Prison sociology and the experiences of men convicted of sex offences

我的博士论文，题为“适应，道德社区和权力在监狱的男人被定罪的性犯罪”，探讨了关押在HMP斯塔福德的男人的监禁经历。性犯罪者在监狱人口中所占的比例越来越大——几乎每五个被判刑的成年男子中就有一个被判有性犯罪——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为止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42个与囚犯的长时间半结构化访谈，12个与监狱官员的短时间半结构化访谈，以及对监狱日常生活的长时间参与性观察。研究集中在对这些人特别重要的三个方面，所有这些都在现有的主流监禁研究中得到了详细探讨：第一，他们适应刑期的方式；第二，他们之间形成的社会和道德共同体；第三，他们与工作人员的关系以及监狱权力对他们的影响。这三个方面——适应、道德社区和权力——都受到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。通过引起人们对这一问题的关注，我希望从传统的理解监狱的模式——作为一个完全由权力构成的纪律机构——转向一种更严肃地看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，我将通过四个主要方面的工作来发展这个项目。首先，也是最重要的一点，我将传播我的博士研究成果，并建立一个监狱研究人员的网络，这些研究人员研究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，我将以我的博士研究成果为基础，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，我将把我的发现传达给刑法领域的决策者和从业者，并在不同国家的从业者之间建立关系。我将为知名学者和实践者举办小型研讨会；我还将访问五所关押性犯罪者的监狱，与监狱官员讨论我关于如何善用权力的调查结果，并将在监狱从业人员的主要期刊《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，从而促进更知情的公众讨论刑事司法系统在规范性生活方面应该和确实发挥的作用。通过这项奖学金，我将通过发表大量论文和建立一个同事网络来建立我作为一流监狱学者的声誉。不过，更重要的是，我将鼓励监狱研究人员考虑监禁性犯罪者，从而对刑罚学领域产生持久的影响。绝大多数关于监狱的社会学文献都描述了主流男性囚犯的经历，并简单地假设监狱对性犯罪者和女性的运作方式是一样的。通过这次合作，我将挑战这些假设，并为Pat Carlen（1994）所称的惩罚的“联合”分析做出贡献，这种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.