The Curious Eclipse of Prison Ethnography in the Age of Mass Incarceration

“…correctional administrators from undertaking studies of life inside jails and prisons or hampered in such attempts by institutional review boards (Wacquant 2002, Haggerty 2004), scholars turned their lenses to the multitude of deleterious effects of incarceration on the employment prospects…”

“Much has been made of the “eclipse” of qualitative, sociological prison research, particularly in the United States (Simon, 2000; Wacquant, 2002).”

“In the US penal context, Wacquant (2002) has drawn attention to an ‘eclipse’ in prison ethnography even as this institution has risen to unparalleled prominence.”

“This study is important in the context that, although rich interpretive ‘explorations … best reveal the prison’s social contours’ (Crewe, 2009: 144), this genre is ‘not merely an endangered species but a virtually extinct one’ (Wacquant, 2002: 385; see Phillips and Earle, 2010; Ugelvik, 2012).”

“Wacquant (2002) states that healthcare in prison or jail facilities cannot be described as “distortive and wholly negative” because it may act as a “stabilizing and restorative force” (p. 388), especially for those with many barriers to accessing healthcare in the community.”

“…the 1970s, however, the War on Drugs and the entrenchment of “law and order” policies have changed the demographic landscape of penal institutions ðWacquant 2001;Western 2006; Simon 2007Þ as well as the relationship between incarceration and race making ðHenderson et al. 2000; Brennan, Wells,…”

“See Wacquant (2002) for an alternative argument.”

“…micro-social settings such as schools (Connolly and Troyna, 1998; Foster, 1990); police organizations (Brewer, 1991; Fielding, 1991); housing departments (Cowan and Halliday, 2003; Garot, 2004); factories (Grzyb, 1990); prisons (Wacquant, 2002) and political organizations (Fielding, 1981).”

“…of the big cities, the unskilled and precarious fractions of the working class, and those who reject the ‘slave jobs’ and poverty wages of the deregulated service economy and turn instead to the informal commerce of the city streets and its leading sector, the drug trade (Wacquant, 2002: 382).”

“Scholars from other disciplines have made observations of prison life that are linked to space or place (e.g. Markus 1993; Wacquant 2002a, 2002b; Wilson 2004), and have made contributions to the geographic literature on prisons (Hughes and 2000; Stoller 2003; Mendieta 2004; Myrick 2004).”

“Recoveries of self were associated with having time to reflect, taking up opportunities to address personal problems, or experiencing respite from problematic personal circumstances or the attritional effects of active addiction (see also Crewe, 2006; Wacquant, 2002):”

“After securing permissions from the Institutional 2 U.K. prisons are comparatively more open to researchers than U.S. prisons (Rubin 2015; Wacquant 2002).”

“Wacquant’s assertions present a unique US perspective of the social and cultural life inside the penal warehouse, yet as he acknowledged, upclose ethnographic accounts have largely disappeared from the US academic landscape (see also Simon, 2000; Wacquant, 2002).”

“…sociological knowledge to inform policy and where prison authorities see little to gain in making themselves transparent; and the nature of contemporary academic life, in which there is little time, and perhaps insufficient pay-off, for long-term, intensive fieldwork (Wacquant 2002, p.387).”

“Likewise, commenting on the situation in the USA, Wacquant ( 2002 ) talked of the curious eclipse of prison ethnography in the age of mass incarceration at the very time when they are most needed on both scientific and political grounds following the turn towards the penal management of poverty and the correlative ret…”

“By the 1980s, however, prison ethnographies in the United States virtually disappeared just as the country entered a period of unprecedented prison expansion (Kruttschnitt & Gartner, 2005; Wacquant, 2002).”

“…researchers experience in navigating the emotional burdens of “bearing witness” to the pains inherent in modern imprisonment (Farmer, 2003, p. 28).1 Wacquant (2002) hinted at researcher-based barriers to prison research when he described “the apprehension that academics leading sheltered lives…”

“Given the challenges of archival data and the difficulty of gaining access to contemporary US prisons (Simon, 2000; Wacquant, 2002),1 this evidentiary weakness is especially likely and understandable.”

“A prominent exception to this approach is Wacquant (1999, 2001, 2002), who inscribes them both in the dynamics of the regulation of post-Fordist poverty and the neoliberal transformation of the state over the past two decades, thereby providing an analytic framework wherein prison and lower-class…”

“This finding resonates with the views of Wacquant [(Wacquant, 2002), p.”

“One sociologist has recently lamented the fact that detailed studies of “the everyday world of inmates in America have gone into eclipse just when they were most needed on both scientific and political grounds” (Wacquant, 2002: 371; also Simon, 2000).”

“While there have been ethnographic studies conducted on various aspects of incarceration (Crewe 2006; Rhodes 2002; Wacquant 2002), l imited research appears to exist which examines heroin or methadone withdrawal experi­ ences during incarceration or their effects on inmates ' plans and attitudes towards treatment-seek…”

“Meanwhile, criminology—the discipline we would expect to have most to say about such issues—is consistently accused of failing to offer such insights (Christie, 1997; Jefferson, 2002; Liebling, 2004; Maruna, 1997; Wacquant, 2002).”

“The effects of imprisonment are mediated by a number of pre-existing conditions, deeply rooted in pre-existing social inequalities (Wacquant, 2002).”

“…along with other observers, “failed to realize that, far from being fated to recede into the societal background to make room for dispersed disciplines, the prison was here to stay right alongside them – indeed, it was about to grow to proportions never before envisioned” (Wacquant, 2002, p. 384).”

“These terms partly communicated the experience of being, at best, restricted to a highly constrained physical environment, and, at worst, the tomb-like quality of being locked in a cell with very limited access to natural light or elements (Wacquant, 2002).”

“Despite the unprecedented growth of the correctional population in the U.S., especially the massive increases in incarceration rates since the early 1970s, there has been a discernable decline in scholarly attention to life inside prison walls (Simon 2000; Wacquant 2002).”

“Many scholars have lamented the difficulties of accessing prisons as research sites and the subsequent paucity of in-prison research (Goodman 2008; Simon 2000; Wacquant 2002).”

“There is now more emphasis on spatiality within the ‘punitive turn’ (Wacquant, 2002), which demands considerable understanding of the spaces that exist as both carceral and cultural geographical sites.”

“…across the world have been experienced as inaccessible, opaque, and constraining environments by researchers who have had to negotiate risk adverse ethical review committees, challenges of influential gatekeepers, and strict security procedures (see: Rhodes 2001; Wacquant 2002; Waldram 2009).”

“Wacquant (2002) suggests that we recognize the prison as a “template or vector of broader social forces, political nexi, and cultural processes that traverse its walls” (p. 386).”

“…is also a womb’; an apt description in the context of imprisonment, with all its connotations of ‘concrete womb’ (Watterson, 1973), tomb-like burial (Wacquant, 2002), a liminal ‘antechamber of death’ (Fludernik, 2019), ‘mortification’ (Goffman, 1961), ‘civil death’ (Liebling, 2009) and bare…”

“A uthor M anuscript A uthor M anuscript A uthor M anuscript A uthor M anuscript however, is difficult (Rhodes, 2009; Wacquant, 2002).”

“11 Whereas some research has demonstrated that in-carceration healthcare can be stabilizing or provide care that would have not otherwise been attained, 12 there is still a need to investigate the ways in which the healthcare system within correctional facilities impacts HIV positive individuals.”

“Wacquant (2002) decried the declining conduct of prison ethnographies (particularly in the US) at a time when the use of imprisonment is rapidly increasing.”

“In 2005, and like others before him (Simon, 2000; Wacquant, 2002), Ben Crewe lamented:”

“Family contacts are defined as a privilege of prisoners rather than a right of the family as a whole (Farrell, 1998; Wacquant, 2002).”

“VUILLE Joelle, KUHN André, 2010, “L'exercice de la liberté de conscience et de croyance dans les établissements de privation de liberté en Suisse”, Jusletter, 12th April. weblaw.ch. WACQUANT Loïc, 2002, “The curious eclipse of prison ethnography in the age of mass incarceration”, Ethnography, 3-4, pp. 371-397.”

“As such, the present article takes up Rhodes’s (2001: 75) claim, which Wacquant (2002) dismisses, that ‘the most pressing need for the study of prisons is to challenge the terms of the discourse that frames and supports them’.”

“Scholars have identified “an exodus of social scientists from prisons and other penal environments” (Goodman 2008), employing the metaphor of an “eclipse” and even an “extinction” to describe the reduction in qualitative prison research (Wacquant 2002).”

“More recently, in contrast to the U.S. experience (Wacquant, 2002), there has been a growing current of rich qualitative and ethnographic studies of prison life within British criminology (see, e.g., Crewe, 2009; Drake, 2012; Drake et al., in press; Phillips, 2012; ), some of which has focused on…”

“Mass incarceration shifted the focus of correctional research from prison experiences to prison order, such as overcrowding, riots, and violence (DiIulio 1987; Jacobs 1977; Kreager and Kruttschnitt 2018; Simon 2000; Wacquant 2002).”

“This state of affairs is not a result of lack of interest on the part of researchers or because the topic of life inside prison has receded in importance (Simon, 2000; Sparks, 2002; Wacquant, 2002).”

“Wacquant ethnographically analyzed the Los Angeles County Men’s Jail and emphasized its “deafening and disorienting noise” (Wacquant, 2002, p. 373).”

“1 See Aguirre ð1995, 2003Þ, Pérez Guadalupe ð2000Þ, Wacquant ð2002Þ, and Combessie ð2004Þ.”

“It is just for this reason, that in the future the educator will also be an active participant in society” (Vygotsky, 1997, pp. 345-346).”

“A uthor M anuscript A uthor M anuscript A uthor M anuscript A uthor M anuscript (Clemmer 1940; Irwin 1970; Rhodes 2001; Sykes 1958; Wacquant 2002).”