'Tactics', Agency and Power in Women's Prisons by Abigail Rowe

The DA recently read Abigail Rowe’s BJC article, ‘‘Tactics’, Agency and Power in Women’s Prisons’. The article was based on ethnographic research and semi-structured interviews conducted in two women’s prisons in England. Rowe writes that women’s agency has traditionally been framed in terms of resistance, and their coping strategies have generally been considered in the context of inter-personal relationships. In contrast to this approach, Rowe focuses on how agency can manifest as problem-solving, and how women engage with the power of penal regimes.

Rowe explores how prisoners and staff manage the constraints of the prison environment, and divides her findings into the issues of: visibility and discipline, dependency and hierarchy, and staff tactics of ‘lending’ and ‘poaching’. These latter terms are taken from Certeau (1984), whose theory Rowe uses to good effect throughout in her explication of agency and power. Rowe writes that Certeau’s ideas emerged in response to the monolithic, everywhere and nowhere, accounts of power proposed by Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1977). Certeau’s work concentrates on how those with limited power navigate these structures. The concept of ‘poaching’ in this context refers to ‘The subversion of a system to fulfil a private goal’ (at 337). Using Certeau’s ‘tactics’, Rowe's research adds to the complexity of the concept of the post-disciplinary prison.

Surveillance and Visibility

Rowe highlights the ‘very public nature of prison living’ (335) and the repercussions of this for relationships. For example, disagreements between prisoners can quickly be escalated and officially labelled as bullying. Although this is a protective mechanism, it is also a label with harsh outcomes for the individual accused of bullying.

Rowe offers examples of poaching which demonstrate how the systems of power in penal regimes can be exploited by prisoners for their own ends. Institutional mechanisms, such as the official response to bullying, can be used by prisoners to satisfy their own goals. The example is offered of one prisoner who was moved to another wing after false allegations of bullying were made against her. Rowe brands this a ‘tactic’, whereby other prisoners on the wing achieved their desired outcome through use of existing systems.

The DA noted that the necessary structure of complaint mechanisms, which in Rowe’s terms created points of invisibility as well as hypervisibility, was one of the primary areas of conflict and tension within prison, for prisoners and staff. It was noted by the group that certain allegations can effectively ruin the careers of staff, and can prejudice the release prospects of prisoners. This use of penal systems for personal ends therefore offers an effective example of ‘poaching’.

Dependency and Hierarchy

The dependency of prisoners on staff, and the hierarchy of the prison, offered another opportunity for the use of ‘tactics’. While the inequality of prison regimes can be disguised when all goes well, any resistance reveals its true nature.

The DA noted that within this fragile environment, prisoners are just as engaged in the business of affective labour as prison officers. Rowe reported numerous instances recounted by prisoners of how they managed the moods of staff, including stories of how they indulged the jokes of staff, and sussed them out as to their current mood.

Contrasting readings of the same incident were also notable, especially with regard to the women’s stated need to repeatedly ask, sometimes asking multiple staff members, to ensure that basic requests were carried out. This demonstrated starkly the dependency and prison hierarchy. However, prison staff perceived this very differently, as annoyance and as potentially humiliating if women went above their heads to request something. However, incorporating Goffman’s (1963) concept of ‘spoiled identities’, Rowe noted that repeated asking was a ‘tactic’ women used to ensure that simple needs were catered to. The DA discussed how women prisoners are perceived as a needier cohort than male prisoners, however from this perspective the stated and restated needs can be reframed as a means of achieving an outcome that might not otherwise happen.

Staff Tactics: ‘lending’ and ‘poaching’

Rowe’s research also looked at how staff resorted to strategies in the prison environment. However, throughout, staff members’ position as agents of power within the prison was noted. One staff member, who recounted that her attitude towards rude prisoners was framed by knowing that they would need her sooner or later, was quick to state that this ‘wasn’t necessarily a power thing’. The DA noted the lack of reflexivity in these attitudes. However, they also pointed to the powerlessness felt by many prison staff, who were often seen as unloved cogs in the penal machine, slotted between the management and the prisoners. The comments of staff offered in this section were fascinating, and could have provided material for an article on this subject alone.

In summary, Rowe states that she has sought to investigate and explicate the ‘relational, intersubjective dynamics through which penal regimes are delivered and negotiated’ (346). The article offers an alternative approach to theorising the experience of women prisoners. The use of Certeau's framework, and in particular the notion of 'poaching', offered considerable insight into how the institutionalised power in prisons can be adapted for prisoners' needs. The offering of this different theoretical slant on prison research provided new perspective on how individuals navigate within broader theories of the structure of power.

AUTHOR EVENT: 'Prisoners, Solitude, and Time' by Ian O'Donnell

The Differential Association is delighted to announce that our next book club meeting will be an author event, with Professor Ian O'Donnell of University College Dublin.

Professor O'Donnell will be talking about his new book, Prisoners, Solitude, and Time, which will be followed by a general group discussion of the themes and ideas in the work. For a description of the book, see below, the first chapter is also available from the above link.

The event will be followed by a small wine reception.

To register, please email Lynsey Black at lblack@tcd.ie

Details
Date and Time - Tuesday 14th June at 6pm
Venue - School of Law, Trinity College Dublin (the School of Law is located at House 39, New Square, on the main TCD campus, see map for details)



Prisoners, Solitude, and Time
Examining two overlapping aspects of the prison experience that, despite their central importance, have not attracted the scholarly attention they deserve, this book assesses both the degree to which prisoners can withstand the rigours of solitude and how they experience the passing of time. In particular, it looks at how they deal with the potentially overwhelming prospect of a long, or even indefinite, period behind bars.
While the deleterious effects of penal isolation are well known, little systematic attention has been given to the factors associated with surviving, and even triumphing over, prolonged exposure to solitary confinement. Through a re-examination of the roles of silence and separation in penal policy, and by contrasting the prisoner experience with that of individuals who have sought out institutional solitariness (for example as members of certain religious orders), and others who have found themselves held in solitary confinement although they committed no crime (such as hostages and some political prisoners), Prisoners, Solitude, and Time seeks to assess the impact of long-term isolation and the rationality of such treatment. In doing so, it aims to stimulate interest in a somewhat neglected aspect of the prisoner's psychological world. The book focuses on an aspect of the prison experience - time, its meanderings, measures, and meanings - that is seldom considered by academic commentators. Building upon prisoner narratives, academic critiques, official publications, personal communications, field visits, administrative statistics, reports of campaigning bodies, and other data, it presents a new framework for understanding the prison experience. The author concludes with a series of reflections on hope, the search for meaning, posttraumatic growth, and the art of living.

'Tactics', Agency and Power in Women's Prisons

Following some months off to attend to pressing PhD business, The DA is making a comeback with a meet-up in May to discuss Abigail Rowe's recent article in the British Journal of Criminology, 'Tactics', Agency and Power in Women's Prisons.

Everyone welcome!

Date: Tuesday 10th May
Time: 6pm
Venue: Mulligan's Pub (we're usually in the back room) (Dublin 2, Poolbeg Street)

Please feel free to get in contact to be included on future mailing lists! Alternatively tweet to @blalygamal for more information.

Orange is the New Black - S3!

The Differential Association is plunging into the world of Orange is the New Black yet again this summer to discuss season 3 of the phenomenally successful Netflix show. In the summer of 2014, we discussed the first two seasons, and this August we're returning to discuss the story so far.

In the interim, Orange is the New Black has spawned its own mini-industry, with seminars devoted to it, and with an exciting array of research which takes the show as its starting point; this research is coming from the fields of media studies, gender/queer studies, critical race studies and criminology and criminal justice issues.

This makes the release of the third season a really pertinent time to get together and discuss how the show is progressing, how characters are developing AND to discuss the reaction to the show as well.

Everyone is welcome! If you missed the first DA on the show, come along and partake in the second.

Date: Wednesday 26th August

Time: 6pm

Venue: Mulligan's on Poolbeg Street - distressingly, the door to the back room has been REMOVED. We shall struggle on, make and mend.

Death and Furniture - the DA talks epistemology

On Wednesday 29 April, The Differential Association will be discussing Edwards, Ashmore and Potter's 'Death and Furniture'. The article is a reflection on realism versus relativism and the arguments for and against social constructionism.

As well as discussing the questions of epistemology that this article throws up, we will also be applying these questions to our own research and experience, so that we can consider the theoretical preoccupations in light of tangible questions emerging in relation to understandings of crime and punishment.

When: 6pm Wed 29 April
Where: Mulligan's Back Room

Edwards, D., Ashmore, M. and Potter, J. (1995) 'Death and Furniture: The Rhetoric, Politics and Theology of Bottom Line Arguments Against Relativism', History of the Human Sciences, 8(2), 25-49.

Filler Elevator Music...

The Differential Association has been AWOL for some months now. Its winning mix of light-hearted banter, deep criminological ponderings and devotion to holding monthly meet-ups in Dublin pubs has no doubt been much missed.

There has been a very good reason for its prolonged absence.

Members of the DA have been beavering away tirelessly behind the scenes to arrange a conference in which a lot of what happens at our monthly meetings will take place on a larger scale.

On Friday 27 March, the inaugural Irish Postgraduate Criminology Conference will be held. The conference is being co-hosted and funded by Dublin Institute of Technology, and the School of Law at Trinity College Dublin. It will bring together dozens of postgraduate researchers in the fields of criminology and criminal justice, criminal law, historical perspectives on crime and many others, to provide a space for research, both Irish and international.

The invited speakers at the conference are Professor Ian O'Donnell, of University College Dublin, Professor Eamonn Carrabine of the University of Essex and Dr Claire Hamilton of NUI Maynooth. We feel hugely honoured to host these speakers, especially as each has authored a text which at one time was the selected reading material of a monthly meet-up!

Normal service will resume for all those criminology discussions following the conference!

Democratising Punishment by Julian V Roberts and Jan de Keijser

Julian V Roberts and Jan W de Keijser (2014) ‘Democratising Punishment: Sentencing, Community Views and Values’, Punishment and Society, 16(4), 474-498

How far should public involvement in punishing criminal wrongdoing be facilitated? A recent movement towards greater participation from the ‘lay’ public has suggested that these voices are lacking in the criminal justice system as it is currently conceptualised. Those in favour of this movement towards ‘Democratising Punishment’ have argued that a crisis of legitimacy is impending as decision-making in criminal justice matters becomes ever more divorced from ‘common-sense’.

In light of this, one of the key rationales put forward by the democratising punishment scholars, the notion of ‘common-sense’, presents itself for examination. It is hard not to think of Gramsci’s view of common-sense as ‘a reservoir of historically discontinuous and disjointed ideas that functions as the philosophy of non-philosophers’ which suggested that it was hardly the wise arbiter it often purported to be (In Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci 1971).

In their forcibly articulated argument Roberts and de Keijser critique, and in turn, criticise the models of participation and rationales proposed by advocates of the democracy in punishment movement.

As Lon Fuller articulated, through the person of Justice Handy, in ‘The Case of the Speluncean Explorers’, the place of public opinion in justice has been a recurring question in legal circles:

‘I have never been able to make my brothers see that government is a human affair, and that men are ruled, not by words on paper or by abstract theories, but by other men. They are ruled well when their rulers understand the feelings and conceptions of the masses. They are ruled badly when that understanding is lacking.

‘Of all branches of the government, the judiciary is the most likely to lose contact with the common man.’

Fuller presented Justice Handy as entirely swayed by the ‘common-sensical’ views of the public, as revealed to him through opinion polls in newspapers; Handy used this evidence to solve the difficult case at hand, namely the saving of four men accused of murder (the case is worth a read, and it makes great dinner party/pub banter).

Interestingly, given the concerns of democratising punishment advocates about the apparent disconnect between the people and the courts, Ireland’s highly discretionary system would surely provide acute cause for concern. It ensures that there is even less input from democratically elected persons, while tools such as sentencing guidelines, for example, are not a feature of this jurisdiction.

Advocates of democratising punishment extol the virtues of community involvement. One issue not explored at length in Roberts and de Keijser’s article however is the assumed homogeneity of ‘community’ which must necessarily underpin these treatises. The concept of the ‘community’ in each of the models of participatory justice is presented without nuance or discussion of what this nebulous term actually consists. Using a vague term such as 'community' also serves to glorify and romanticise the idea of lay participation, in a manner which becomes difficult to sustain when subjected to scrutiny. The direct participation of ‘community’ in this abstract form would inevitably incorporate the discrimination and inequity of society; currently within a professionalised criminal justice system there is the veneer of equality and neutrality. This is allied to the dangers of a reduction in transparency and accountability, as laypersons would not be held accountable to the same extent as professionals acting within carefully determined parameters. The entire debate suggests that a key question must be answered - is dispassionate deliberation a desired trait in decision-making? If this is not agreed on, then proportionality and principled sentencing make way for emotive and expressive justice. The argument put forth by 'Democratising Punishment' advocates that sentencing is ‘dysfunctional’ is interesting in this vein. ‘Dysfunctional’ how? In reality, this appears to mean lenient. Therefore, public participation in sentencing poses a risk of increasing punitiveness in the form of longer sentences, with the resultant rise in prison populations and expense.

Following on from the uncertain concept of 'community', even juries in many jurisdictions, including Ireland (see the Law Reform Commission report on this), are rarely representative, inevitably showcasing a selection of society skewed towards certain sub-groups. The small proportion of criminal cases which end in a jury trial is also regularly glossed over in the fiction of the jury trial as the cornerstone of the legal system. The valorising of the jury trial also sits uneasily with calls for greater expert juries or calls for a complete absence of jurors, for example in sexual offence cases or in cases of financial complexity deemed particularly specialised.

The question of how public reactions are to be gauged is also problematic. The equation of a media with a public reaction raises issues of causation. To what extent can a media reaction be viewed as reflective of a public reaction? In Ireland, an intense media reaction to the Lavinia Kerwick case in the early 1990s led to the Criminal Justice Act 1993 in which victims were given an opportunity, through the use of victim impact statements, to express in court how the crime had impacted them. However, the untangling of genuine public disquiet from media noise is difficult to quantify and assuming that media reactions are a proxy for public opinion can have the paradoxical effect of shutting the public out of debate.

Ultimately, the democratising punishment argument appears to locate the citizen as consumer, and to prioritise concerns of getting value for ‘your’ money; a sleek criminal justice system, incorporating Points of View-style feedback, is envisaged. The question of how great the want is among the public to assume their starring role in the administration of justice is debatable, for example the record low turn-out at the elections for Police Commissioners in England and Wales, which suggested a tokenistic exercise in devolving power to a people who had little interest. Over the previous two centuries, civil society gradually gave up its role in the punishment of offenders, it is questionable to what extent it has the desire and capacity to participate in a meaningful way.

Ultimately, The Differential Association suggested that education and information campaigns targeted at the public may offer a more feasible means of incorporating public acceptance of criminal justice processes. Those present discussed the possibility of televising trials, for example The Murder Trial (aired by Channel 4) and the blanket coverage of the Oscar Pistorius homicide trial, both presented opportunities to assess how such a proposal could work in practice. However, inevitably, the entertainment imperatives and the danger of misleading editing presents issues of ethics, exploitation and sensationalism.

What is lost in the literature calling for greater democratisation is the idea that professionals in the criminal justice system are citizens; they are merely citizens that have been tasked with acting impartially and to the best of their ability according to pre-set parameters. Further, judges are already to an extent influenced by public opinion in sentencing. Arguably, the use of restorative justice practices are already an attempt to introduce the community into the criminal justice process, as is community policing.

Finally, justice cannot be devolved as a discrete area which operates without reference to other areas of policy-making. The criminal justice system comprises one part of a symbiotic relationship with other areas of policy and politics such as welfare and education. Should public participation extend to these diverse other areas? To consider criminal justice policy in isolation merely perpetuates the use of its institutions and agencies as a catch-all for failures elsewhere in society.

Roberts and de Keijser have presented a sharp critique of the main arguments for 'democratising punishment'; the article is written in an informal and colloquial style, and the arguments are concisely and convincingly stated.