, 4, 5, 20, 50, 60, 62,
173, 273
Criminology and F
criminologists, 1–7, 76, 81, Family
84–87, 92, 118, 172, 174, 272, and effects of imprisonment, 260
273, 289 Femininity, 29, 76, 77, 83, 84,
Critical border studies, 242 86, 94
Feminism, 78–80, 81, 85
Food and eating, 16, 144,
D 204, 254
De Certeau, Michel, 271 Fluidity, 15, 19, 243, 258, 259,
Deleuze, Gilles, 93, 261, 273 260–262, 272, 279
Dirsuweit, Teresa, 13, 20, 25, 27, 75, Foucault, Michel, 50, 51, 63, 64,
80, 82, 84, 94, 99, 274 116, 118, 149, 150, 182, 271
Index 287
G 219, 220, 223, 225, 227, 228,

Gender 231, 244, 270–275, 277, 279
gendered experience of Imaginary, 7, 62, 114, 213, 217,
imprisonment., 5, 83, 89, 174, 222, 225, 227, 231, 257,
177, 191, 258, 260, 273 273, 274
See also Femininity; Masculinity;
Transgender prisoners
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson, 244, 279 K
Goffman, Erving, 20, 48, 50, 57, 64, Koestler Trust, 139, 140, 143,
65, 171, 172, 173, 271 147–149, 275
Kosovo, 249, 251, 278
Kristeva, Julia, 202, 207, 213, 214,
H 215, 228, 230–231, 277
Hapticality, 7, 136, 153, 157, 274,
275, 279
Health, and health care, access to, 45, L
51, 53, 80, 85, 87, 88, 89, Learning disability, 6, 43–65,
96, 114, 185, 220, 228, 254, 271, 273
261, 272 Liminality, 7, 170, 171, 173–176,
Home, 13, 20, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 180, 186, 189, 192–193, 257,
30, 32, 57, 77, 85, 137, 145, 258, 271, 275
175, 185, 187–189, 192, 222,
225, 226, 227, 228, 231, 258,
260, 276 M
Homo sacer, see bare life Manhood, 21, 83, 97, 272
Human rights, 208, 218, 248, 254, Masculinity, 21–23, 26, 29, 33, 34,
256, 257 35, 79, 80, 84, 92, 272
Hypermasculinity, 83n6, See under Media
Masculinity and imprisonment, 140–141
representations of prisoners, 274
Memory, 6, 7, 155, 159, 201–207,
I 209, 215–217, 227, 228, 231,
Identity, 6, 7, 13, 14, 17, 18, 20–26, 270, 271, 277–279
29–35, 46, 48, 64, 75–77, Mental health, 53, 88, 89, 261, 272
80–82, 84–87, 90, 93, 94, Mesh (carceral), 19, 29, 31, 53, 118,
97–99, 152, 153, 174, 188, 175, 272, 276
189, 201, 203, 204, 206, 207, Metaphors, 118, 125–128, 129,
208, 210, 213, 214, 216, 217, 141, 158
288 Index
Mobility, 17, 18, 23, 29, 89, 154, Privacy, private space, 179, 206
239, 243, 244, 247, 257, 270, Prison Architect, 7, 113–129
272, 273 Prison design, 123
Moran, Dominique, 1–7, 20, 25, 27, Psychiatry, 84
35, 50, 75, 76, 82, 83, 84, 90, PTSD, 207, 211, 212, 213, 217,
97, 99, 114, 115, 119, 121, 218, 220, 224, 225, 226,
122, 124, 144, 157, 169, 170, 228, 231
174, 175, 206, 243, 245, 256,
258, 269–279
R
Rehabilitation, 51–53, 76, 82, 96,
N 97, 114, 119, 124, 127,
Narrative, 14, 16, 23, 33, 135–137, 153, 248
191, 207, 210, 211, 213–216, Relational space, 14, 17, 18, 21, 258
223, 227, 228, 231, 251, Reoffending, 189
260, 277 Resistance, 75–77, 84, 86, 87, 135,
Neighbourhood, 5, 19, 30, 249 184, 249, 262, 274
Netherlands, The, 6, 86, 201, 203,
205, 208, 217, 220, 225, 277
Neoliberalism new punitiveness, S
257, 275 Scotland, 43–45, 54, 88, 90, 99, 170,
Normalisation, 51, 82, 84, 97, 273 173, 176, 177, 187, 250, 251,
Normative, 56–58, 61, 64, 65, 77, 259, 278
86, 94, 214, 229, 253, 273 Self-harm, see Suicide and self-harm
Sentencing, 56
Sexuality, 22–24, 27, 75, 77, 80, 82,
P 86, 90, 95, 98, 99, 154
Panopticon, panopticism, see Sierra Leone, 249, 252, 255,
Bentham 257, 278
Philippines, 248, 251, 252, 278 Solitary confinement, 116, 139
Philo, Chris, 19, 44, 47, 51, 56, 60, South Africa, 6, 16, 21, 24–26, 29,
201, 202, 246, 270 75, 82, 272
Porousness, 275 SPS, 54, 177–180, 185, 186
Post-prison, the, 86, 261 Stigma, 48, 64, 83, 89, 96,
Power 224, 260
and prisons, 62 Street, 6, 13–35, 271, 272
theorisations of, 3 Suicide and self-harm, 141, 250, 251
Index 289
Surveillance, 19, 51, 116, 117, 141, U

145, 182, 254, 270, 271 Urban fabric, 118
Utopia, 113–129, 274
T
Technologies, penal, 51 V
Timespace, 271 Visiting prisoners, 169ff
Total institution, 170, 171–173,
192, 258, 259
Touch, 135–162, 187, 203, 213, W
228, 244, 246, 256, 258, 270, Wacquant, Loïc, 5, 45, 52
274–276 Western prisons, 252, 253
Transcarceral space, 170, 244
Transgender prisoners, 89,
98, 273 Y
Trauma, 62, 86, 94, 212, 213, 215, Young women, 54, 76, 77, 81,
216, 220, 222, 224, 226, 227, 87–90, 92, 93, 94, 96, 99, 273
229, 230 Youth, 13–23, 26, 28–35, 88

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Palgrave Studies in Prisons

More information about this series at

Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940253

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Cover illustration © Joe Vogan / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

This book is one of the outcomes of a series of sessions co-organised by

and Colin Lorne. We are grateful that chapter contributors, many of

1 Introduction: Co-production and Carceral Spatiality 1

Part I Mapping Beyond Carceral Identities

2 Entangled Identities Inside and Outside: Exploring Cape

3 An Extended Social Relational Approach to Learning

4 Towards a Feminist Carceral Geography? Of Female

Part II Moving Beyond Carceral Walls

5 Illusions of Utopia: When Prison Architects

6 The Artistic ‘Touch’: Moving Beyond Carceral

7 Exploring ‘Betwixt and Between’ in a Prison Visitors’

Part III Imagining Beyond Carceral Spaces

8 Tracing Memories in Border-Space 201

9 Disavowing ‘the’ Prison 237

10 Conclusion: Reﬂections on Capturing the Carceral 269

Fig. 6.1 Death in Custody Anon. (HMP Bullingdon), Bronze Award

Table 3.1 Conviction statuses of participants 54

© The Author(s) 2017 1

architectural geographer Colin Lorne, and Andrew Jeﬀerson and Sarah

Carceral Geography and the Spatial Turn

emergence, over the preceding decade, of spatial criminology, which he

‘environments that are unwaveringly sterile, unfailingly aggressive or

Town. Next, criminologist Caitlin Gormley discusses ableist/disableist

Moran, Dominique, Jennifer Turner, and Anna Schliehe. (forthcoming).

Dominique Moran is Reader in Carceral Geography at the University of

Anna K. Schliehe is Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the Prisons Research

L. van Blerk (*)

© The Author(s) 2017 13

This chapter draws on in-depth narratives with street youth, aged

This critical consideration of street youth’s relationship to the street

Research Design and Methodology

Constructing Identities Between the Street

political structures in their communities and societies (Young 2003).

Prisons as Carceral Spaces of Conﬁnement

fortress-like public institutions with security fences and perimeter patrols

as non-static, porous and spatially malleable and drawing on inﬂuences

Street Youth Identities in Cape Town: Spaces,

fragmenting patrilineal clusters, has made it increasingly diﬃcult for

not enabled them to elude similar power struggles. In Cape Town,

I stayed everywhere on the streets . . . I went from one place to another

In contrast, Xolile (21) describes how, as a newcomer to the streets at

We used to walk up to A . . . Street. There was a Roxy cinema there and we

Merging Street and Prison in Street Youth’s

transferred from rural communities to mining compounds (in this

Entangled Identities: The City Kids

dominated carceral spaces, but were also connected to criminal gang

each with separate chains of command. Those men in the ‘masculine’

central business district of the city). Some came because of problems at

Abraham’s (28) Entangled Masculine and Feminine

As a teenager, who had been establishing a criminal street career for

Fergus’s (26) Entangled Identities of Age: Growing

I was 16 when I went to Pollsmoor8 [prison] for grabbing a chain [stealing

Grant’s (18) Entangled Identities of Growing up

Like Fergus, Grant was powerfully dominated as a young child on the

Bonge’s (29) Entangled Identities of Outside and Inside