Power and Resistance in Prison

Doing Time, Doing Freedom

T. Ugelvik

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781349455706, 9781137307859
• eBook ISBN: 9781137307866
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores how prisoners turn themselves into active opponents of the prison regime, and thus reclaim their freedom and manhood. Using extensive ethnographic fieldwork from Norway's largest prison, Ugelvik provides a compelling analysis of the relationship between power, practices of resistance and prisoner subjectivity.

1

Implementation

I am hanging out with Brede. An officer discreetly knocks on the half-open cell door and tells us that we have to end our conversation because it is about to begin. We eagerly get up and start getting ready. First out are all the prisoners. They leave unit four and go through the metal detector gate and down the stairs as if they were just going out into the prison yard as normal; although they are perhaps more pleased and excited. The weather is good, luckily. Perfect for a barbecue. After the officers have made a quick inspection and checked that all the cells are empty, it’s our turn. In the corridors we meet prisoners from other wings on their way out. Quick, expectant steps.

Just before the exit we are naturally and smoothly divided into different groups – prisoners to the right, officers (and me) to the left. For a split second I can see in his eyes that the officer who is posted to ensure that everyone chooses the right lane is about to ask me to move to the right. Then he sees the ID cards and the alarm and says “Move to the . . . no, not you”, and smiles at me. We all leave our keys down in wing one. The officers there can watch them. Keys are not allowed out in the prison yard with the prisoners. We move out into the sun, through the wire mesh enclosed passage that leads from the building to the prison yard.

Out in the yard the party has already begun. Long tables have been laid and, in a marquee at one end, red-clothed Red Cross workers are hard at work serving a long queue of prisoners plates laden with barbecued food, hot dogs and hamburgers. Two large barrel barbecues made in the prisoners’ metal workshop are working away. Several prisoners ask what the burgers and hot dogs are made of and the cooks reassure them that they are only beef or chicken, not pork. Everyone is satisfied.

All the prisoners coming from the main building join the food queue straight away. All the officers move to the right, basically putting themselves on the sidelines, as outsiders. A small group wearing blue shirts are standing together, out of place and a bit tense, next to a hundred men in civilian clothes on the grass, benches, stools, and in the food queue, all with summer hamburger and hot dog grins.

What should I do? Stick with the officers? No, that does not seem like the thing to do. But whom should I approach? I look around and see a few familiar groups of prisoners sitting together. At the same time I see a number of hearty reunions between people who know each other. A number of wings are gathered here, people who are not used to sharing the prison yard. I feel I have to do something. But is there an empty stool next to anyone I know?

I pick out a stool, join the queue, get some food and a mineral water, and sit down. Fortunately, the stool is still empty. Several people around the table eye me suspiciously, but those who know me help break the ice. They tell them that I work at the university; that I’m writing about the prison. And apparently that’s just great; people smile and give me the thumbs up. There is a great atmosphere around the tables; the band has started playing some classic tunes. “No Woman, No Cry” is played to great approval. “We Don’t Need No Education” is also popular.

The officers are still standing on their own, still without any food. They are reduced to awkward visitors now; it’s quite clear that the prison yard is not their territory. Red Cross girls, cute and highly visible in their red T-shirts, walk around handing out coffee and ice creams. The prisoners are lying around on the lawn chatting, relaxed. They are flirting with the ice cream girls. Small groups of prisoners glance up and whisper to each other, before they break out in loud laughter. The band has become background music. The girls smile and appear to be enjoying the attention. Doling out ice cream is not a job for those who do not enjoy being looked at.

I move over to Arfan. He is chatting with an older prisoner on crutches. He has broken two bones in his foot. It fucking hurts, he says, grimacing for emphasis. He has taken six strong paracetamol, but they aren’t helping. But he is still going to party. The foot is not in plaster, it’s just bandaged. Dark blue toes protrude from the peach-coloured bandage. In broken Norwegian he tells me that they have to wait for the swelling to go down before they can break the bones again and put a cast on. It had taken too long to get to accident and emergency. The prison’s fault, he says, shaking his head.

The clouds suddenly empty. Warm summer rain pours down. Laughing, we seek shelter in the two, much too small, marquees – the one where the food was made and the other one used by the band. The mood is still light and pleasant among the random collection of prisoners standing under the drumming rain. Arfan thinks the rain proves that everyone who is outside right now is innocent. After all, the other block will take over the summer party soon, while we will have to go back in. They’ll only get the rain and are therefore guilty. God is for us, not them. God loves us innocents, he says, laughing.

We return to the wing along the same two routes we took on our way down. The mood is still good; everyone is wet, stuffed and happy. But now lock-up awaits. A trustee asks if there will be dinner later, but no – this was dinner. A Spanish-speaking prisoner’s eyes widen when he finally understands the message: the normal association time and all normal activities are cancelled for the rest of the evening. The reason is that the officers have to be on standby for as long as the barbecue continues for the other half of the prisoners outside (luckily the weather cleared up again). Therefore, it will be an afternoon in the cells for those for whom the party is over. The prison gives with one hand and takes with the other, says Arfan. That way everything evens out.

* * *

A book like this one must meet some formal requirements. One is that it must explain the study’s methodology and the circumstances surrounding its implementation. In the ethnographic tradition it is normal in such cases to present the researcher’s position in the field in some detail in order to provide the reader with some keys to understanding and drawing conclusions about the data material upon which the study is based. For many people, the methodology section is one of the most enjoyable sections – it can, in its own way, provide a lot of information about the field and the researcher, which is often somewhat tangential to the overall argument. For others, such sections often represent a diversion on the way to the real substance. For those who wish to go directly to jail, I have tried to frame the discussions of methodology in the context of Oslo Prison as much as I can.

The practical stuff

Oslo Prison is Norway’s largest. With a capacity of 392 male prisoners in single cells, it houses over one-tenth of Norway’s total prison population. When it opened, the prison stood on a hillside on the outskirts of the city. Today, Oslo has expanded well beyond its walls, placing the prison in a multi-ethnic residential area in the eastern part of the city centre. The prison has two wings. Wing A occupies the oldest part, the brick building that opened as one of six planned penitentiaries (“botsfengsel”) built in 1851.¹ Unit A is, therefore, also called “Botsen” when there is a need to differentiate. It houses prisoners with sentences of up to two years. Unit B occupies the newer buildings in Åkebergveien on the way up to Galgeberg. These buildings were originally home to the Oslo Aktiebryggeri brewery and gradually became part of the prison through a renovation process in the 1930s. For this reason, wing B is often referred to by its nickname “Bayern”; the bayer is a type of dark beer inspired by Bavarian beer-making traditions. Bayern mainly houses remand prisoners. It was here, in units four and five located on the fourth and fifth floor of the yellow prison building closest to Galgeberg, that I spent a year.

So, who are the prisoners here? They are men. Oslo Prison is an all-male prison. It is also important to point out that remand prisoners represent a special section of the Norwegian prison population. The average time spent in prison by prisoners convicted in Norway is about 110 days, and most of them spend no time on remand at all. When remand prisoners arrive at Oslo Prison they are first sent to a special reception wing. It is only after they have been here for some time that they, if they are remanded for long enough, may be moved to the two wings where I conducted my fieldwork. The group of prisoners who appear in this book are, thus, not just remand prisoners; unlike “most prisoners”, they are those remand prisoners who have been on remand longer than most. They are generally suspected of committing serious offences involving violence, murder, rape or importing or dealing relatively large amounts of illegal drugs. In such cases prisoners can spend a long time on remand, sometimes years, before their case comes to court. If they have been imprisoned on remand for some time, they will, as a rule, be convicted. And if they are convicted, they will, as a rule, be given sentences that far exceed the average.

Remand prisoners also represent a mixed group. At the time of writing, around 60 per cent of remand prisoners in Norway are foreign nationals. That figure is probably even higher in Oslo Prison. In addition to this, a large but unknown proportion of those counted as Norwegian belong to an ethnic minority. Looking at the overview whiteboard hanging in the officers’ room, you will see that some of the names belong to Norwegian-Pakistanis with Norwegian citizenship who have been in the country since the 1970s, or who were born here, and whose entire network is in Norway. Some prisoners arrived in the country later, as refugees from the former Yugoslavia, and have also been in Norway for years; most of these also have Norwegian passports. Others, for example prisoners from North Africa, have often lived in Norway for some time and speak broken, but understandable, Norwegian. Some, from Romania or Africa south of the Sahara, rarely speak Norwegian, but can make themselves understood in English. Another group, often from the Baltic States, speak neither Norwegian nor English. This is the diversity represented by the remand prisoners in Oslo Prison.

The introductory description of my first day in the prison does not tell the whole story of how the project started. I had, by this time, been working on the project for a full year. There was a lot that needed to be done. Prison researchers often face big problems just getting as far as gaining access to a prison. Waldram (2009), who has carried out research inside a number of prisons, describes major difficulties in gaining access to some institutions. Even though he had the approval of the central prison authorities, at one place he had to wait at least an hour every day before he was allowed into the prison because his application for more permanent access rights was always still sitting on the prison governor’s desk. It is impossible to conduct research in a prison without a certain degree of goodwill on the part of those who work there. The prison service, the prison’s management and the officers on the particular wing all have to accept the researcher’s presence, at least before and during the entire fieldwork phase. Thankfully, unlike Waldram, I experienced no sabotage. On the contrary, the regional level of the Norwegian Correctional Services approved the project without delay, and the management of Oslo Prison received me with interest and goodwill. I also quickly became part of daily life in the two specific wings where I spent most of my time, despite some initial challenges. I could come and go as I wanted and I could speak with whomever I wanted without clearing it in advance. Within the framework of the two units, I only experienced the restrictions I imposed upon myself.

I visited the prison three or four days a week for one year, usually for five– six hours at a time. I did not make observation notes while I was at the prison. In other fieldwork contexts a notepad can signify that what is being said is being taken seriously, that the researcher regards it as important. But when you have a notepad in your hand it is easy to be assigned the role of social worker, journalist, or, worst of all, police detective, and then the pad just becomes a distraction. This, of course, does not mean that I believe that a researcher without a notepad can assume some sort of neutral position – I will return to this later. The desire to avoid this sort of distraction resulted in my nonetheless, after weighing all the pros and cons, choosing not to use a notepad.

As the fieldwork moved forward I noted a series of events I wanted to know more about, and questions I really wanted to discuss. After I had been visiting the prison for about six months I asked some of the prisoners if they might be willing to participate in more formal interviews, which would be recorded. With one exception, everyone I asked was willing to do so. These interviews represent just a small part of the total data material, but they did afford me an opportunity to return to specific episodes and ask those involved what they thought about what had happened. They also gave me an opportunity to ask questions and open up areas for discussion in a different way than one usually would as part of the day-to-day interaction in the units. I conducted eight such interviews, each of which lasted between one and two and a half hours. All of the interviews were conducted alone with the prisoner in his cell. They were thematic and driven by specific events I had observed or conversations I wanted further comments on. At the same time, they were open and relatively unstructured: I had noted a handful of questions, but the interviews were just as much steered by the prisoners’ interest.

The prisoners I interviewed were, without exception, among those I had known quite well for some time. Nonetheless, the interview situation felt tense and a bit formal. The prisoners underscored this new solemnity by taking their role of host extra seriously: they served mineral water, instant cappuccino, crisps or toast with fresh cheese and honey. The small audio recorder I used added to the formality. It sat there seemingly staring at us and emphasising that the situation was new and different, even though in most cases we had previously spent hours together in the same cell. With the audio recorder there, we were suddenly not alone; we had listeners. Some interviewees reacted by being more expansive when relating anecdotes. At the same time, conversations that normally would have been more fluid took on a more strategic character. I noted that the prisoners became more interested in the details being correct; who had done what suddenly meant more. And I noted that several of the prisoners I interviewed suddenly wanted to take about “their criminality”, even when I tried to steer the conversation in other directions. This was probably an expression of what they thought I “really” wanted. All in all, the interviews were useful as an opportunity to discuss and correct my preliminary interpretations, and, therefore, they often stimulated reflection and helped with the formulation of new questions. Nonetheless, an interview situation presents clear limitations, which resulted in my choosing to focus on the observation data.

The indented quotes are either excerpts from my fieldwork diaries or transcripts of interviews. I noted my impressions from the day’s visit to the prison on the same evening or the morning after, not just focusing on the meaning of what was said, but also expressing the tone and style of speech, as well as the relevant conversation situation. I have chosen not to use quotation marks around fieldwork diary excerpts (meaning they stand out from interview excerpts in the text) in order to show that the words cannot be read as a verbatim reproduction of what I observed. Quotation marks in the fieldwork diary excerpts are used to show direct speech and do not signify a verbatim quote either.

My position as researcher

I experienced my first day in the prison as an extremely chaotic jumble of loud noises and strange people, alleviated by (I must admit) a welcome silence when the prisoners were locked in their cells. Nonetheless, at the end of the day I was, despite my slightly unclear undercover status, a restrained optimist, given that things had gone better as the day went on. In the weeks that followed I gradually became part of a world that I grew to understand better and better, a world in which I had created a space for myself and which I could relate to and which related to me. This position, partly on the inside and partly on the outside of the rest of life on the wing, was the result of a process of negotiation that continued throughout the fieldwork. Who and what I was in relation to daily life in the prison was important in how I perceived the institution, for what I could, as a result, see and not see, and, as an extension of this, the entire result of the research project. It was in their meeting with me, in the position I developed in relation to the specific context the two units constitute, that the prisoners thought as they thought and did as they did. Naturally, the presence of a researcher changed the field in various ways. However, such “control effects” are not sources of errors; they are key methodological tools.

Prison researchers have often been able to carry out their research via holding an official position in the relevant prison. Clemmer (1940) continuously interviewed prisoners in his role as a resident sociologist as part of the institution’s knowledge production and other decision-making processes (his job title was “sociologist-actuary”). He also carried out his prison sociology surveys in this position. Coggeshall (2004) conducted his studies while teaching anthropology in the prison’s school. Mathiassen (2004) returned as a researcher to a prison where she had previously been employed as a clinical psychologist. Former prisoners have also written about their experiences. The most common genre is the prison biography, although some prisoners also write research papers and monographs (Galtung, 1959; Lauesen, 1998; Ross and Richards, 2003; Bosworth et al., 2005).

I experienced Oslo Prison as a politicised field in the sense meant by Becker (1967), with a clear dividing line between prisoners and officers. The “perpetual conflict” that some (inter alia Sparks, Bottoms and Hay, 1996; Lindberg, 2005) have seen as characteristic of a prison per definition could not be misunderstood, although in Oslo Prison the conflict was far more moderate in daily life than, for example, the one experienced by Jacobs (1977) when he arrived at Stateville Penitentiary. He describes how he was thrown into an unstable social situation with rumours, factions, suspicion and more or less open conflict, all of which were like landmines he could step on at any time. But, even though it was somewhat more moderate, conflict was also the permanent basis for all interaction in Oslo Prison. Given such a situation, I made a point of trying to approach the field without “choosing sides” in advance.

I held no clear position when I arrived at Oslo Prison as a university employee. My behaviour and presence basically had no clear meaning for either prisoners or officers. I observed, but I was also observed. I had to sort out and negotiate a meaningful role. I had previously worked as a researcher for the Norwegian Correctional Services, which I was, of course, completely open about. At the same time, I represented a criminological academic community that for many people – officers as well as prisoners – is synonymous with prisons critique and even prison abolitionism. Given my background in the Norwegian Correctional Services, I risked the prisoners viewing me as an agent of the System who was working for the Ministry of Justice, while the officers might view me as a management man, since my previous job in the Norwegian Correctional Services involved doing evaluations. On the other hand, my university affiliation could result in the officers associating me with someone who speaks from his ivory tower about punishment being the intentional infliction of pain. Both the prisoners and the officers were initially sceptical about me in different ways. The prisoners viewed me either as a representative of the authorities or as their useful idiot, while the officers wanted to know more about the project, the criminological academic community in general, and whether that weirdo Christie is still going on about that pain business?² For me, therefore, much of my initial effort to adapt consisted of trying to disprove and refine both of these forms of preconceived affiliation.

The dividing line between prisoners and officers structures everything that happens in a prison. The actors are deeply committed to this difference and, to a very large extent, define themselves and others on this basis (Goffman, 1961). For example, as a general rule, providing some types of information across this boundary is strictly taboo. Both prisoners and officers have clear rules about what can be told and how it can be told to members of the opposing group. This taboo forms such an integral part of everyday life in the prison that it is joked about (which, of course, does not mean it is not real): like the time some prisoners put the clock back in the common area to trick the officers into extending a social. When the officer on duty – resignedly, but smiling – realised he had been tricked and asked a prisoner if he had had anything to do with it, the prisoner grinned slyly and repeated the well-known refrain: I didn’t see anything, officer. I know nothing. Prisoners become snitches if they give the wrong piece of information to the wrong person. For their part, officers risk causing a political criminal justice scandal and the need for a public inquest should the wrong practice be described in the wrong way. Both sides in the game risk something by talking to a researcher. And there I was, somehow in the middle of everything, without a clear role, but pursuing this precise sort of information.

Neutrality as a research strategy is not without problems when it comes to its actual practice. You can easily be drawn into the day-to-day categorisations, whether you want to be or not. And, as an ethnographer, you really do want to be drawn in. Simply put, the problem is that being drawn in will challenge the desire for neutra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Power, Resistance and Freedom in Prison
• 1. Implementation
• 2. The Forms of Power in Prison
• 3. Taking Liberties
• Conclusion: To Be or Not to Be a Prisoner
• Prison Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index