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Based on in-depth fieldwork in a medium-security training prison for men, The Prisoner Society offers a comprehensive analysis of contemporary imprisonment. In particular, it explains how penal power is exerted by the institution, how prisoners adapt to its terms, and the relationships, hierarchies, and everyday dynamics that characterise the prisoner social world.

The Prisoner Society offers an in-depth sociological analysis of prison life drawn from the life stories and experiences of prisoners and the testimony of officers, managers and prison governors at the UK prison HMP Wellingborough, a medium security prison.

Based on a large, comparative study of prisoner experiences in England & Wales and Norway, this article explores the concept of the 'depth of imprisonment' – put most simply, the degree of control, isolation and difference from the outside world – in two stages. First, it sets out the various factors that contribute to 'depth' i.e. its core components. Second, it outlines the most frequent metaphors used to communicate depth, highlighting the ways in which these metaphors bring into focus a range of ways in which the basic fact of imprisonment – the deprivation of liberty, and the removal of the individual from the community – is experienced. In doing so, the article also makes a case for the adoption of conceptual metaphors as a means of describing prison systems and regimes, and thereby attending to the ways in which prisoners experience some of the most fundamental elements of incarceration.

One of the striking characteristics of much 'big picture' penal scholarship is that it stops at the gates of the prison, or breaches its surface somewhat barely or briefly. This article proposes that such work could be advanced and made more compelling if its insights were married with – and modified through – those provided by empirical and ethnographic analyses of the practice and experience of penal power. It then sets out a framework which would enable this form of engagement and analysis, first providing an account of the development of the main components of the framework, before elaborating in more detail how its constituent parts – depth, weight, tightness, and breadth – might be conceptualised. It concludes by offering some reflections on the practical implications of this agenda for prison researchers.

The 'pains of imprisonment' have been a longstanding concern within prison sociology. This article revisits the topic, suggesting that modern penal practices have created some new burdens and frustrations that differ from other pains in their causes, nature and effects. It notes that the pains of imprisonment can be divided up conceptually, and to some degree historically, into those deriving from the inherent features of incarceration, those resulting from deliberate abuses and derelictions of duty, and those that are consequences of systemic policies and institutional practices. Having described the latter in detail – focusing on the pains of indeterminacy, the pains of psychological assessment and the pains of self-government, the article explains the relevance of the concept of 'tightness', as well as 'depth' and 'weight', to the contemporary prison experience.

Drawing on material collected as part of a semi-ethnographic study of an English training prison for men, this article describes the orientations of male prisoners towards female prison officers. A number of attitudes and orientations are outlined, some of which privilege the significance of femaleness over professional identity and practices (for example through discourses of sexualization and chivalry), while others focus primarily on the officer role and professional practices and treatment. The article suggests that prisoner life experiences and the nature of imprisonment are significant influences on the relationships between male prisoners and female officers, and that the high emotional charge that characterizes many of these relationships reflects a complex set of issues around incarceration, masculine self-identity, power and desire.

Abstract: Based on fieldwork conducted in a medium‐security UK prison for men, this article highlights the strengths of ethnographic research methods for exploring prison drug dealing. Having detailed the way that the research project proceeded, it analyses prison drug dealing as an individually meaningful act that takes place within a broader context of cultural codes, social relations and institutional policies. It suggests that, to unpack these issues fully, and chart the terms of the internal economy which heroin dominates, a committed attendance in the prison establishment, and an approach that is broad and exploratory, is of great benefit.

A telling indication of the decline of ethnographic prison sociology is the paucity of research on drugs and their influence on the prisoner social world. Based on long-term fieldwork in a medium-security English prison, this article argues that the key components of prisoner social life are deeply imprinted by the presence and prevalence of hard drugs in and around the penal estate. After outlining the appeal of heroin to prisoners, and the terms of the prison drugs economy, the article shows how heroin restructures status and social relations in prison in a number of ways. First, users are stigmatized, particularly when their consumption has consequences that violate established codes of inmate behaviour. Second, heroin grants considerable power to those prisoners who deal it within prison, although this power is not necessarily equivalent to respect. Third, heroin transforms the terms of affiliation that exist when drugs are scarce. Meanwhile, for those prisoners whose lives prior to incarceration have been dominated by drug addiction, the experience of incarceration has a number of distinctive qualities.

Little of what we know about prison comes from the mouths of prisoners, and very few academic accounts of prison life manage to convey some of its most profound and important features: its daily pressures and frustrations, the culture of the wings and landings, and the relationships which shape the everyday experience of being imprisoned. The Prisoner aims to redress this by foregrounding prisoners' own accounts of prison life in what is an original and penetrating edited collection. Each of its chapters explores a particular prisoner sub-group or an important aspect of prisoners' lives, and e.