'A good life in prison': Everyday ethics in a prison holding young men

监狱里的年轻人在犯罪学和政策想象中有着特殊的地位。他们通常被视为既受损又具有破坏性，因为他们容易自杀和自残，同时也容易发生暴力和不服从行为。政治家和从业人员越来越多地将他们描述为神经不发达，情感和行为不成熟的人，并认为刑事司法对年轻人犯罪的反应应该是帮助肇事者发展成道德成熟的成年人。当年轻人被囚禁在权力严重失衡、极度贫困和帮派关系密集的机构中时，实现这些愿望就变得复杂起来。这个项目将考虑监狱中的年轻人如何思考和制定他们的道德生活，以及他们如何在监狱中寻求参与日常道德。拟议中的项目有四个主要的研究问题。首先，年轻的男性囚犯认为监狱里的美好生活是什么样的，他们在监狱里是如何过道德生活的？第二，他们过美好生活的努力如何受到更广泛的囚犯社会的影响，囚犯社会如何成为美好生活的资源或限制？第三，监狱作为一种制度，在哪些方面塑造和阻碍了囚犯的道德生活？制度上的道德化是如何与囚犯自身的道德相交叉的？第四，罪犯的美好生活观念与犯罪克制之间存在怎样的关系？这项研究将涉及对关押在监狱里的年轻男子进行为期一年的民族志调查，该监狱关押了大量年轻男子。它将从一段时间的参与者观察开始，旨在理解一些构成日常道德的小行为——比如借给别人一块巧克力，去健身房，或者和家人打电话。将对囚犯进行约60次半结构化访谈，了解在监狱里做个好人意味着什么。研究人员还将对囚犯进行约25次长期的生活史访谈，以了解监禁在囚犯更广泛的道德教育中所扮演的角色。将组织一个由最多10名囚犯组成的“对话小组”，促进每两周就监狱内外的道德、权力、身份和政治等问题进行讨论。该项目将处于犯罪学和刑罚学发展领域的前沿，这是向道德及其对理解刑事司法的相关性迈进的一步。它将首次对监狱中的日常伦理进行详细的民族志描述，将发展新的理论概念来描述监禁的伦理层面，并将补充现有的、更传统的关于囚犯世界的社会学研究。此外，它将为政策和实践提供有关监狱从业人员难以管理的群体的信息，并将促使政策制定者讨论监狱可以促进和实现美好生活的方式。

Young men in prison have a particular position in the criminological and policy imagination. They are generally seen as both damaged and damaging, as people who are vulnerable to suicide and self-harm and simultaneously prone to violence and non-compliant behaviour. Politicians and practitioners increasingly describe them as neurologically undeveloped and emotionally and behaviourally immature, and argue that the criminal justice response to young adult criminality should be to help the perpetrators to develop into morally mature adults. The realisation of these aspirations becomes complex when young adults are imprisoned in institutions riven with stark power imbalances, profound deprivation and dense gang affiliations. This project will consider how young adults in prison themselves think about and enact their moral lives, and how they seek to engage in everyday ethics in the prison.The proposed project has four main research questions in mind. First, what do young male prisoners think a good life in prison looks like, and how do they live ethical lives while they are incarcerated? Second, how are their attempts to live a good life affected by the wider prisoner society, and how does the prisoner society act as a resource for or as a limitation to the good life? Third, in what ways are prisoners' moral lives shaped and stunted by the prison as an institution, and how do institutional attempts at moralisation intersect with prisoners' own moralities? And fourth, what relationship is there between prisoners' conceptions of the good life and desistance from crime?The research will involve a year-long ground-up ethnography of the young men held in a prison holding a large proportion of young men. It will begin with a period of participant observation, aiming to understand the small acts - such as lending someone a chocolate bar, going to the gym, or talking to family members on the telephone - which constitute everyday ethics. Around 60 semi-structured interviews will be conducted with prisoners about what it means to be and do good in prison. Around 25 long life-history interviews will also be conducted with prisoners, to understand the role played by imprisonment in prisoners' wider moral education. A 'Dialogue Group' with up to ten prisoners will be organised, which will facilitate fortnightly discussions of issues relating to ethics, power, identity and politics in the prison and beyond.This project will be at the forefront of a developing field in criminology and penology - a move towards ethics and its relevance for understanding criminal justice. It will offer the first detailed ethnographic description of everyday ethics in prison, will develop new theoretical concepts to describe the ethical dimension of imprisonment, and will complement existing, more conventional sociological studies of the prisoner world. Furthermore, it will inform policy and practice about a group who prison practitioners find difficult to manage, and will also prompt discussion among policymakers about the ways in which the prison can promote and enable a good life.