There is plentiful evidence that imprisonment is painful, harmful and criminogenic. However, alongside accounts that emphasize such consequences are alternative narratives, in which some prisoners claim that carceral confinement has been a positive intervention in their life. Drawing on Scott’s idea of the reinventive institution, this article explores these narratives, which—contra Goffman—involve a voluntaristic commitment to the prison, active engagement in the process of identity reconstruction, normative alignment with institutional values and the role of lateral regulation in shaping the prisoner’s new self. Our analysis emphasizes the impact of the prison as an institutional form, and the ways that, in interaction with particular biographical experiences, it produces narratives of reinvention which imply an inversion of its normal destructive processes. Our argument is not a defence of imprisonment, but an attempt to theorize a narrative claim that, although expressed by a minority of prisoners, merits proper analysis.

Prison scholarship has tended to focus on the pains and frustrations that result from the use and over-use of penal power. Yet the absence of such power and the subjective benefits of its grip are also worthy of attention. This article begins by drawing on recent literature and research findings to develop the concept of ‘tightness’ beyond its initial formulation. Drawing primarily on data from a study of men convicted of sex offences, it goes on to explain that, in some circumstances, the reach and hold of penal power are not experienced as oppressive and undesirable, and, indeed, may be welcomed. Conversely, institutional inattention and an absence of grip may be experienced as painful. Prisons, then, can be ‘loose’ or ‘lax’ as well as ‘tight’. The article then discusses the different ways in which prisons exercise grip, and, in doing so, recognise or misrecognise the subjectivity of the individual prisoner. It concludes by identifying the connections between this ‘ground-up’ analysis of the relative legitimacy of different forms of penal intervention and recent discussions in penal theory about the proper role of the state in communicating censure and promoting personal repentance and change.

The prisoner is never allowed to forget that, by committing a crime, he has foregone his claim to the status of a fully-fledged, trusted member of society. (Sykes, 1958/2007, p. 66). 1 Gresham Sykes argued that the exclusion of the prisoner is moral as well as physical, and that the deprivation of moral status is more painful for prisoners than the other pains and deficits of incarceration. However, since the nature of some prisoners' crimes can lead to their secondary exclusion from the society of captives itself, some prisonersfor current purposes, those convicted of sexual offencesface a more profound form of status deprivation than others (Åkerström, 1986). This article will explore how imprisoned sex offenders experience, perceive and respond as agents to their moral exclusion. In particular, it argues that, if we are to understand the experiences of prisoners convicted of sexual offences, it is not enough to describe them as excluded by mainstream prisoners, or to explore their vertical relationships with those in power over them. 2 Instead we should study and explain their horizontal relationships with other sex offenders, seeing the excluded group as forming a new society, a form of moral community, which is in itself worthy of consideration. The experiences of prisoners convicted of sexual offences have been largely neglected by prison sociologists (O'Donnell, 2004: 252-253). This is despite the fact that they constitute a sizeable proportion of the prison population: in England and Wales, sixteen per centalmost one in sixof sentenced adult male prisoners have been convicted of a sexual offence (Ministry of Justice, 2014). In this jurisdiction, then, there are more than three times as many sex offenders in prison as there are women, and yet sex offenders barely feature in sociological studies of prison life. Very little is known about them beyond their position at the base of the prisoner hierarchy and the fact that they are often accommodated separately from mainstream prisoners in order to ensure their safety (Guy, 1992). Almost no research has been conducted into the societies they form within these separate institutions. This article is based on research conducted in an English Category C (medium security) prison holding only sex offenders. The inhabitants, who had been excluded in their earlier institutions, were now the insiders, but they still experienced an acute form of moral stigmatisation and exclusion which was experienced as an assault on their moral character. This article argues that the moral community formed by prisoners was largely an attempt to mitigate the painful consequences of this condemnation and form an accepting and supportive community. However, the attempt was frustrated by the 1 Emphasis in original. 2 The term 'mainstream prisoners' refers to those who have not been convicted of a sexual offence. A 'mainstream prison' is therefore an institution which mainly accommodates mainstream prisoners. structural lack of trust within prison and by sex offenders' own imported moral ju...

Late-modern penal power has been described as ‘tight’. Through the increasing use of indeterminate sentences and psychological assessment, and the growing insistence that prisoners engage in self-government, the prison monitors and seeks to change those it holds. This tight and disciplinarian power is often described as contributing to the increasing fragmentation and atomisation of the prisoner community. However, this article, which is based on research conducted in a English medium-security prison for men convicted of sex offences, argues that tightness can operate through the prisoner community, in a process which it terms ‘lateral regulation’. It shows that prisoners spend a lot of time observing, categorising and policing their peers, in ways which replicate and often uphold the more formal systems of power. However, the relationship between these two systems of power is complex, and prisoners’ collective self-regulation can conflict with and challenge the demands of the penal institution, in a way which reveals some of the weaknesses in the institution’s disciplinary gaze, and indicates the normative motivations underlying this regulation.

Based on a survey administered in 13 prisons in England & Wales and Norway, as part of a research programme with explicitly comparative aims, this article seeks to address both the relative and absolute dimensions of the Nordic penal exceptionalism thesis. It outlines the consistently more positive results in Norway compared to England & Wales, explaining them primarily with reference to the former’s much higher quality and use of open prisons. At the same time, it emphasizes that, even in an unusually humane prison system, prisoners report considerable pain and frustration. The article also makes the case that comparative analysis should strive to be systematic, but that such comparisons are always imperfect, making methodological transparency all the more essential.