Experiences and perception of punishment: an insight into the life of prisoners

Most ethnographic studies of prisoners focus on one prison in one country. Based at the University of Cambridge, Dr Crewe aims to go further by comparing the experience of imprisonment across different prisoner groups and national contexts. Specifically, his aim is to interrogate the ‘Nordic exceptionalism’ thesis – that is, the claim that punishment in Nordic nations is less harsh than in other countries - through using a framework which builds on the concepts of the ‘depth’, ‘weight’, ‘tightness’ and ‘breadth’ of imprisonment. To achieve this, his team will conduct substantial fieldwork in England & Wales and Norway, including a longitudinal study of entry into and exit from each prison system, ethnographic studies of female prisoners and imprisoned sex offenders, and an exploration of ‘deep-end custody’ in each country. Through the concept of ‘penal consciousness’, the team will explore interactions between the punitive intentions of the State and prisoners’ understanding of purpose and legitimacy of their penalty. Moral and cultural factors, such as shame and guilt, will also be taken into consideration and studied in different contexts.

Another objective of the COMPEN project is to investigate the processes affecting punishment policy. Through what mechanisms does the political economy of a country – whether it is neo-liberal (England & Wales) or social-democratic (Norway) – determine penal policy? Which groups, discourses and assumptions shape penal policy in these two jurisdictions?

At the end of the project, the research team will provide a theoretical framework enabling a more nuanced analysis of the experience of imprisonment than those used in current studies of penal systems. With this tool at hand, Dr Crewe will challenge the assumption that prisons are uniform entities in which penal experiences are the same for all prisoners, and will seek to put the ‘exceptionalism’ thesis to a strong empirical test.