Exploring friendships behind prison walls

Abstract

Positive connections between men in prison are rarely thought about or discussed in academic research. Yet as Crewe (2014),1 Laws and Lieber(2020),2 and Morey and Crewe (2018) highlight,3 considerable intimacy and camaraderie exists between imprisoned men. In this paper, we utilise academic collaborative writing — taking a knowledge equity approach — to examine friendships between imprisoned men. One author with first hand lived experience of prison (Marc)writes about their experiences freely in their own words, in the first person, and creates the wider narrative together with an academic (Donna). We suggest these conditions create a more relaxed and natural position for a person with lived experience sof prison to share them, arguably encouraging openness surrounding sensitive topics like friendships during incarceration, deepening insights. Through this process of co-production, we aim to bridge some of the distance from the conventional space of ‘research participant’towards a more equitable ‘participant author’

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Donna Arrondelle: orcid.org/0000-0002-5224-6243

Catalogue record

Export record