Overview
- This book is open access which means that you have free and unlimited access
- Explores long-term imprisonment in Switzerland and expands the field which mainly focusses on the US and UK
- Offers a wide range of methodological suggestions including gaining access to the field
- Critically discusses understandings of imprisonment
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology (PSIPP)
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This open access book provides insights into the everyday lives of long-term prisoners in Switzerland who are labelled as ‘dangerous’ and are preventatively held in indefinite, probably lifelong, incarceration. It explores prisoners’ manifold ways of inhabiting the prison which can be used to challenge well established notions about the experience of imprisonment, such as ‘adaptation’, ‘coping’, and ‘resistance’. Drawing on ethnographic data generated in two high-security prisons housing male offenders, this book explores how the various spaces of the prison affect prisoners’ sense of self and experience of time, and how, in particular, the indeterminate nature of their imprisonment affects their perceptions of place and space.
It sheds light on prisoners’ subjective, emplaced and embodied perceptions of the prisons' various everyday time-spaces in the cell, at work, and during leisure time, and the forms of agency they express. It provides insight into prisoners’ everyday habits, practices, routines, and rhythms as well as the profoundly existential issues that are engendered, (re)arranged, and anchored in these everyday contexts. It also offers insights into the penal policies, norms, and practices developed and followed by prison authorities and staff.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Irene Marti is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute for Penal Law and Criminology at the University of Bern and at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Since 2013, she has been a member of the Prison Research Group at the University of Bern.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Doing Indefinite Time
Book Subtitle: An Ethnography of Long-Term Imprisonment in Switzerland
Authors: Irene Marti
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12590-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Law and Criminology, Law and Criminology (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-12589-8Published: 08 October 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-12592-8Published: 08 October 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-12590-4Published: 07 October 2022
Series ISSN: 2753-0604
Series E-ISSN: 2753-0612
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 353
Number of Illustrations: 5 b/w illustrations, 36 illustrations in colour
Topics: Prison and Punishment, Human Rights, Crime and Society, Cultural Geography, Social Justice, Equality and Human Rights, Forensic Psychology