Prison sociology and the experiences of men convicted of sex offences

我的博士论文题为《性犯罪男性在监狱中的适应、道德共同体和权力》，探讨了被关押在HMP Stafford的男性被监禁的经历。性犯罪者在监狱人口中的比例很大，而且还在不断增长--近五分之一被判刑的成年男性被判犯有性侵犯罪--但他们一直被监狱研究人员忽视。在我的论文中，我通过探索一个迄今被忽视的群体的经历来纠正这种不平衡，并产生了与更广泛的监禁研究相关的理论见解。这篇论文是基于一项为期五个月的深入人种学研究。它包括对囚犯的42次长时间半结构化访谈，对狱警的12次较短的半结构化访谈，以及对监狱日常生活的较长时间的参与者观察。它侧重于对这些人特别重要的三个领域，所有这些领域都在现有的主流监禁研究中进行了详细探讨：第一，他们适应判决的方式；第二，他们之间形成的各种社会和道德共同体；第三，他们与工作人员建立的关系以及监狱权力对他们的作用方式。这三个领域--适应、道德共同体和权力--都受到了两个更重要的问题的影响：他们因性犯罪而服刑的事实，以及由此产生的“性犯罪者”的社会身份。通过引起人们对这个问题的关注，我希望从传统的理解监狱作为一个完全由权力构建的纪律机构的模式，转向一个更严肃地对待监狱作为一个谴责机构的道德功能和影响的模式。如果我被选为博士后研究员，我将通过参与四个主要方面的工作来发展这个项目。首先，也是最重要的是，我将传播我的博士研究成果，并建立一个监狱研究人员网络，检验性犯罪者的惩罚经历。为此，我将出版一本书和几篇期刊文章，并组织一次关于性犯罪者监禁的学术圆桌会议。其次，我将在我的博士研究成果的基础上，对英格兰和威尔士的性犯罪者监禁历史进行一项小型研究。第三，我将向刑法领域的政策制定者和实践者传达我的发现，并在不同国家的实践者之间建立关系。我将为主要的学者和从业者组织一个小型研讨会；我还将访问关押着性犯罪者的五所监狱，讨论我对监狱官员善用权力的发现，并将在监狱从业者的领先期刊《监狱服务杂志》上发表一篇关于这一主题的短文。最后，我将与公众接触，从而促进更有见地的公众讨论刑事司法系统在规管性生活方面应该发挥的作用。通过这个联谊会，我将通过发展出版物的记录和扩大同事网络，建立我作为一名领先监狱学者的声誉。然而，更重要的是，我将通过鼓励监狱研究人员考虑入狱性犯罪者，对监狱领域产生持久的影响。绝大多数关于监狱的社会学文献描述了主流男性囚犯的经历，只是假设监狱对性犯罪者和女性以同样的方式运作。通过这个联谊会，我将挑战这些假设，并为Pat Carlen(1994)所说的对惩罚的“联合”分析做出贡献，该分析结合了主流男性、女性和性犯罪者的经验，分析了监狱惩罚的方式。

My PhD dissertation, entitled 'Adaptation, moral community and power in a prison for men convicted of sex offences', explored the experiences of imprisonment of men held in HMP Stafford. Sex offenders constitute a significant and growing proportion of the prison population - almost one in five sentenced adult men have been convicted of a sex offence - but they have been consistently overlooked by prison researchers. In my thesis, I redressed this imbalance by exploring the experiences of a hitherto overlooked group, and generated theoretical insights which are of relevance to wider studies of imprisonment. The thesis was based on an in-depth ethnographic study conducted over a five-month period. It included 42 long semi-structured interviews with prisoners, 12 shorter semi-structured interviews with prison officers, and extended periods of participant observation of day-to-day life in the prison. It focused on three areas which were of particular salience to these men, all of which have been explored in detail in existing studies of mainstream imprisonment: first, the ways in which they adapted to their sentence; second, the sorts of social and moral communities they formed amongst themselves; and third, the relationships they formed with staff and the way the prison's power operated on them. All three of these areas - adaptation, moral community and power - were inflected by two issues of even greater significance: the fact that they were serving sentences for sexual offences, and their resulting social identities as 'sex offenders'. By drawing attention to this issue, I hope to move on from the conventional mode of understanding the prison, as a disciplinary institution structured solely by power, to one which takes more seriously the moral functions and effects of the prison as a condemnatory institution.If selected for a postdoctoral fellowship, I will develop this project by engaging in four main strands of work. First, and most importantly, I will disseminate the findings of my PhD research and build a network of prison researchers who examine sex offenders' experiences of punishment. I will do this by publishing a book and several journal articles, and by organising an academic roundtable on sex offender imprisonment. Second, I will build on the findings of my PhD research by conducting a small study into the history of sex offender imprisonment in England & Wales. Third, I will communicate my findings to policymakers and practitioners in the penal field, and build relationships between practitioners in different countries. I will organise a small symposium for leading academics and practitioners; I will also visit five prisons holding sex offenders to discuss my findings about the good use of authority with prison officers, and will publish a short article on this topic in the Prison Service Journal, the leading journal for prison practitioners. Finally, I will engage with members of the public, thereby contributing to a more informed public discussion about the role the criminal justice system should and does play in the regulation of sexual life.Through this fellowship, I will establish my reputation as a leading prison scholar by developing a track record of publications and by growing a network of colleagues. More importantly, though, I will have a lasting impact on the penological field by encouraging prison researchers to consider the imprisonment of sex offenders. The vast majority of sociological literature on the prison describes the experiences of mainstream male prisoners, and simply assumes that the prison operates in the same way on sex offenders and women. Through this fellowship, I will challenge these assumptions, and contribute to what Pat Carlen (1994) calls a 'federated' analysis of punishment, one which incorporates the experiences of mainstream men, women and sex offenders as it analyses the ways in the which the prison punishes.