Elsevier

Journal of Criminal Justice

Volume 40, Issue 5, September–October 2012, Pages 413-424
Journal of Criminal Justice

Social relationships between prisoners in a maximum security prison: Violence, faith, and the declining nature of trust

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2012.06.003Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

This paper describes significant changes to social relationships in a high security prison, including the prominent role played by faith identities and fears of radicalisation in shaping prisoner social life.

Methods

The study consists of a repeated sociological investigation of the nature of staff-prisoner relationships at a single site in the UK. Methods included extensive observation, the creation of a regular dialogue group with 14 prisoners, long, private interviews with 32 staff and 52 prisoners, focus groups, and surveys with 170 prisoners and 180 staff.

Results

The study found a decline in already low levels of trust, with dramatic effects on the prison's inner life. Relationships between prisoners were fractured, more deeply hidden than in the original study, and the traditional prison hierarchy, formerly easily visible in long-term prisons, had dissolved. Longer sentences, fears of radicalisation, confusion about prison officer power, and high rates of conversion to Islam, reshaped the dynamics of prison life, raising levels of fear. Clear indications of the anxieties and social unravellings of late modern society were found.

Conclusions

Increased punitiveness, indeterminate sentences, the intensification of risk-oriented practices, and anxieties relating to terrorism, have deepened the tone and reshaped the practices of long-term imprisonment.

Highlights

► Decline in levels of trust among prisoners and staff found in UK maximum security prison. ► Faith, faith identities, and fears of radicalisation affected prisoner social life. ► Relationships were fractured and the traditional prison hierarchy had dissolved. ► Long sentences, fears of radicalisation, and shifting power bases led to higher fear. ► Religion had become an identifier and ‘cover’ for violent disputes between prisoners.

Introduction

My sense of the present … is that it is a moment shaped by 30 years of New Right politics that have removed the restraints on finance capitalism … increased the power of the wealthiest elites; and subordinated national economic governance and welfare state protections to the demands of global markets. As a result, structural sociology, class analysis and the rigorous connection of societal processes to community, household and individual outcomes have never been more important … in the sphere of crime and punishment (Garland, 2012: 8).

This is not an honest prison (Prisoner).

Criminological and other scholars have described fundamental changes to penal policy and practice, as well as to the social, economic and political contexts in which penal practices take shape (e.g. Misztal, 1996, Beck, 1992, Giddens, 1991, Bauman, 1989, Bauman, 1997 Boutellier, 2004, Rose, 2000, Garland, 2001, Simon, 2007, Young, 1999, Young, 2007). The anxieties and social unravellings of late modernity have led to a ‘convulsive penal politics’ (Hope & Sparks, 2000: 3) but also a decline in already low levels of trust, with dramatic but largely undocumented effects on the inner life of the long-term prison. Increased punitiveness, longer and more indeterminate sentences, the politicisation of crime and its control, the emergence of risk-oriented practices, and fears and anxieties relating to terrorism, migration and the economy, have impacted on the tone and ethos of long-term imprisonment in particular, as well as on the numbers and demographic composition of prisoners subject to it. Some countervailing developments (a human rights agenda, concerns about institutional racism, and some improved physical facilities) have interacted with harder-edged changes to policy and practice in some unintended ways.

Few studies of single prisons have documented resulting changes to the prison experience, or to the nature of social relationships among prisoners (although see Jacobs, 1977, Irwin, 1980; and more recently, Crewe, 2009). In an unusual, repeat, sociological study of a maximum security prison in England, first conducted twelve years earlier, clear indications of the impact of ‘the new penology’ (Feeley & Simon, 1992), the shift to a risk-laden late modern society (O'Malley, 1992), new fears of radicalisation (Hamm, 2011), confusion about the limits to and shape of prison officer power, and a decline in already low but ‘workable’ levels of trust throughout the establishment, were evident. Describing this new state of affairs – including fundamental changes to the traditional prisoner hierarchy – was extremely challenging. Relationships between prisoners were complex. They were described as fractured, were more deeply hidden than in the original study, and the ‘traditional prison hierarchy’, formerly easily visible in high security and long-term prisons in England and Wales, had all but dissolved. The traditional ‘liberal-relational’ model of high security prisons in England and Wales, implemented (albeit falteringly) following the Radzinowicz report into conditions for prisoners in conditions of maximum security1 (Advisory Council on the Penal System, 1968) is under threat.

This paper is organised as follows: after a brief introduction to the literature, the empirical study on which the paper is based is introduced. Some of the changes between the context and findings of ‘study 1’, conducted 12 years earlier, and the current study, are described. The remainder of the paper describes the new prisoner population and their relationships with each other. The importation of a more overt and violent ‘street life’ and culture, as well as a sharper sense of the injustices of social exclusion and penal politics, meant that prisoners entered prison with an acute sense of both shock and grievance. Political aversion to ‘pampering long-term prisoners’ meant that some of the activities and sense-making opportunities for prisoners facing long sentences observed in the first study were no longer available. Violence, and fear of violence, in prison, particularly in relation to the growing presence of Muslim prisoners, emerged as major themes in private conversation. Shifting faith identities (including a high rate of in-prison conversion to Islam) had become intertwined with the flow of power in prison in ways that were highly complex and difficult to describe. There were risks that faith had become the new ‘no go area’ in prison. A mixture of coercion and the attractions of faith made turning to Islam appear as one solution to the problems of fear, lack of trust, and the existential crisis that prisoners faced.

Section snippets

Prison sociology and the traditional prison hierarchy

Prison is a place where people live (Clemmer, 1940).

The society of prisoners … is not only physically compressed; it is psychologically compressed as well, since prisoners live in an enforced intimacy where each man's behaviour is subject both to the constant scrutiny of his fellow captives and the surveillance of the custodians. It is not solitude that plagues the prisoner but life en masse (Sykes, 1958: 4).

Prison sociologists have long been interested in social relationships among prisoners,

The maximum security prison in late modernity: A sociological study

The study reported here was a repeat of a semi-ethnographic study of a single maximum security prison conducted by the authors and colleagues at the request of the Home Office following a negative Inspectorate Report about the state of staff-prisoner relationships in the prison (HMCIP, 2008) and some concerns about radicalisation (Hamm, 2009, Liebling et al., 2012). It was generously funded by the Home Office, a ‘neutral, curiosity-driven’ approach and title were agreed, and access under the

An overview of a new social organisation at Marchwood

Marchwood prison, in which both studies took place, is located in a remote Fenland town, a long way from the London (or other major city) homes of most of its prisoners.4

Relationships and alliances between prisoners in a contemporary maximum security prison

In general, prisoners described their relationships with each other as cautious and limited. On the one hand, they were tense, strained, and temperamental. On the other, they were ‘convenient’ and instrumental (as other scholars have noted). Interactions between prisoners had little substance: they might ‘look OK on the surface’, but they were extremely guarded. Prisoners were reluctant to give them the label ‘relationships’; there was too much fear involved. Several non-Muslim prisoners were

Faith, violence and ‘the street’

These guys in the middle, what are really university geezers, internet geeks and that, they don't know about the street (Prisoner).

A striking finding was the central and complex role of faith, or faith identity, in prisoner conflict. Levels of fear and violence were high. Prisoners and staff suggested that there was a framing of conflict between prisoners, ‘using the new issues’ of faith identity and practices. This framing reinforced the power of the perpetrators, providing protection.

One of

Violence, fear of violence and safety in prison

Violence is currency in prison (Prisoner).

Violence is not a good thing and I don't really condone it yeah? But I know if you're rattling the cage, with the door open yeah? Then it might bite, you know what I mean? (Prisoner).

I grew up around violence; I mean my life's really been around violence (Prisoner).

The research team were aware that the threat and fear of violence in ‘Study 2’ seemed more present in day to day life and conversation than it had been in ‘Study 1’. This was in part an

Violence, fear of violence and safety in relation to Muslim prisoners

A significant number of prisoners talked about violence in relation to Muslim prisoners in interviews; several believed that ‘the Muslim influence’ was responsible for much of the violence in Marchwood; others felt that it was simply a part of prison life that had to be accepted and that it was unrelated to faith issues:

When you start talking about gangs you start to relate it to violence, you start to relate it to solidarity of a gang, prisoner on prisoner retribution …, I wouldn't say it's

Coercion, intimidation, and the flow of power

I've worked on the landings for God knows how many years, I know what threat these people are under, what life is like, it's an animal world in here … they have no choice, it's either they do that or they die, or they end up in hospital with severe injuries (Officer).

Prisoners compared living at Marchwood to ‘swimming in a shark tank’. A high-security prison environment held multiple potential threats to one´s life and safety, and required rapid adaptation. ´Survival’ meant, amongst other

Identity and resistance: Pushing back the application of power

To the extent that there was evidence of growing bids for power made by new Muslim sub-groups, many similarities (and some important differences) could be detected between the phenomenon of politicised prisoners organising themselves to push back staff in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, and a (less politicised, and less organised) group of prisoners exerting a form of collective power at Marchwood. Prison scholars have described the ways in which paramilitary prisoners ‘resisted’ (that is,

Trust and its decline at Marchwood

If distrust reaches upper limits, it can produce escalation of mutual suspicion and hostility. Trust operates as a ‘lubricant of social co-operation’ but is also necessary for individual mental health’ (Liebling, & assisted by Arnold, H., 2004: 243).

Trust had declined at Marchwood, for complex reasons relating to the changing conditions and terms of imprisonment, population characteristics and relationships, and official priorities outlined above. The difference between ‘a little’ trust, and

Summary and conclusions: Prisons and the problem of trust

Returning to a prison after a twelve year break to repeat a sociological study was a surprisingly instructive and difficult exercise. Major changes in the structure and nature of staff-prisoner, and prisoner-prisoner relationships were evident, and faith identities (real and adopted) were playing a new and complex role in prisoner dynamics. Allegiances, identities, and motives were ‘fake’. Marchwood was suffering from a major ‘problem of trust’ at the time of Study 2 and this seemed to be

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the outstanding research assistance of Christina Straub throughout this study, with whom we plan to write much more, and the encouragement and guidance of Shadd Maruna, Richard Sparks, Jonathan Steinberg, Monica Lloyd and Tony Bottoms in this project. We are indebted to our ‘Dialogue’ group, and to many other individual prisoners and staff for their time, trust, and for going out of their way to explain the complexities of their world to us.

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