The 'pains of imprisonment' have been a longstanding concern within prison sociology. This article revisits the topic, suggesting that modern penal practices have created some new burdens and frustrations that differ from other pains in their causes, nature and effects. It notes that the pains of imprisonment can be divided up conceptually, and to some degree historically, into those deriving from the inherent features of incarceration, those resulting from deliberate abuses and derelictions of duty, and those that are consequences of systemic policies and institutional practices. Having described the latter in detail -focusing on the pains of indeterminacy, the pains of psychological assessment and the pains of self-government, the article explains the relevance of the concept of 'tightness', as well as 'depth' and 'weight', to the contemporary prison experience.Keywords 'depth', pains of imprisonment, psychological power, 'tightness', weight of imprisonment They dangle carrots, so you're walking on eggshells. (Prisoner, HMP Wolds) The vernacular of prison life is a guide to its qualities. It is therefore significant that prisoners regularly use phrases like the one above and are understood and endorsed by their peers when they do so. The 'carrots' refer to the prison's incentive scheme and the promise of progressing through the system in return for engaging with

As penal power has been transformed in recent years, so too have relationships between prisoners and staff. This article discusses how these relationships are forged by the terms of ‘neo-paternalism’, focusing in particular on what is labelled ‘soft power’. It describes some of the impediments that hinder the development of closer relationships between prisoners and uniformed staff. It explores the implications of soft power for the prison’s interior legitimacy, and discusses soft power in relation to the culture of uniformed staff.

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Drawing on data collected in five private sector and two public sector prisons, this article highlights the complex relationship between prison staff culture and prisoner quality of life. Specifically, it explores the link between the attitudes of prison staff and their behaviour, particularly in terms of their use of authority, and seeks to explain the somewhat paradoxical finding that those prisons rated most positively by prisoners were those in which staff were least positive about their own working lives and most negative in their views of prisoners. The article highlights the importance of experience and competence, as well as attitudes, in determining how authority is exercised and experienced in prison. It also draws attention to the different kinds of staff cultures that exist both between and within the public and private sectors.

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A telling indication of the decline of ethnographic prison sociology is the paucity of research on drugs and their influence on the prisoner social world. Based on long-term fieldwork in a medium-security English prison, this article argues that the key components of prisoner social life are deeply imprinted by the presence and prevalence of hard drugs in and around the penal estate. After outlining the appeal of heroin to prisoners, and the terms of the prison drugs economy, the article shows how heroin restructures status and social relations in prison in a number of ways. First, users are stigmatized, particularly when their consumption has consequences that violate established codes of inmate behaviour. Second, heroin grants considerable power to those prisoners who deal it within prison, although this power is not necessarily equivalent to respect. Third, heroin transforms the terms of affiliation that exist when drugs are scarce. Meanwhile, for those prisoners whose lives prior to incarceration have been dominated by drug addiction, the experience of incarceration has a number of distinctive qualities.