‘Tightness’, recognition and penal power

Abstract

Prison scholarship has tended to focus on the pains and frustrations that result from the use and over-use of penal power. Yet the absence of such power and the subjective benefits of its grip are also worthy of attention. This article begins by drawing on recent literature and research findings to develop the concept of ‘tightness’ beyond its initial formulation. Drawing primarily on data from a study of men convicted of sex offences, it goes on to explain that, in some circumstances, the reach and hold of penal power are not experienced as oppressive and undesirable, and, indeed, may be welcomed. Conversely, institutional inattention and an absence of grip may be experienced as painful. Prisons, then, can be ‘loose’ or ‘lax’ as well as ‘tight’. The article then discusses the different ways in which prisons exercise grip, and, in doing so, recognise or misrecognise the subjectivity of the individual prisoner. It concludes by identifying the connections between this ‘ground-up’ analysis of the relative legitimacy of different forms of penal intervention and recent discussions in penal theory about the proper role of the state in communicating censure and promoting personal repentance and change.

‘Perfectly individualized and constantly visible’? Lateral tightness in a prison holding men convicted of sex offences

“…You sort of just have to tell them to deal with it themselves. (Female officer, field notes)As a result, formal power in this prison was experienced as ‘loose’ (Crewe and Ievins, 2020), but prisoners’ constant presence allowed them to supplement the official strategies of surveillance and monitoring, and thereby tighten the overall experience of imprisonment.…”

“…The tightness of the late-modern prison has been metaphorically described as a grip (Crewe, 2011a), as something which wraps around prisoners and demands they behave in certain ways, or as a fairground claw (Crewe and Ievins, 2020), a centralised power which prisoners must be ready to be gripped by but which may never come to collect them. The lateral regulation which functioned in this prison was more akin to the tightness of the crowd: suffocating, disorienting, chaotic, and impossible to escape.…”

Authoritarian exclusion and laissez‐faire inclusion: Comparing the punishment of men convicted of sex offenses in England & Wales and Norway*

“…Indeed, some scholars argue that rehabilitation in neoliberal countries has not so much died as changed form, increasingly moving in the direction of what Rotman called “authoritarian rehabilitation”—that is, “a technical device to mould the offender and ensure conformity to a predesigned model of thought and behaviour” (1994, p. 292). Hannah‐Moffat (2005) and Robinson (2008), for example, argued that rehabilitative principles have been transformed rather than eradicated through the neoliberal move toward risk management and managerial practices, and Crewe (2011; Crewe & Ievins, 2020) used the concept of “tightness” to describe how men in English prisons feel pressured to transform themselves to live up to the expectations of late‐modern rehabilitative practices. The presence of these authoritarian strands in non‐Nordic countries suggests that the relationship between rehabilitation and political economy is more complex than the Big Mother metaphor implies.…”

“…It also raises questions about the role the state can and should play in people's private lives. Psychological rehabilitation can help people to address their own real sense that there is “something wrong with them,” but it can also impose intrusive and controlling demands as a requirement for reintegration (see also Crewe & Ievins, 2020). Legal regulations can facilitate formal inclusion if released people regain their full rights on release from prison and if legal measures oblige employers not to discriminate, or they can shore up formal exclusion, as when they are, for example, banned from having contact with the people they care about.…”

“…Inclusion and exclusion are more complex and ambivalent concepts than much of the comparative literature indicates, then, and we should therefore pause before assuming that they are easily distinguishable, that inclusion is always benevolent, or that the intentions of policy makers are easily converted into reality. Cohen's warnings also apply to the analysis of rehabilitation, which is often described as an unadulterated social good, but is in reality much more complex: Policies that are intended to be rehabilitative do not always achieve it (Martinson, 1974; Mews et al., 2017); it is possible to rehabilitate in ways that are deeply controlling and invasive (Crewe & Ievins, 2020), and although some people want to be “rehabilitated,” not everyone does (McEvoy, 2001). Taken together, this ambiguity invites us to conduct research on how inclusion, exclusion, and rehabilitation are experienced from the ground up, focusing on fine‐grained ethnographic analysis.…”