Emotions and agency in prison research

Abstract

The emotionality of prison research has received much justified attention in recent years. However, this aspect of undertaking qualitative research is often not considered by early career researchers until they are confronted with the impact of both researching emotionally laden subjects and employing their emotional agency as the researcher. Emerging from this, the authors argue for the development of a methodology that conceives researchers as emotional agents. This methodology incorporates harnessing emotional experiences as a tool for data collection. In this way, researchers are encouraged and trained to shift from passive to active emotional agents. Thus, far from inhibiting the research, the inherent emotionality of conducting research enhances its rigour, integrity and validity. Emotionality is intrinsic to conducting research in the prison milieu. As such, it warrants constructive employment and integration into existing research methodologies. This article draws on the authors’ respective experiences conducting mixed methods research in prison settings. The authors’ research methodologies incorporated emotional reflexivity as a core constituent throughout their data collection, analysis and the writing of their doctoral studies. The argument will be illustrated by detailing experiences of emotional charge during the fieldwork. To reflect this, the authors advocate for the emergence of an integrative methodology. The development of such a methodology would be of value to prison researchers but particularly to novice and/or doctoral researchers. Furthermore, it would be similarly applicable to researchers throughout the field of criminal justice and beyond.

The emotional labour of doctoral criminological researchers

“…It is important that doctoral researchers have the space to talk about their emotions. The creation and promotion of support networks is particularly pertinent for doctoral researchers as they are often new to the discipline and new to the academy, and because PhDs are often in themselves isolating experiences (Azad and Kohun, 2006; Garrihy and Watters, 2020; Kay, 2017; Skakni, 2018).…”

Reflexivity of discomfort: Two women outsiders doing sport research in prison

“…In this situation, contrary to what was reported in the previous section, teamwork with our PhD supervisors was indeed useful for us, as recommended by Garrihy and Watters (2020) to, among other things, assess the inexorability of the environment and relativize our possibilities. In this regard, the previous experience of Daniel was very useful to us, who a time ago, had already experienced this discomfort.…”

“…Reflexivity invites us to evaluate the subjectivity of our data (Pillow, 2003) and power imbalances that exist between researchers and participants (Vadeboncoeur, Bopp and Singer, 2020). However, they are not so in the field of prison research, in which the most emotional aspects that fieldwork entails have been historically and until relatively recently hidden or ignored (Garrihy and Watters, 2020; Jewkes, 2014; Waters et al, 2020) including those related to gender (Jewkes, 2012).…”

Men’s Health Across the Lifespan: Health and Wellbeing of Older Male Prisoners

“…Comparison of the Well Man data with community health surveys also enabled an which may have important implications on how the research is conducted. 62 For example, participants may be less likely to describe negative experiences of their treatment in prison with a person who does not have a similar demographic background. 63 For this current research, data was collected by a white female, aged in her 30's, born in Northern Ireland and not from an Irish Traveller community background.…”