This seminar will present the findings of Alice’s PhD, an ethnographic study of a medium-security English prison for men convicted of sex offences. Sex offenders constitute a significant and growing proportion of the prison population - almost one in five sentenced adult men have been convicted of sex offences - but they have been consistently overlooked by prisonresearchers.
Alice’s work redresses this imbalance, and this seminar will focus in particular on how prisoners adapt to their sentence, form relationships with their peers, and their perceptions of the prison’s legitimacy. Taken together, this suggests that we should move on from understanding the prison as a disciplinary institution structured solely by power, and take its moral functions and effects more seriously. For sex offenders, it is argued by Alice, the prison
is a condemnatory institution: entrance into it is determined on the basis of being convicted of committing a wrong, and experiences within the prison further communicate that you are a wrongdoer.
See for more information
Date:
Thursday, 15 February, 2018 - 17:30 to 19:30
Event location:
Institute of Criminology, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 9DA