White Collar Criminals’ Experience of Imprisonment in England and Wales: Revisiting the ‘special Sensitivity’ Debate

Abstract

This article explores white collar criminals' experience of imprisonment in England and Wales.Based upon interviews with 13 convicted offenders after they had completed their imprisonment, it is the first study to date of this kind in England and Wales (all others have been based in prison). It offers a unique impartial insight of prisoners' experience, beyond the influence of the prison walls. The paper explores the experience around the largely American 'special sensitivity' debate, over whether such offenders are more sensitive to prison. The research uncovers both positive experiences, labelled 'good', but also negative, labelled 'bad' (non-violent experiences) and 'ugly' (violent experiences). Overall the findings reveal it is difficult to apply the special sensitivity hypothesis universally to this group of offenders.

Carceral Experiences of White-Collar Offenders: Qualitative Research Design Utilising the Offender-Based Definition and Pierre Bourdieu’s Capital Theory

“…Even without the involvement of other inmates and prison guards, detention was accompanied by various impositions. As in prior research (Benson & Cullen 1988, Button et al 2020, the white-collar offenders studied linked their emotional distress primarily to the first fortnight of confinement, directly after they were jolted out of their professional and familial life and thrust into radically altered social settings. Three participants confessed suicidal ideation during that period, and a further three reported some symptoms of mental breakdown.…”

“…Qualitative research to date has delivered valuable insights into the lives of those few whitecollar offenders who have served time for their crimes. In their recent paper, Button et al (2020) have listed 14 previous studies based on interviews with convicted white-collar offenders, of which, however, only four addressed prison experience. Benson's pioneering article (1988) has shown that white-collar offenders being studied distanced themselves from prison subculture, stuck to their middle-class identities and actively neutralised the criminal label through a obsequious observance of rules and associating with other former professionals.…”

“…Nevertheless, respect from fellow prisoners and the reinforcement of family ties were mentioned as silver linings. The recent British study by Button et al (2020) can be considered the most extensive. The difficult experiences of the offense-based sample of 13 white-collar offenders included alienation, the hostile approach of the guards, and, in one case, a physical assault.…”

“…In response to the increasing number of white-collar offenders in prison, several studies on the subject were conducted in the United States and Great Britain that applied both quantitative (Stadler et al 2013;Crank & Payne 2015;) and qualitative methodologies (Benson & Cullen 1988;Hunter 2012Hunter , 2015Button et al 2020). This emerging academic interest in convicted whitecollar offenders can be linked not only to the emerging criminology of white-collar crime as an established subdiscipline with dedicated handbooks and journals (Friedrichs 2011;Alvesalo-Kuusi & Barak 2020), but also to certain developments within prison research, which has recently dedicated more attention to the distinctive experiences of subgroups of inmates as various as, for instance, the elderly, former soldiers, and LGBT+ individuals (Mann 2016;Logan and Pare, 2017;Maycock, 2021).…”

“…Firstly, almost 1 all available findings originate from two jurisdictions -that is the US and the UK, whose criminal justice systems are more of an exception than a generalisable examples when considered within a global framework, a state of affairs which has even been criticized within Anglo-Saxon scholarship (Hunter 2019). Secondly, available literature remains explorative in its nature and most scholars 'focused on a blunt optic around the presence or lack of a special sensitivity hypothesis' (Button et al 2020). Although the hypothesis now seems untenable, the reasons behind an unexpectedly good adjustment to carceral settings were only subject to tentative explanations (Stadler et al 2013).…”