Let the convicts speak: a critical conversation of the ongoing language debate in convict criminology

Creating convict criminology in the UK: a response to Aresti, Darke and Ross from members of the British Convict Criminology group

“…As is clear from many recent accounts of CC, defining what it is and how it is conducted or developed are under constant critical appraisal (Cox, 2020;Ortiz et al, 2022). Some of this critical attention falls on the use of the word 'convict' and in this article we offer some comment on this.…”

“…Nomenclature is a system for giving names to things within a particular profession or field. In their article Aresti, Darke and Ross avoid any engagement with the troubles of nomenclature that continue to circulate around CC, not least in Australia and the US (Cox, 2020;Ortiz et al, 2022;Ortiz, 2023). Here in the UK, there are probably almost as many established criminology lecturers with criminal convictions and prison time who eschew direct identification with CC as there are in the BCC group.…”

Captive bodies, prison geographies, and the somatic carceral condition

“…We already have such models with the scholarly work being done by self-described “convict criminologists” (see Ross, 2012) as well as carceral sociologists whose writing on prison and prisonization articulates the nuances of captivity, including the debilitating nightmares and sleep deprivation of “doing time” (Walker, 2022). Formerly incarcerated scholars are likewise better able to eschew neat scholarly conceptualizations and opaque theoretical approaches to incarceration (Ortiz et al, 2022; Shanahan, 2022), while still speaking to the complexity of reentry: an experience Bolden (2020: 157) describes as “overwhelming in the sense that I felt like I somehow had been kept alive without breathing for years, and was just now taking my first breath… [but] to say that I was ‘free’ would be a misnomer.”…”

The role of language in probation: A creative conversation

“…That said, User Voice conducted research with 4000 people on probation and found that 67% preferred the term service user (User Voice [@uservoiceorg], 2022). There is a need to respect the language autonomy of people in the system and be conscious of differences between ‘in-group’ and ‘out-group’ speakers (Ortiz et al, 2022). Whilst language is important, there are many other important issues to consider (such as the collateral consequences of punishment and the structural disadvantage which many people on probation experience) which have a greater and – probably – more immediate impact on peoples’ lives than how we refer to them.…”