The power of the pen: Prisoners’ letters to explore extreme imprisonment

Abstract

This article examines how we might best examine the most extreme and inaccessible corners of imprisonment. Drawing on a study of life imprisonment without parole (LWOP) in California, this article argues that prisoners’ letters can shed exceptional light on the hidden and unspoken experiences of imprisonment. It provides an in-depth methodological and reflective outline of how to use prisoners’ letters, a familiar tactic in prison researchers’ and advocates’ toolkits, but a research implement that is rarely discussed explicitly. By better understanding how to do prison research with letters and the emotions these might provoke in the process, this article demonstrates the very specific and distinct value of the method, in particular how letters can contribute to knowledge about extreme penal severity.

Locked up While Locked Down: Prisoners’ Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…We collected the data as part of our study of transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) prisoners’ lived experiences that commenced in June 2019 and continued throughout the pandemic. The data were gathered using the letter writing method, advocated for uncovering ‘hidden experiences of imprisonment’ ( Vannier 2020 : 249). Our approach was representative of qualitative longitudinal research, which ‘typically takes the form of small-scale, in-depth studies of individuals or small collectives, tracking them intensively over relatively modest time frames to generate rich, situated data’ ( Neale 2016 : 9).…”

Access denied: Research on sex in prison and the subjugation of ‘deviant knowledge’

“…They should, in short, contest what Martel (2004) terms the tendencies towards paradigmatic ‘bipolarization’ and ‘banalization’, in which the deification of quantitative methods seemingly demands the denigration of qualitative approaches. Less ambitiously, the combination of tenacity, patience and resourcefulness can sometimes eventually enable the successful completion of research by, for example, relocating the project to a more amenable jurisdiction or correctional service provider (King and Liebling, 2008); utilizing freedom of information protocols (Yeager, 2006); or analysing publicly available policy or institutional documents (Hannah-Moffat, 2011) and prisoners’ autobiographies (Morgan, 1999) and letters (Vannier, 2020). And while the involvement of formerly imprisoned people has frequently enriched studies of release and resettlement, re-offending and desistance, and parole and community supervision (notably, Appleton, 2010; Maruna, 2001; Petersilia, 2003), this article has drawn attention to the potential for formerly imprisoned people, as compelling contributors to research about (rather than conducted in) prisons, to resist and transgress the limits to knowledge imposed by prison authorities.…”

“We are prisoners, not inmates”: prison letters as liminal counter-carceral spaces

“…The method I pursued in my research draws on sociological classics, such as Thomas and Znaniecki (1918) and Wright Mills (1959) on sociological imagination; the more recent narrative approach developed in criminology that contributes to how inmates use discursive resistance strategies in prison (Fleetwood et al, 2019;Vannier, 2018); the discussion in geography about narrative turn in the humanities and social sciences and the emphasis on narrative activity, i.e. how the narrative is constructed and what the different narrative environments are (Prokkola, 2014); insights into personal correspondences, the question of truth in narratives; the historicity of the material and the limits and opportunities given by the specificity of epistolary exchanges in social history (Elliott et al, 2006); the development from critical criminology and geography on the narratives of prisoners (Earle, 2019); and the narratives of political prisoners (Schaich and Hope, 1977;Shabazz, 2014).…”