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

监狱中的年轻男子在犯罪学和政策想象中具有特殊地位。他们通常被视为既受伤害又具有破坏性，因为他们容易自杀和自残，同时也容易发生暴力和不顺从行为。政治家和从业者越来越多地将他们描述为神经发育不全，情感和行为不成熟，并认为对青少年犯罪的刑事司法反应应该是帮助犯罪者发展成为道德成熟的成年人。当年轻人被监禁在权力严重失衡、极度贫困和帮派密集的机构中时，这些愿望的实现变得复杂起来。该项目将研究监狱中的年轻人如何思考和实施他们的道德生活，以及他们如何寻求参与监狱中的日常道德。首先，年轻的男性囚犯认为监狱里的美好生活是什么样子的，他们在被监禁期间如何过上道德的生活？第二，他们过上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，监狱作为一个机构，以何种方式塑造和阻碍了囚犯的道德生活，以及机构在道德教化方面的尝试如何与囚犯自己的道德相交？第四，罪犯的美好生活观念与停止犯罪之间存在什么关系？这项研究将涉及一个为期一年的地面上的民族志的年轻男子被关押在监狱举行了很大比例的年轻男子。它将从一段时间的参与观察开始，旨在了解小行为-例如借给某人巧克力棒，去健身房，或与家人通电话-这些构成日常道德。将对囚犯进行大约60次半结构化的采访，了解在监狱里做好事意味着什么。还将对囚犯进行大约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发挥的作用。将组织一个由多达10名囚犯组成的“对话小组”，每两周就监狱内外的道德、权力、身份和政治问题进行讨论。该项目将处于犯罪学和刑罚学发展领域的前沿--走向道德及其与理解刑事司法的相关性。它将首次提供监狱中日常伦理的详细民族志描述，将开发新的理论概念来描述监禁的伦理层面，并将补充现有的，更传统的囚犯世界的社会学研究。此外，它将为政策和实践提供信息，说明监狱从业人员难以管理的群体，还将促使决策者讨论监狱如何促进和实现美好生活。

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.