First Encounters: Accessing Prisons

Jefferson, Andrew M.; Gaborit, Liv S.

doi:10.1057/9781137433770_3

Cited by 3 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…We know that prisons are environments where both prisoners’ and prison officers’ health is at risk and we know that officer stress and prisoner stress interact (Ross, 2013: 84), so what incentive do staff have to provide high quality care when they feel uncared for themselves? This is a reality in Sierra Leone where officers share similar experiential worlds with prisoners and often lament their situations even more insistently than prisoners (Jefferson and Gaborit, 2015). As one officer put it ‘working for the prison service is like punishment’ (Jefferson and Gaborit, 2015: 83).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is a reality in Sierra Leone where officers share similar experiential worlds with prisoners and often lament their situations even more insistently than prisoners (Jefferson and Gaborit, 2015). As one officer put it ‘working for the prison service is like punishment’ (Jefferson and Gaborit, 2015: 83). They feel more shame than pride and they wield a weak form of authority.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They lobby for prisoners’ rights via meetings and radio programmes and engage in innovative conflict mediation initiatives hereby supporting the authorities in maintaining order and safety in the prisons. (For a more sustained discussion of their style of work focused on their encounters with the prison authorities see Jefferson and Gaborit, 2015. )…”

Section: Prison Watchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Health provision and health professional roles under compromised circumstances: Lessons from Sierra Leone’s prisons

Jefferson

Jalloh²

2018

Criminology & Criminal Justice

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This article adds to a growing body of empirical work on prisons in the global south. It reports on a survey into prison health provision in Sierra Leone, West Africa conducted by a local non-governmental organization (Prison Watch – Sierra Leone). Taking the survey results as the point of departure and engaging with the limited literature on prison health provision in the South we discuss the role of health professionals in preventing violence in prisons, suggesting that, under compromised circumstances where a punitive penal ethos often subverts good intentions and appeals to professionalism, advocacy for prisoner health and torture prevention initiatives must be broad-based and include a more radical questioning of the foundations of the penal apparatus. Such circumstances call for a more critical interrogation of dominant forms of penality and generic modes of intervention than has hitherto been the case.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Prison Watchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Health provision and health professional roles under compromised circumstances: Lessons from Sierra Leone’s prisons

Jefferson

Jalloh²

2018

Criminology & Criminal Justice

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“…Campaigns for prisoners’ human rights are symbolic and expansive in their efforts to challenge prison standards, administrative decisions and legal rules. Human rights in prisons are debated from multiple standpoints and framed differently to include: their legal status and effects on law (Daems, 2011; Van Zyl Smit and Snacken, 2013), their framing as part of a struggle for equality and fairness (Morrison, 2010) and their dominant influence in societies formerly marked by atrocity and the absence of the rule of law (Jefferson and Gaborit, 2015; McEvoy, 2003). 1 While all prison regimes differ in their cultural specificities, rules, laws, infrastructure and norms, it is through the diffusion of human rights law into international human rights obligations, trickling down to domestic laws, national prison service policies outlining fair and transparent decision-making, where legal links and obligations between penal systems are made (Rubin, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A human rights lens, therefore, can be valuable for interrogating questions around the cultural meaning of human rights in prisons, penal exceptionality and the question of commonality between punishment systems. Few Western sociologists have explored these questions in depth but some scholars are analysing carefully the sociological intersections between prison as a place of legal rights and penal power (see Calavita and Jenness, 2015; Hannah-Moffat, 2001; Jefferson and Gaborit, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Carceral framing of human rights in Russian prisons

Piacentini

Katz

2016

Punishment & Society

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This paper introduces to punishment and society scholarship a new carceral framing of human rights in Russian prisons. Russian imprisonment remains elusive to prisons scholars and ethnographers around the world. Moreover, on the subject of prisoners' rights specifically, the scholarship is dominated by legal discourse. The empirical and theoretical scholarship that has developed over the last twenty years has argued that Russian imprisonment is exceptional in the study of world penal systems with the research seeking to gain a sense of this exceptionality through looking at the inertial legacies of Gulag penal culture on present day punishment forms. This article attempts to challenge this claim and will argue that specifically in the area of human rights, Russia has followed a not dissimilar carceral formation to Western prisons. Through an interrogation of the cultural, political and historical factors underpinning how rights are framed in Russian prisons the article suggests that human rights are operationalised as a lever for legal and penal control. This is a significant new finding in the study of Russian imprisonment because of the questions that arise around penal resilience, how rights and penal power develop through discourse and how global penal norms converge across jurisdictions.

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Prison reform and torture prevention under ‘compromised circumstances’

Jefferson

2022

Criminology & Criminal Justice

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In this article, drawing on two decades studying prisons and prison reform practices in (mostly) southern countries undergoing transition, I examine the challenges facing anti-torture professionals and prison reformers working in the global south and critically interrogate the assumptions of dominant models of reform. Rights and health-based entry points to the prevention of torture and inhumane treatment and prison reform are argued to be necessary but insufficient. I propose the concept ‘compromised circumstances’ to counter the structural biases that diminish and erase ordinary everyday experience. The ‘compromised circumstances’ of countries torn by conflict, inequality, poverty and mundane violence call for innovative interventions based on reflexive social scientific description and analysis. The inevitable sense of dizziness and uncertainty such circumstances induce must be embraced not denied. A dynamic, organic and relational entry point to reform is required.

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First Encounters: Accessing Prisons

Cited by 3 publications

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Health provision and health professional roles under compromised circumstances: Lessons from Sierra Leone’s prisons

Health provision and health professional roles under compromised circumstances: Lessons from Sierra Leone’s prisons

Carceral framing of human rights in Russian prisons

Prison reform and torture prevention under ‘compromised circumstances’

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