Prison sociology and the experiences of men convicted of sex offences

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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.