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Bibliographic Data

ID4380169
AuthorsL T Schneider (0000-0001-8305-8547, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume38
Issue1
Pages88-104
Publication date2020-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Cambridge Journal of Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0305-7674 • E-ISSN: 2047-7716
PublisherBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/cja.2020.380107
OpenAlexW3014671006
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited17

This article deconstructs a binary that has arisen between prisons as, on the one hand, 'total institutions' of exclusion and, on the other, 'carceral continuums' that incorporate marginalized urban livelihoods. The experiences of four inmates at Pademba Road, Freetown's male prison - which accommodates inmates with sentences from one year to life - illustrate that prisons belong in neither camp. Instead, inmates' unique responses to their imprisonment show that both a prison's continuity and its exclusionary mechanism are situational and gendered as crime, social standing, capital and agency coalesce. Following Michel de Certeau's examination of people's reappropriations of culture in everyday life, this article analyses how inmates' tactics to reinforce and bend prison walls work to either strengthen or undermine the carceral system's strategies and influence the prison's permeability. Inmates' embodied experiences allow for a nuanced understanding of the inside/outside relationship of imprisonment and of the space between mobility and stasis, subjugation, embrace and resistance

Criminology · Embodied cognition · Imprisonment · Livelihood · Precarity · Prison · Social science · Sociology · Subjectivity · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Gender Studies · History · Homelessness and Social Issues

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