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

“a variation of what Wacquant (2002) “concludes by suggesting”

“…and chaotic jail environment (e.g., smaller cells, no access to the outdoors, absence of natural light, noisiness and dirtiness; Irwin 1985; Wacquant 2002), these processes make jails even more punitive than prisons and present potential structural and cultural barriers to mental health…”

“…Girling, 2016; Leigey, 2015; Ogletree and Sarat, 2012; Seeds, 2018), yet little empirical attention has been paid to the lived experience of LWOP’s severity likely because US prisons are structurally and bureaucratically difficult to access (Reiter, 2014; Rhodes, 2001; Simon, 2000; Wacquant, 2002).”

“No scholarly consensus exists about the social mechanisms that underlie parole outcomes (see Wacquant 2002; Rhine et al. 2017; Vîlcică 2018), and extant literature is divided about whether racial disparities exist in parole decision-making at all.”

“Prison ethnography has, however, shown that the distinction between frontstage and backstage is not straightforward because of the distinct lack of any truly private space (Ugelvik, 2014; Wacquant, 2002); singing in the shower is not a private matter in Bjørgvin prison.”

“In the end, our work echoes calls for researchers to reignite an empirical focus on prison conditions and prison life (Arditti, 2005; Kreager & Kruttschnitt, 2018; Wacquant, 2002)—similar to the way things used to be done in early correctional research (Clemmer, 1940; Irwin & Cressey, 1962; Sykes, 1958).”

“3 Here, I focus specifically on prison ethnographies that seek to uncover the social and cultural processes within the institution, rather than on research which examines the nexus of communities and carceral institutions, for example Wacquant (2002b).”

“For obvious reasons, researching sport in total institutions is challenging, given the general difficulty of accessing these physically isolated, bureaucratically managed and tightly controlled spaces (Wacquant 2002, Reiter 2014, Monahan and Fisher 2015).”

“” The “ eclipse of prison ethnography ” (Wacquant 2002), however partial, in the United States and other countries has left a blind spot in our understanding of how legal norms actually impact correctional institutions and, more broadly, how organizations adapt to their changing legal environment.”

“Wacquant (2002) warned against the ‘eclipse of prison research’, arguing that ethnography, in the era of mass imprisonment, has never been more important.”

“(Wacquant 2002: 389) The weaponization and prisonization of Black youth’s masculinity is embedded within state structural violence in the form of marginalization, repression, dehumanization, demonization, vilification, exploitation and other forms of discrimination.”

“This lack of understanding corresponds with a general decline in empirical research on prison life in North America more generally (Simon, 2000; Wacquant, 2002).”

“…however do not necessarily lead to success (namely mastery of the field or of a profession) but also to the equally skilful mastery of marginality and to phenomenologically embodied codes of class subalternity, which may serve the purposes of a violently classificatory state (Wacquant 2002, 2010).”

“In this respect, America and Europe constitute the provenance of most of the studies, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, two countries with high percentages of prison population.”

“Despite the attention devoted to examining this period of correctional instability, there has been a relative dearth of scholarly work that explores daily life inside of the prison (Simon, 2000; Wacquant, 2002).”

“” 3 Furthermore, regarding the prospect of going “ native, ” Wacquant (2002) argues that critical distance between the researcher and researched is of utmost importance given that the objective of an ethnography is always to “ dissect the social mechanisms and meanings that govern their [social…”

“Such research is particularly pressing in a political and institutional context in which ethics protocols (Haggerty 2021), escalating professorial workloads, and risk-averse correctional of fi cials make it more challenging to conduct ethnographic research in prison (Simon 2000; Wacquant 2002).”

“In the context of a “curious eclipse of prison ethnography in the age of mass incarceration,” Wacquant and other researchers have recently stressed the importance of resurrecting phenomenological research on the experience of longterm inmates (Calverly, 2013; Crewe, 2009; Wacquant, 2002).”

“The emergence of penal environmental science education, it will be argued, calls for an approach attentive to contemporary critiques of the ‘penal State’ (Wacquant 2002, 2010a, 2010b, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c), as well as nuanced perspectives on neoliberal science and environmental biopolitics.”

“That research tradition nearly disappeared in the US in the age of mass incarceration (Wacquant 2002), but it became stronger in Europe (Drake, Earle, and Sloan 2015).”

“LA County Jail consists of “seven mega-houses of detention” holding more than 23,000 inmates, or “nearly half the total prison population of France or Italy” (Wacquant, 2002, p. 371).”

“Thus, scholarship from across a range of disciplines and continents points to an entwined, fluid relationship between two sites once understood as radically distinct objects of analyses (da Cunha 2008, 2014; Turner and Jensen 2019; Wacquant 2002).”

“And although Wacquant (2002) claimed that prison ethnography was in ‘eclipse’, the preponderance of PhD students researching ‘under the radar’ in prisons– and other criminal justice institutions – says otherwise (Jewkes, 2016).”

“The low social status of prisoners, and the difficulty of access to penal facilities creates many barriers to life story work (Wacquant, 2002).”

“Despite these objections, some continue to encourage prison tours as pedagogical and research practices that can provide insight into the conditions of imprisonment (e.g., Wacquant 2002, University of San Diego, 2015.”

“An understanding of the governing rationalities underpinning this disciplinary apparatus serves as a critique of the dominant approach to prisoner health, driven by studies in a small number of countries in the Global North (Wacquant, 2002).”

“We must also mention the fact that research carried out in prison is not highly regarded, especially by the warders and this makes prison contexts opaque to inquiry (Wacquant, 2002; Waldram, 2009).”

“…formalized and more tightly regulated (Mopas and Turnbull, 2011; Trulson et al., 2004); and penologists have experienced reduced support for their research, especially when involving ethnographic fieldwork and/or addressing sociologically informed issues (Jewkes and Wright, 2016; Wacquant, 2002).”

“Despite the rapid growth in the U.S. prison population since the 1970s, scholars have noted that the volume of research on prisoners has declined (Frost & Clear, 2012; Wacquant, 2002).”

“With such a profound cultural association between blackness and crime, politicians and lawmakers could target the black population without directly saying so (Wacquant, 2002).”

“While other scholars have discussed the lack of qualitative carceral research generally (Simon, 2000; Wacquant, 2002), approval for qualitative work inside secure juvenile facilities encounters its own unique barriers.”

“After decades in which the experience of incarceration was relatively neglected by scholars of punishment (Wacquant 2002), recent years have seen renewed interest in the meaning and lived experience of prison labor (Gibson-Light 2020, 2022; Goodman 2012a, 2012b; Hatton 2018, 2021; Zatz 2008;…”

“More generally, the surveillance of researchers in the prison, from the prison, and outside the prison represents a more generalized reconfiguration of the relations that the prison maintains with its environment in relation to managing individuals and populations (Wacquant 2002; Veaudor 2020).”

“As Wacquant (2002) points out, the stigma of being a (former) prisoner is frequently compounded by racial and class discrimination.”

“These premises have been reinforced by a number of features of the penal field itself associated with mass incarceration, including the exclusion of researchers, journalists, and independent health professionals from the new mass incarceration prisons (Wacquant, 2002).”

“Inside these facilities, prisoners' social lives are restricted (Crewe, 2005; Wacquant, 2002), and physical exercise and sport, particularly in adult prisons, have gotten even less attention (Williams, Walker, & Stran, 2005).”

“in order to grasp the complexities of post-release risk and so-called ‘reintegration’ (Wacquant 2002; Armstrong 2004, 2006; Halsey 2007; LeBel et al. 2008).”

“…institutional is particularly apposite when investigating total institutions such as jails and prisons, which have become more opaque to researchers at the same time that they have come to play a central role in how the United States manages social problems (Rhodes 2007; Simon 2000; Wacquant 2002).”

“This led Simon (2000) and later Wacquant (2002) to plead for more American qualitative prison research.”

“…increase in the imprisonment of black people in America and the expanding reach of criminal justice in the lives of Black Americans (Wacquant, 2001) where the experience of imprisonment ‘is woven deep into the fabric and lifecourse of the lower classes across generations’ (Wacquant, 2002: 388).”

“And, as Wacquant has put it, ‘the ethnography of the prison in the United States is not merely an endangered species but a virtually extinct one’ (Wacquant, 2002, p. 385).”

“According to Wacquant (2002) prisons operate under strict bureaucratic protocols, with support from the political and criminal justice systems, which makes it often difficult, and sometimes impossible, for outsiders and especially researchers, to enter.”

“…and in-carceration to document everyday life and routines in these institutions (Bosworth and Kellezi 2016; Hasselberg 2016; Maillet et al., 2017; Wacquant 2002); questions of research ethics and re fl exivity in studying carceral settings (Bell and Wynn 2020; Bosworth and Kellezi 2017; Esposito…”