Nothing to lose? State (il)legitimacy, moral communication and prison homicide

As part of the Institute of Criminology's Lent term public seminar series, Professor Kate Gooch spoke on 12th March 2026 on 'Nothing to lose? State (il)legitimacy, moral communication and prison homicide.

Historically, prison homicides were rare. In the last decade, though, fatal prison violence has increased to the extent that men are more likely to be murdered in prison than in the community. Quite why prison homicides occur is little understood and of the few studies published worldwide, none engage perpetrators directly. Consequently, little is known about the aetiology or dynamics of prison homicide, nor the penological, cultural, relational, and moral environments within which fatal assaults occur. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with men who have killed or tried to kill in prison, this paper analyses not only why some men kill other prisoners, but whether they felt they had either ‘nothing to lose’ or conversely something to gain in killing. In so doing, this paper explores the forms of moral communication employed, but also who the intended recipient of these moral messages was and why.

Kate Gooch is a Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Bath, having previously worked in the Law Schools at the Universities of Brimingham and Leicester. She has conducted extensive ethnographic and qualitative research in prisons in England and Wales, Australia and New Zealand. She primarily focuses on harmful behaviour within prison, and the moral, cultural, relational and physical environments that generate or prevent harm, but she has also conducted ESRC funded research on leadership and new prisons. She is currently a recipient of Leverhulme Fellowship Funding and a visiting scholar at the Institute of Criminology.

Catch up with the recording of the lecture here.