"Part of the Furniture Now, Innit?" Risk governance and moral thwarting among life-sentenced men in English prisons
Jarman, Ben "Part of the Furniture Now, Innit?" Risk governance and moral thwarting among life-sentenced men in English prisons. In: Moral and Ethical Worlds of Confinement, 6-7 Jul 2022, Cambridge, UK. (Unpublished)
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Abstract
People serving indeterminate prison sentences in England & Wales progress largely based on assessments by officials of how well they have performed against the expectation to `reduce their risk' of harming others in future. Prison scholars have noted that this kind of assessment prompts pains of `tightness'. This paper draws on case studies of two life-sentenced men in an open prison, both contemplating the `tight' conditions under which they might be released, and reflecting on their ethical lives in light of these. It describes the moral messages they received through punishment, and how they responded, ethically, to these. The paper argues that both men felt morally thwarted. For one, apparently impressive rehabilitative progress meant little because his licence conditions would make it impossible to fully pursue what he saw as as `good' life; for the other, it felt impossible to mould himself to the complicated expectations risk management measures communicated. Both men were framing their ethical goals mainly in relation to the demands of their sentences rather than the lives they hoped to lead afterwards. This undermined one of the sentence's supposed aims, to reform and rehabilitate them and restore them to a position of qualified freedom.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Conference or Workshop Item (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Keyword(s) / Subject(s): | ethical worlds of confinement workshop, manuscripts, ethics, moral, morals |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Law School Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences |
| Research Centres and Institutes: | Crime & Justice Policy Research, Institute for |
| Depositing User: | Ben Jarman |
| Date Deposited: | 20 Mar 2023 16:40 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 18:18 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/49337 |
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