Double liminality
Transitional imprisonment and the ambiguities of the open prison
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24230076 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ed Schreeche-Powell (0000-0002-5551-9649, The University of Greenwich) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-08 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Theoretical Criminology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1362-4806 • E-ISSN: 1461-7439 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/13624806261491968 |
| OpenAlex | W7133578317 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 38 |
This analysis reconceptualises open prisons as institutions of suspension rather than bridges to freedom. Extending penal liminality theory, it advances the concept of double liminality to explain how ‘transitional imprisonment’—custody whose boundary remains permeable in both directions—governs through compounded ambiguity. Drawing on qualitative research in English open prisons, the study theorises how prisoners are suspended between two thresholds: regression to closed prison conditions and conditional release. Over-institutionalised in sanction yet under-institutionalised in support, open prisons generate three dimensions of suspended experience, namely, institutional ambiguity, fractured identity, and temporal suspension, operating as a governance technique. By framing open custody within the logics of neoliberal conditionality and responsibilisation, the study offers a framework for analysing institutional doubleness, where the demand for autonomy coincides with its denial. It contributes to emerging debates on penal transformation, temporal power, and carceral governance through withdrawal.
conditional release · institutional ambiguity · open prisons · prisoner autonomy · Regression analysis · responsibilization · temporal power · withdrawal · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Criminal Justice and Penology · Foucault, Power, and Ethics
Navigating Mental Health in the Male Open Prison
The Culture of Control
Betwixt and between identities
Contrasts in freedom
Permanent (trickster) liminality
The Prisoner SocietyPower, Adaptation and Social Life in an English Prison
Being Imprisoned
Punishment in Disguise
Power and Resistance in Prison
Powers of Freedom
Prisons and their Moral Performance
Persistent Punishment
Liminality revisited
Peer support and iatrogenic outcomes
Navigating the ‘pains of freedom’ in open prisons
Depth, weight, tightness
Tightness’, recognition and penal power
Moral performance, inhuman and degrading treatment and prison pain
Creating the responsible prisoner
The pains of freedom
Exceptional’ Open Prisons Under Pressure
Institutional withdrawal
The Pains of Hope
Dual Liminars
Between outside and inside? Prison visiting rooms as liminal carceral spaces
Heavy-light, absent-present
Double Liminality and the Black Woman Writer
Doing sensitive research
Losing liminality
| Highly cited | No |
|---|