Suchergebnisse

Despite growing numbers of drug users in prisons all over the western world, drug exchange behind bars has received little scholarly attention. The few studies that exist describe the prison drug economy as mainly following market-based principles of exchange. However, ethnographic fieldwork in a closed Norwegian prison reveals something different: prisoners share their drugs, rather than selling them. In this article, I describe and try to explain this 'culture of sharing'. Drawing on anthropological theories of exchange, drug sharing is understood as continuous gift-giving. The gift perspective allows us to see how sharing is shaped by motives of caring, compassion and solidarity, while it simultaneously emphasizes the self-interest embedded in such drug exchanges. The article argues that sharing is a highly effective form of drug exchange because there is a strong commitment to reciprocate when a prisoner receives drugs. The 'culture of sharing' is both contingent upon and produces social relations between prisoners. On the one hand, it offers an inclusive and solidary community for drug using prisoners; on the other hand it is upheld by strong social controls, by which deviations from accepted norms of conduct (i.e. failing to share) are sanctioned in a variety of ways.

AbstractComparative penologists have described neoliberal and social democratic jurisdictions as though they exist at opposite ends of a continuum of inclusion and exclusion, and as though neoliberal states are inactive and social democratic states are invasive. This article, which is based on more than 129 interviews with men convicted of sex offenses in England & Wales and Norway, uses Cohen's work on inclusion and McNeill's typology of rehabilitative forms to complicate this simplistic binary. It argues that the punishment of men convicted of sex offenses in England & Wales was demanding but exclusionary; it imposed strict legal restrictions on these men during and after their imprisonment, blocking them from engaging in social and moral rehabilitation and providing a limited and treacherous route to change. In Norway, punishment operated in a way that was formally inclusionary but surprisingly laissez‐faire: Prisoners retained their legal rights during and after their incarceration, but the lack of opportunities to discuss their offending meant that their sentences were rarely experienced as meaningful, and their formal inclusion was not enough for them to feel substantially included after release.

Comparative penologists have described neoliberal and social democratic jurisdictions as though they exist at opposite ends of a continuum of inclusion and exclusion, and as though neoliberal states are inactive and social democratic states are invasive. This article, which is based on more than 129 interviews with men convicted of sex offenses in England & Wales and Norway, uses Cohen's work on inclusion and McNeill's typology of rehabilitative forms to complicate this simplistic binary. It argues that the punishment of men convicted of sex offenses in England & Wales was demanding but exclusionary; it imposed strict legal restrictions on these men during and after their imprisonment, blocking them from engaging in social and moral rehabilitation and providing a limited and treacherous route to change. In Norway, punishment operated in a way that was formally inclusionary but surprisingly laissez-faire: Prisoners retained their legal rights during and after their incarceration, but the lack of opportunities to discuss their offending meant that their sentences were rarely experienced as meaningful, and their formal inclusion was not enough for them to feel substantially included after release. ; publishedVersion

AbstractExtreme forms of custody represent the boundary points of state power. The configuration of the most restrictive corners of prison systems, and what goes on within them, is highly instructive in exposing the objectives, limits, and implications of state coercion at its most severe. Based on data collected in England & Wales and Norway, this article has two main aims. The first is to explore the degree to which "deep‐end" confinement differs between jurisdictions with different penal philosophies. The second is to understand how the most extreme form of confinement in each jurisdiction differs from the more typical carceral experiences within each system and its overall penal ethos. Empirically, then, the article seeks to shine light into the deepest dominions of both prison systems, illuminating the experiential texture of extreme forms of imprisonment. It concludes by asking what can be inferred about Nordic exceptionalism, and about deep‐end confinement more generally, by analyzing these domains.

Open prisons are portrayed as less harmful custodial institutions than closed prisons, and prison systems that rely more heavily on low security imprisonment are typically considered to have a more humane and less punitive approach to punishment. However, few studies have systematically compared the subjective experiences of prisoners held in open and closed prisons, and no study has yet compared the role and function of open prisons across jurisdictions. Drawing on a survey conducted with prisoners (N = 1082) in 13 prisons in England and Wales and Norway, we provide the first comparative analysis of experiences of imprisonment in closed and open prisons, conducted in countries with diverging penal philosophies ('neoliberal' vs. 'social democratic'). The article documents that open prisons play a much more significant role in Norway than in England and Wales; that prisoners in both countries rate their experience significantly more positively in open compared to closed prisons; and that while imprisonment seems to produce similar kinds of pains in both types of prisons, they are perceived as less severe and more manageable in open prisons. These findings suggest important implications for comparative penology, penal policy, and prison reform. ; publishedVersion