Introduction

Abstract

In Switzerland, as in most Western countries in recent decades, public pressure and changing demands for security have led to a shift towards a more punitive and hard-line approach to crime. As a consequence, there are now more people serving longer sentences or held preventively in indefinite incarceration. Based on ethnographic data generated in two high-security prisons, this book provides insights into the everyday lives of long-term prisoners in Switzerland who are labelled as ‘dangerous’ and preventively held in indefinite incarceration after completing their regular prison sentence. This chapter provides the background for the study on which this book is based. It presents information on the research context and in-depth reflections on how to conduct ethnographic research in a constrained context with heavily stigmatized people.

That’s what simply wears you down and destroys you. On the one hand, [the penal enforcement authorities] give you reason to hope, then you see a light again and think: yes, maybe it could be possible [to get out of prison]. Then you do this and that, and afterwards they come back and say: yes, that’s all well and good what you’ve done, but you still can’t get out. They just hit you on the head again with a hammer. You are devastated. So what’s the point? It makes me sick, it’s tedious. That’s why I sometimes say that it would be best for me if they would just stand up and clearly say: you will not get out, ever. Then you would know where you stand and you […] could adjust to it and say: ok, I’ll spend the rest of my life in prison, I’ll make my life as best as I can and that’s it. But as it stands, it just takes a lot of energy. (Hugo, 25.6.2013)¹

Will I ever see a stream again, will I ever experience a big overgrown meadow full of flowers again [...] [will I ever go up] a mountain again, to the sea or to a lake, see people in a cafe in the city or in the village? (Rolf, 11.9.2013)

Me, as an inmate sentenced to indefinite incarceration, I cannot hope to be released. I cannot wait, though. I take the days as they come. You have to adapt to a certain degree to the setting, to know the rules so that you don’t ignore them and get into trouble, and to establish your own routine that makes you feel comfortable. Me, I feel safe and comfortable […] I don’t say time passes too slowly or too fast, I take it as it comes. I flow with the time, day after day. But this has nothing to do with simply living for the moment. It just helps me to protect myself and not to think too much about my situation. (Marco, 4.5.2016)

My interest in the experiences of Hugo, Rolf and Marco began in 2013, during a study I conducted on end of life in prison.² Most of the elderly prisoners I encountered in the units reserved for ill and elderly prisoners in two ‘secure’ or ‘closed’ prisons in Switzerland were in prison for multiple serious offences. The psychiatrists who had evaluated their cases had put them at a high risk of recidivism, and a judge had therefore decided that the public should be protected from them and imposed a security measure called ‘indefinite incarceration’ (according to Art. 64 of the Swiss Criminal Code [SCC]) in addition to a regular prison sentence.

In Switzerland, lifelong prison sentences without the possibility of release—that is, without reviews of the sentences by the court—are deemed to violate human rights and are unconstitutional (European Court of Human Rights, 2019).³ However, in Switzerland and elsewhere, changing demands for security and public pressure in recent decades have led to a shift towards a more punitive and hard-line approach to crime and even towards zero tolerance for certain criminals, in particular violent and sex offenders. This ‘punitive turn’ (Garland, 2001) in criminal policy has resulted in more investment in security, repression and control. As a consequence, since the 1990s the number of people not only serving longer sentences but also preventively held in prison for an undetermined duration and sentenced to indefinite incarceration (Art. 64 SCC) has increased rapidly (Kuhn, 2017; Simmler, 2016). Even though release is legally possible, and despite the courts and enforcement authorities evaluating these prisoners’ situations on a regular basis, in Switzerland most of those labelled as ‘high-risk’ offenders will remain in prison for the rest of their lives (see also Künzli et al., 2016, p. 4) and spend the end of their lives in a carceral setting (see Hostettler et al., 2016).

In the sparse literature on the ‘punitive turn’ in Switzerland, these developments are explained with reference to the emergence of a general sense of insecurity and threat among citizens and a loss of confidence in the criminal justice system due to economic and political changes that challenge material safety and established norms and values (Garin, 2012; Kunz & Moser, 1997; Kuhn, 2017). They are certainly also reinforced by the popular media, which not only reflects but may also reinforce feelings of insecurity and fear of crime. For example, incidents such as (rare) prison escapes are often reported in an emotionally charged manner and presented as political scandals (Young, 2018). Generally, these changes have been considered to contribute not only to a punitive approach towards crime but to a general ‘culture of exclusion’ (Staerklé et al., 2007) in relation to individuals who are perceived as a threat to the social order and public security—not only criminals but all ‘deviant’ or ‘different’ people, such as the poor, welfare recipients, migrants and homosexuals (Garin, 2012; Staerklé et al., 2007).

This changing attitude towards crime is also reflected in several popular initiatives that have appeared over the past decade. Since 2004, Swiss citizens have accepted several initiatives for a more severe penal regime (Queloz, 2013). In 2004, voters approved an initiative on lifelong incarceration—the enabling legislation entered into force in 2008—in the case of violent and sexual offenders classified as ‘extremely dangerous’ and ‘permanently untreatable’ (Art. 64 para. 1^bis SCC) with no possibility for release on parole unless new scientific findings demonstrate that treatment would render them inoffensive (Baechtold et al., 2016, pp. 335–338). In 2008, the proposal to abolish the statute of limitations for those guilty of crimes involving pornographic acts committed against children under the age of 12 passed by popular vote. In 2010, a programme to deport foreign criminals was widely favoured. Also in 2010, a private committee temporarily considered launching a popular initiative to reintroduce the death penalty for certain offences (Bundeskanzlei BK, 2019). The most recent initiative, which concerned professional disqualification for convicted paedophiles, was accepted in 2014.

While the number of long-term prisoners is currently on the rise, our understanding of indefinite imprisonment—what it is and what it does—is quite limited. It is mainly left to legal experts or journalists, who rarely include the perspectives of prisoners or penal staff in their analyses.⁴ In the dominant public discourse, these prisoners are extremely violent and disturbed criminals, who are often described as ‘evil and sub-human’ (Waldram, 2009a, p. 4), essentially cold and shallow individuals lacking in empathy for their victims. In the media, they are often represented as ‘monsters’ (20 Minuten, 2016) or ‘beasts’ (Blick, 2018). These criminals are not only physically removed from society but also ‘morally exiled’ (Waldram, 2009b, p. 225). In the words of Greer and Jewkes (2005, p. 21), violent and sex offenders who commit serious or ‘unusual’ crimes are portrayed as today’s ‘absolute others’, completely detached from ‘the social, moral, and cultural universe of ordinary, decent people’. Public interest in these people appears to be limited to their crimes and, once they are imprisoned, to possible future illicit or transgressive behaviour.

Although these people are banished from society, they are still alive. During my fieldwork in 2013, I quickly realized the extent to which this almost total exclusion from society and the indefinite nature of imprisonment can affect human beings. Almost all the prisoners I talked with said that they accepted the (sometimes very long or even life) sentences they had received but struggled with the lack of perspective that came with indefinite incarceration. Some described it as ‘mental torture’, an ‘inhumanly long-drawn-out death penalty’, or as ‘suffering from constant depression’. Many said that they would prefer a ‘real’ life sentence, or even the death penalty, to indefinite incarceration. From an anthropological perspective, prisoners serving undetermined sentences find themselves, in a certain sense, in a condition of ‘chronic crisis’ (Vigh, 2008) characterized by a lack of perspective and uncertainty regarding their future. Clearly, this prison population suffers very particular ‘pains of imprisonment’ (Sykes, 1971 [1958]). Among other things, they must find new ways of dealing with space and time.

FormalPara Researching Long-Term Imprisonment

Although indefinite incarceration occurs in other countries (e.g. Germany, New Zealand and France [see Künzli et al., 2016, p. 9]), few studies explicitly and exclusively focus on this form of sanction, and those that do are mostly law and policy related (see e.g. Annison, 2018; Drenkhahn, 2013; Jacobson & Hough, 2010; Kinzig, 2008). This is no doubt due to the fact that this particular population (still) represents a minority within prisons. In Europe, the trend of reintroducing indefinite incarceration is recent, as it was abolished by many countries after the Second World War, when it was deemed contrary to the rule of law.⁵

Studies on long-term imprisonment concentrate on prisoners who are either serving (finite) long-term or (whole) life sentences. For the prisoners I studied, however, the time-based indefiniteness of their incarceration was a central concern. In contrast to a regular, temporally finite (although long) prison sentence, indefinite incarceration may—and in Switzerland indeed often does—become a permanent condition and not ‘simply’ a discrete period in someone’s life course. Yet, in contrast to ‘real life sentences’ or ‘whole life sentences’ without the possibility of parole (typically found in the US or the UK), where the fixed end date is usually death (Leigey & Ryder, 2015), in Switzerland, release from indefinite incarceration is legally possible and has to be examined at regular intervals. The amount of time these people will spend in prison is thus indeterminate, and their future remains uncertain. The expression ‘doing time’ therefore obtains a completely new meaning.

Based on ethnographic data generated in two closed prisons in Switzerland, this book provides extensive and in-depth insights into the overlooked everyday lives of prisoners held in indefinite incarceration, illuminating its conditions and effects.

Although the indeterminate nature of incarceration is the most crucial aspect of these prisoners’ everyday lives, there are other issues they deal with that are also important for prisoners serving life sentences, with or without the possibility of release. Studies on long-term imprisonment emerged in the 1970s in the UK and the US. The abolition of the death penalty in 1965, as well as an increase in violent crime in the UK and a shift in sentencing policy in both the UK (Richards, 1978) and North America (MacKenzie & Goodstein, 1985), led to an increase in the long-term prison population. Parallel to these developments, official concerns emerged about ‘what to do’ with these prisoners: what treatment and regime was appropriate for this prison population, and how could it work to change their lives for the better (Liebling, 2014b)?

These early studies on long-term imprisonment were driven by the widely shared assumption that long-term imprisonment would automatically lead to a higher degree of ‘prisonization’ (assimilation to ‘prison culture’) (Clemmer, 1958 [1940], pp. 298–299) and to emotional and intellectual deterioration. Thus, a great deal of this mainly quantitative sociological and psychological research was conducted to explore the effects of long-term imprisonment on prisoners’ well-being and personality. Generally cross-sectional and longitudinal, this research was usually based on cognitive tests, such as visual reproduction tests or reaction tests (Banister et al., 1973), or questionnaires including a list of ‘problems’ such as psychological stress, often combined with structured interviews exploring prisoners’ coping strategies (Flanagan, 1980; Richards, 1978). However, none of these studies provided hard evidence that long-term imprisonment necessarily led to cumulative or progressive effects on prisoners’ experience of problems (see also Heather, 1977; MacKenzie & Goodstein, 1985; Rasch, 1981; Sapsford, 1983). Certain scholars claimed that later stages of imprisonment are less stressful than early stages and that, over time, prisoners adapt and find strategies to cope with imprisonment (Flanagan, 1980; MacKenzie & Goodstein, 1985; Richards, 1978; Zamble, 1992). Generally, being deprived of relationships with the outside world has been found to be much more painful than the deprivations prisoners face within the institution (Flanagan, 1980; Richards, 1978).

During this same period, another strand of research emerged that was critical of these early studies. Pointing to their ‘limited’ character, these authors claimed that this kind of research design, which relied on pre-defined, specific (psychological) categories and large-scale (sociological) perspectives, was ‘not sophisticated and subtle enough’ (Cohen & Taylor, 1972, p. 51) to capture the difficulties faced by long-term prisoners. These critiques emphasized subjective experience and prisoners’ adaptation processes. At their core was the argument that even if there is no evidence of psychological deterioration, long-term imprisonment has ‘profound existential implications’ (Crewe et al., 2016, p. 3; see also Crewe et al., 2020). Cohen & Taylor (1972), in particular, explored the experience of long-term imprisonment from a phenomenological perspective by considering it an ‘extreme situation’ similar to an expedition or migration that has significant effects on everyday activities and feelings. Using methods such as unstructured group interviews (conducted during sociology classes held in prison and attended by approximately 50 men), letter-writing and the production of other written texts by prisoners in the maximum-security wing of a British prison, the authors concluded that long-term prisoners are particularly concerned with the passage of time, the making and breaking of friendships, the fear of deterioration and the loss of self-integrity and identity. Moreover, Cohen and Taylor (1972) claimed that the indeterminacy of a sentence represents a specific source of stress. Similar conclusions emerged from a study conducted by Flanagan (1981). Based on qualitative interviews conducted with 59 long-term prisoners in the US, the latter study found that the main challenges faced by this particular prison population are time structuring and management, maintenance of family ties, and the prison’s pernicious assault on prisoners’ self-esteem. These results were confirmed by studies conducted in Canada (Zamble & Porporino, 1988) and again in Great Britain (Mitchell, 1990).

However, by the 1980s, interest in qualitatively oriented prison research had decreased significantly for various reasons. With respect to long-term imprisonment, Liebling (2014a, p. 260) points out that a lack of riots as well as some major improvements (at least in the UK) during the 1990s helped remove high-security prisoners from the policy agenda and away from public scrutiny. In the 2000s, however, events such as the rise of terrorist attacks and the diffusion of fundamentalism, along with the introduction of new and longer sentences for violent crimes (such as Imprisonment for Public Protection), placed this subject back on public policy and research agendas (Liebling, 2014a, p. 260).

More recent qualitative as well as mixed-method research on the experience of long-term imprisonment still largely derives from the US and the UK. While these studies draw on early research to highlight the challenges prisoners face, they delve more deeply into the heterogeneity of this population, notably in terms of their age (for studies on younger long-term prisoners, see Cope [2003], Crewe et al. [2020], and Tynan [2019]), their gender (for studies on the experience of women ‘lifers’, see Crewe et al. [2017], Jose-Kampfner [1990], and Walker and Worrall [2000]), and also the regime under which they are imprisoned (e.g. solitary confinement and super-max prisons, typically found in the US [King, 2005; O'Donnell, 2014; Rhodes, 2004]). Among US studies, there are also some autobiographical books about prison life, known as ‘convict criminology’, written by ‘insiders’—that is, prisoners serving life sentences—often in collaboration with academics (Hassine, 2009; Paluch, 2004). Other surveys explore the experience of long-term imprisonment by focusing on specific themes: prisoners’ coping strategies in relation to time (Brown, 1998; Cope, 2003; Crewe et al., 2016; Cunha, 1997, 2016; Jewkes, 2005; O'Donnell, 2014), their views on the legitimacy of their sentences (Schinkel, 2014), or their difficulties with and strategies for finding meaning and purpose in life (Jewkes, 2005; Liebling, 2014b).

All of these studies basically agree that long-term prisoners generally find ways of coping over time, making their sentences meaningful by dealing productively with the time they have. For example, prisoners construct ‘new narratives of the self’ (Jewkes, 2005), learn to ‘swim with the tide’ (instead of against it) (Crewe et al., 2016), or develop an ‘art of living’ (O'Donnell, 2014)—a specific attitude that facilitates acceptance of the situation and at the same time the maintenance of self-integrity. Nonetheless, as several authors (see, e.g. Jewkes, 2002) critically remind us, only the ‘survivors’ can actually be part of these studies. Those who are suffering from acute mental health problems are generally held in secured psychiatric facilities that are rarely accessible to researchers (Crewe et al. 2016). Moreover, as argued by Hulley et al. (2015, p. 789), adaptation also has a ‘deep and profound impact on the person’ as the process of coping leads to ‘fundamental changes in the self, which go far beyond the attitudinal, and may bring about secondary problems of their own’ (see also Crewe et al., 2020).

In sum, in the academic literature on (long-term) imprisonment, the prison is usually assumed to be a very particular place, one that is in essence ‘bad’ or ‘dehumanizing’ (O'Donnell, 2014, p. 179), where prisoners face a wide range of ‘pains’, ‘deprivations’, ‘problems’ and ‘loss’ (Hulley et al., 2015; Jewkes, 2005; Leigey & Ryder, 2015; Sykes, 1971 [1958]), and have to invent strategies in order to ‘survive’ (Toch, 1996 [1977]) this ‘extraordinary’ or ‘extreme’ situation (Cohen & Taylor, 1972). Without wanting to downplay these understandings, the ethnographic research project on which this book is based tried to start without a priori ideas of what the prison is and what it does. Rather, I set out firstly to gain an understanding of the prison ‘from the inside’ (Eriksen, 2015 [1995], p. 8)—that is, as it appears to prisoners—without previously assigning it a set of qualities.

I tried to maintain this outlook without losing sight of the formal organization imposed by the penal system—that is, the political, institutional and social forces at work in prisoners’ lives. This research strategy echoes work by Moran et al. (2018), who call for more studies that ‘uncover the subjectivity and relativity inherent in the experience of carcerality, since in its lived experience, the carceral is relative rather than absolute’. As they argue,

the carceral is in the eye of the beholder – its perception is complex, nuanced, contextual and only partially predictable. What is felt acutely as suffering by one individual may not perturb another. What is not intended to punish may deliver significant harm. (Moran et al. 2018, p. 677)

To analyse long-term prisoners’ experiences, I propose in this book to shift the analytic lens away from the familiar framework of power and resistance and towards a phenomenological and pragmatist perspective, using space, time and embodiment as key concepts. As embodied individuals, we are spatially and temporally positioned in any social situation we encounter—whether we live in prison or under other conditions. In this book, I explore prisoners’ subjective, situated and embodied perceptions of the prison’s various everyday contexts, and the forms of agency they express through their multiple means of dealing with space and time, thereby uncovering prisoners’ manifold ways of inhabiting the prison.

1.1 Observing, Listening and Engaging in Prisoners’ Everyday Lives

My research was geographically and institutionally located in prison, more precisely two Swiss prisons, understood as two different organizations. However, the ‘institutional logic’ (Thornton et al., 2012) inscribed in what I will call the ‘penal system’ through its organizing principles was common to both prisons.

As a state institution, the penal system includes all authorities and organizations in charge of implementing criminal sanctions and measures. The most important authorities and organizations include the cantonal penal enforcement authorities, probation services and the prisons themselves. Their fundamental legal principle and purpose (for both prison sentences and measures) is rehabilitation. Their most important goal is the prevention of recidivism and thus future crimes. Security for society and internal security for the prisoners and staff working there are also important (Baechtold et al., 2016). The institutional logic of the penal system is materialized in prison architecture and infrastructure and internal norms and rules, and it shapes the practices of management and staff (Marti et al., 2017).

To carry out the research on which this book is based, I relied on established institutional connections and previous research experience. As a member of a research group at the University of Bern, Switzerland, which has been conducting research in Swiss prisons since 2006,⁶ and within the framework of the research project End-of-life in prison: legal context, institutions and actors, mentioned above, I obtained privileged access to two closed Swiss correctional facilities: JVA Lenzburg and JVA Pöschwies. Through two intensive, uninterrupted fieldwork trips (each lasting one month) in 2013 and several day trips between 2013 and 2014, I was able to establish relations with prisoners (most of them labelled as ‘dangerous’ and thus sentenced to indefinite incarceration) and staff members that allowed me to gain in-depth insights into daily prison life and develop an understanding of this special institutional context. While the research focus was on the end of life, I became more and more interested in living life in prison under these particular conditions: being entirely excluded from society, stuck in a context that was the same each day (same place, same people, same routines, same food, etc.), and left to wonder if they would ever be released. I discussed these issues in many exchanges with prisoners and prison staff, and little-by-little, my PhD project emerged.⁷

Justizvollzugsanstalt (JVA) Lenzburg

• JVA Lenzburg was built in 1864 and can accommodate 366 inmates. It consists of the Strafanstalt and the Zentralgefängnis (built in 2011), which are about 300 metres apart. The Strafanstalt is intended to house 199 male prisoners (including those sentenced to indefinite incarceration) who must serve their sentence in a secure or closed setting. In the Zentralgefängnis, 167 places are available for pre-trial detention, semi-detention and short-term sentences for young people, men and women. The prisoners are monitored, supervised and assisted by around 250 employees (Kanton Aargau. Departement Volkswirtschaft und Inneres, 2020).

• The Zentralgefängnis also has a special unit for ill and elderly prisoners, namely the 60plus unit, inaugurated in May 2011. It has 12 places and is primarily intended—according to Art. 80 SCC, which allows ‘other forms of sentence execution’—to offer an appropriate place for long-term prisoners aged 60 and over (JVA Lenzburg, 2012, p. 59). The unit also accommodates prisoners who have not reached their 60th birthday, but who are, due to physical and mental disabilities, not able to live together with the main prison population. In contrast to the regime⁸ in the main prison, the 60plus unit is characterized by longer cell opening times, a reduced workload and more ‘rehabilitative, social and leisure-oriented’ activities (JVA Lenzburg, 2014, p. 50, my translation). JVA Lenzburg is guided by the principle that prisoners’ autonomy should be maintained and promoted. Thus, they carry out everyday activities such as cooking, washing and cleaning independently. Prison officers in the 60plus unit are required to support and specifically promote the cognitive and intellectual abilities of the prisoners and offer brain-performance, creative or handicraft activities. To counteract social isolation and loneliness, the employees spend a large part of their time with the prisoners in the common rooms of the unit. In order to provide suitable palliative care, the social workers and nursing staff are assisted by external professionals and institutions (e.g. Spitex) (Galli, 2016).

Justizvollzugsanstalt (JVA) Pöschwies

• JVA Pöschwies is the largest secure or closed prison for male prisoners in Switzerland. It can accommodate 423 adult male prisoners, all of whom have been sentenced to a prison term of at least one year, to an in-patient therapeutic measure according to Art. 59 SCC, or to indefinite incarceration (Art. 64 SCC). It currently employs about 260 people (Amt für Justizvollzug Kanton Zürich, 2019a).

• An Age and Health (Abteilung Alter und Gesundheit, AGE) unit is located within the JVA Pöschwies. It offers space for 30 prisoners. Similar to the 60plus unit at JVA Lenzburg, the AGE accommodates prisoners of advanced age and those with health issues, such as addiction problems or somatic diseases, as well as prisoners who are in a difficult life situation and in need of ‘a safe space, protection and more intensive and care-oriented assistance’ (Amt für Justizvollzug Kanton Zürich, 2019b, my translation). In addition to these inmates, who need a temporary break from the ‘normal’ regime, the AGE is also designed for long-term prisoners (Amt für Justizvollzug Kanton Zürich, 2019b).

• The regime of detention in the AGE is ‘loosened’, with detainees receiving ‘a high degree of attention and humanity, without losing sight of organizational and security aspects’ (JVA Pöschwies, 2014, p. 18, my translation). The employees work together with the prisoners to establish individual daily routines. In this, they are supported by the prison’s medical and social services as well as its psychiatric-psychological service (Amt für Justizvollzug Kanton Zürich, 2019b).

I started my PhD fieldwork in 2016 and, as in the previous project on end-of-life situations, explored prisoners’ lived experiences inductively, using ethnographic research methods. As Coyle points out, ethnographic fieldwork is particularly suited to gaining a better understanding of ‘what goes on behind [prison’s] high walls’ (Coyle, 2005, p. xi) because it brings the researcher into direct contact with the social and institutional context. Despite this advantage, in many countries, ethnographic studies are (still) ‘overshadowed’ by quantitative studies (Jewkes, 2015, p. x) despite a revival of ethnographic prison research (see Drake et al., 2015) after its decline—or ‘eclipse’ (Wacquant, 2002)—in the late 1980s. My previous research experience led me to support Crewe’s argument that we have ‘insufficient knowledge about the ordinary world of the prison, at a time when both policies and populations are changing rapidly, and that it is through sustained fieldwork that this knowledge can best be accumulated’ (2006, p. 348). With my choice to use an ethnographic approach for my study, I join scholars who wish to renew the tradition of prison ethnography (see Drake et al., 2015). In order to gather information on the living conditions of long-term prisoners and to make their lived experience visible, I used a selection of qualitative research methods to generate data, ranging from participation and observation to different forms of interviews and document analysis.⁹

1.1.1 ‘Being There’

In order to explore prisoners’ subjective (embodied) experience and practice of space and time, I relied on Pink’s (2009) ‘sensory ethnography’. Through this concept, Pink draws our attention to the sensory experience, perception and categories we use when we talk about our experiences and everyday life. The anthropological research process is thus understood as ‘personal engagement and embodied knowing’ (Pink, 2009, p. 43). More concretely, the process involves the ethnographer not only engaging with the ideas of others, but learning through her or his own sensorial experience, practice and knowledge. Observing, listening, and writing/reading are therefore ‘not enough’, and must be complemented by multisensory, embodied participation. The ‘being there’ is hence not simply about observing and playing ‘roles’ in certain situations in order to ‘do things similar to those that they do’ (Pink, 2009, p. 67). Rather, through sensory ethnography the researcher focuses on his or her emplaced engagements in the research participants’ ‘ordinary’ practices (such as eating, drinking, walking or passing time) in order to learn how these sensory experiences are lived. Of course, in the prison the scope for (sensory) experience was limited, as my options regarding mobility and involvement in activities were restricted by the management, above all for security reasons. Nevertheless, during my stay within the prisons, I was allowed to participate and to be present in a wide range of daily activities and situations: I worked, played games or music, walked around, had lunch, had coffee breaks and waited with prisoners. This allowed me to explore prisoners’ multisensory experiences and relationships to the prison environment, and their feelings about them. From my perspective, ‘sensing with’ also involves ‘feeling with’, which I understand as being empathetic and at the same time reflexive, a position I tried to maintain while in prison as well as when I was back home or at my desk at the university. Drawing on my emotions as ‘intellectual resources’ (Jewkes, 2012) helped me to grasp my impression of the prison atmosphere and the micro-interactions that defined it, and thereby also to become aware of my ethical and moral engagements in and with the field.

During fieldwork, whenever I found the time and space to write undisturbed (usually in staff offices), I took fieldnotes, which I divided into ‘observational notes’, ‘theoretical notes’ and ‘methodological notes’ (Schatzman & Strauss, 1973). These I later coded using MAXQDA and then analysed along with the rest of my data. All in all, between 2013 and 2017, I spent a total of 155 days in the two prisons, including four one-month periods where I spent five whole working days a week in prison (including some weekends) as well as several day trips. As with any ethnographic research, my fieldwork began with the ‘problem’ of gaining access—to the research setting as well as to the research participants.

1.1.1.1 Gaining Access to the Prison: The Formal Organization of My Fieldwork

Researchers who decide to carry out ethnographic fieldwork in prison face specific challenges, since prisons are considered ‘closed’ and ‘sensitive’ institutions not accessible to the public (Bouillon et al., 2006; Drake et al., 2015). Prisons are characterized by power relations, surveillance and control, mutual mistrust (between staff and prisoners and among prisoners) and a wide range of deprivations. Hence, there are many practical challenges and ethical questions specific to prison research, concerning both access to and access within the prison.

Gaining access to the prison is strongly influenced by political conditions, guidelines and the architectural features of the prison, as well as by management’s willingness to open the gates, as granting access to an external person constitutes a security risk and disturbs institutional routines. While the Council of Europe has long recommended that prisons be open for social science research (Council of Europe, 1967), institutionalized and pre-established patterns for civilian access are often lacking, and researchers therefore regularly have to break new ground (Reiter, 2014, p. 418). As the Prison Research Group (PRG), of which I am a member, had been active in the carceral field for almost ten years at the time of my research, it was relatively easy to negotiate access within the scope of the two research projects on which this book is based. Nonetheless, there were no pre-established institutional procedures to deal with persons external to the penal system. Hence, we had to start our negotiations from scratch. At the core of these negotiations was my role during each research stay and the rules of conduct I had to follow.

In the prison literature, a wide range of possible roles are discussed (Hostettler, 2012). Among them one can find so-called ‘prison tourists’, visitors who participate in official prison tours (Piché & Walby, 2010; Wacquant, 2002), as well as researchers who are part of the prison staff, so-called ‘insiders’, who conduct research in the role of ‘staff researchers’ (Fleisher, 1989; Jack, 1988), and those who work as ‘independent researchers’ (Waldram, 2009a) coming from the outside. Working with the management of both prisons, we defined my research stays officially as ‘internships’ for the position of a prison officer. Nonetheless, in both prisons I wore regular clothes rather than a uniform in order to mark my distance from the prison staff (see Sloan & Wright, 2015, p. 151). The status of intern allowed me to be integrated into the prison officers’ day-to-day work and to conduct research at the same time. However, in practice my experiences at the two sites turned out to be quite different from each other, oscillating between being part of the system (a quasi-employee) and an autonomous individual (an independent researcher coming from outside the system) (for details, see Marti et al., 2014; Marti & Hostettler, 2016, 2018).

During my pre-doctoral research at JVA Lenzbrug, I spent most of my time in the Zentralgefängnis unit for ill and elderly prisoners. Like the prison staff, I was given a telephone equipped with an alarm function (that also allowed me to be located at any time) as well as keys (including one to open the prisoners’ cells). I could thus move around freely throughout the whole prison. During my stay, I became increasingly integrated into the prison officers’ day-to-day work and was assigned different tasks, such as escorting prisoners to the medical unit, the school or the courtyard, and conducting administrative paperwork such as proofreading reports. I also unlocked prisoners’ cell doors in the morning and locked them again in the evening. Due to this close involvement in the everyday work of the prison staff, I was treated both by staff and inmates almost like a staff member (‘insider’). I became aware that as a quasi-employee, I started to develop strong feelings of loyalty towards the prison staff and their tasks, rules and behaviour. However, I tried to spend as much time as possible with prisoners during their leisure time, mainly in the unit’s common room (often playing games with them), but also on the floor and in the courtyard, walking, waiting or simply hanging out.

For my PhD project, I mainly conducted fieldwork in the Strafanstalt of JVA Lenzburg. As I was known to prison management and some of the prison staff, I very soon became a ‘familiar visitor’—though I was barely involved in prison staff activities. As with the unit for ill and elderly prisoners, I was given a key to open the main doors within the building, allowing me to move around unaccompanied. However, I was not given keys to the prisoners’ cells. Moreover, during day trips I had to wear a badge that identified me as a visitor. I spent most of my time at the prisoners’ workstations and participated in the evening sports programmes. Over time, I also arranged some ‘unregulated’ time, which allowed me simply to ‘hang out’, preferably at a junction for prisoners where I could easily engage them in a chat, after work on their way back to the cell, for instance. For reasons of time, I decided not to attend the evening school lessons. I did not spend much time in the courtyard, mainly because most of the long-term prisoners I met avoided the courtyard. Worried that I would disturb prisoners’ rare moments of privacy and intimacy, I also avoided the visitation room.

At JVA Pöschwies, during my pre-doctoral research as well as for my PhD project, I conducted fieldwork exclusively in the unit for ill and elderly prisoners. Although labelled an ‘intern’, the prison management and staff treated me as an ‘independent researcher’ or ‘outsider’. I had to wear a red visitor tag for the entire day, signalling to everybody that I was not allowed to walk around the building unaccompanied. I did not receive a telephone or keys and was therefore totally dependent on prison staff. Most of the time, I accompanied prison officers during their daily activities, and whenever possible they delegated minor tasks to me, such as assisting (actively or by counselling) prisoners in their daily work assignments in the unit (e.g. watering plants, handicraft work). Moreover, I was also allowed to perform some tasks when I was in the office. For instance, I received and handed out the prisoners’ own cell door keys (which they were obliged to hand in while at work) and delivered letters and newspapers to the prisoners. Furthermore, I carried out some administrative paperwork (proofreading reports and other texts). Because the upper floor where the prisoners’ cells are located is not equipped with surveillance cameras (CCTV) for privacy reasons, it would have been impossible for staff to monitor my movements. I was therefore required to stay in the office, the workstation or the courtyard, all locations where I could be seen by staff.

During my PhD fieldwork, I continued to be viewed as an independent researcher; however, I also had the feeling that I was increasingly treated as a ‘familiar visitor’. No doubt because I was familiar with the rules and norms of conduct, I was given more latitude to choose how to spend my time and was less involved in staff work and routine assignments. In contrast to my initial stay, when prison officers would worry that I would feel ‘bored’ and tried to think up tasks to keep me busy, they knew by now that they could just ‘let me alone’ and that ‘hanging around’ was just fine with me. I spent my days partially with prison officers and partially with prisoners, whom I preferred to meet at their workstations or during their leisure time, which they, in contrast to the prisoners in JVA Lenzburg, liked to spend in the courtyard, where I played games, such as table tennis, or sat or walked around with them.

In both prisons, staff had been informed about the research project in advance by prison management or the principal investigator. During our first meetings in both prisons, I personally informed the prisoners about the research and regularly provided details of its progress as openly and transparently as possible to all research participants.

1.1.1.2 Gaining Access Within the Prison: Establishing and Maintaining Trust

Gaining access is also an issue within the prison and—as with any ethnographic research—boils down to how trust between researchers and research participants is established and maintained. This is essential in the prison context because, by default, hierarchy and mutual distrust characterize this particular research site. Research participants can be prisoners, staff or both at the same time. In the literature, different strategies are described for establishing trust, all related to the question of loyalty and ‘taking sides’ (Liebling, 1999). For instance, independent researchers may find it necessary to prove their neutrality and independence from the prison by engaging in ‘unusual [or] unauthorized behaviour’ that inmates can interpret as an act of resistance against the system (Waldram, 2009a), or to signal their distance by not attending staff meetings, not reading prisoners’ files and/or not wearing staff symbols such as a uniform or carrying keys (Mathiesen, 1965, p. 234). However, even when ‘siding with’ prisoners, it is obvious that a researcher ‘never become[s] “one of them”’ (Mathiesen, 1965, p. 236). As Feldmann (1991) puts it: ‘in a culture of surveillance, participant observation is […] a form of complicity with those outsiders who surveil’ (Feldmann, 1991, p. 12). It would seem that it is impossible to obtain a ‘total view’ that includes both prison staff and inmates’ perspectives ‘without damaging at least some relationships’ (Mathiesen, 1965, p. 241). In sum, taking sides is generally regarded as an ‘inevitable part of the research process’ (Scott, 2014, p. 30).

Certainly, my institutionally ascribed role as trainee created a formal proximity between staff members and myself and consequently a certain distance vis-à-vis the prisoners. Before we even encountered one another, the prisoners were, of course, wondering about me. The majority indeed thought that I was a new prison officer, social assistant or psychotherapist (who generally do not wear uniforms either). Others thought that I was a journalist. However, these inmates soon learned that, in contrast to prison staff, I had no mission to fulfil for the prison or even the penal system as a whole; I remained an ‘outsider’ with an interest in the prisoners’ lives as individuals, not as offenders who needed to be punished or rehabilitated. As I explore further below, it was therefore possible for me to generate a ‘neutral’ space within the framework of informal interactions and thus to allow the inmates a short ‘time out’ from prison procedures. This opened up the opportunity to build trust with them through everyday encounters. However, my immersion in the field was also shaped by my own emotions, images and preconceptions of these men. In contrast to ‘epistemological violence’, defined as ‘a form of violence that is produced in “knowledge”’ (Teo, 2010, p. 298) and related to the interpretation of data and the way researchers construct ‘the Other’ as inferior or problematic, I had to deal with research participants who have already been designated by society as ‘problematic’ or ‘absolute’ (Greer & Jewkes, 2005) ‘Others’.

Probably unsurprisingly, my very first encounter with prisoners was ‘marked by a certain fear and inhibitions’ (Fieldnotes, 29.4.2013):

The inmates evoked very different feelings in me, often depending on how they looked at me or watched me. I interpreted their looks as curious, sceptical, deceitful, but also good-natured, childlike, shy … […] While taking refuge in the staff’s office during the whole morning and afternoon, I tried to get in contact with the inmates in the evening, and therefore went out into the corridor. One of the prisoners, Hans, immediately came up to me and we had a short conversation about the pansies that he had planted in the courtyard. He also showed me some of his private photos, which he stored in his cell. However, I didn’t dare to enter his cell and asked him to step outside. This didn’t seem to be a problem for him; he immediately came out of the cell. The other inmates didn’t show much interest in me. Slowly my fear vanished. (Fieldnotes, 29.4.2013)

I quickly realized that I had to block out the prisoners’ offences (and forget about the stereotypical images and what I had read in the newspaper about some of them) and to simply approach them as human beings, whose life experiences certainly included many more aspects than ‘just’ the crime(s) that brought them into prison. For this reason, I also avoided reading their files (although I was allowed to) during the first weeks of my stay. By reflecting on this (initially rather intuitive) attitude towards approaching the prisoners after I completed my first fieldwork trip in 2013, I became more and more aware of its ethical, analytical and methodological consequences.

1.1.1.2.1 The ‘Everyday’ and the ‘Ordinary’ as Methodological Entry Points

As I came to realize, approaching the prisoners first of all simply as people—people living in this particular place—opened up the possibility of encountering them detached not only from stereotypical images, but also from pre-defined assumptions and concepts of what the prison is and what it does. In contrast to much of the academic literature, in which the prison is characterized as a ‘bad’ or ‘dehumanizing’ place (O'Donnell, 2014, p. 179) per se, I propose in this book to approach the experience of being in prison without assigning it any set of qualities at all. To do this, I used the everyday and the ordinary as methodological entry points.

In the Oxford Dictionaries (2018a) the ‘everyday’ is defined as ‘happening or used every day; daily’, ‘commonplace’. ‘Ordinary’ as an adjective is defined as: ‘with no special or distinctive features; normal’, ‘not interesting or exceptional; commonplace’ (Oxford Dictionaries, 2018b). During fieldwork, I focused on the everyday as it is organized by the prison, and the everyday and the ordinary as created and lived by prisoners. This brought me to focus on routine activities and objects such as the staff’s daily locking and unlocking of cell doors, cell furnishings, the prisoners’ daily walks in the courtyard or ways of passing time—that is, the rudiments of prison life. This methodological shift from the ‘spectacular’ to the (at least at first glance) ‘unspectacular’ aspects of prison life allowed me to study prisoners’ ways of being and doing indefinite time by remaining empirically grounded, and to capture their diverse modes of engagement in different everyday situations, all contextually embedded.

The association of normalcy and ordinariness with imprisonment was also expressed by the prisoners I met. Many of the long-term prisoners who had already spent more than half of their lives in prison told me that that they have ‘lost the feeling for the outside world’ (Kurt, 3.5.2016), so that ‘this is now normal life’ and ‘everything else would be abnormal’ (Marco, 10.9.2013) or exceptional. Moreover, for long-term prisoners who may remain in prison for the rest of their lives, to perceive imprisonment as their ‘normal life’ may also allow them ‘to regain mental free spaces’, to ‘feel safe’ and ‘comfortable’ and to go about their lives (Marco, 4.5.2016). Yet, this does not mean that the pain or sense of loss disappears automatically. I would like to insist, therefore, that in approaching the prison and imprisonment through the lens of the ordinary and the everyday, my aim is not to neglect the suffering of prisoners. Drawing on Vigh (2008), I understand the ordinary or the normal not in the sense of ‘how things should be’, but in terms of ‘what there is most’: ‘normalising’ imprisonment is not about ‘indifference’ but rather involves looking at it as a ‘frame of action’ (Vigh, 2008, p. 11). Although they may not be in a position to change the forces that affect their lives in a negative way, prisoners remain able to act and live within this context and are free to ‘choose’ their attitude (O'Donnell, 2014, p. 277).

1.1.1.2.2 ‘Normalising’ the Prison Context

Approaching the prisoners as people living an ordinary, everyday life in this particular place also fosters trust. Of course, a (female) researcher coming from the outside is per se something extraordinary. Yet, participating in everyday life over a longer period of time automatically leads to jointly constructed modes of daily interaction and thus also to some degree of ‘normalcy’ between researcher and research participants, as we simply got used to each other’s presence. Here, by ‘normalising’ I also, and above all, mean actively and jointly ‘dampening’ the effects of the institutional context that ascribes (oppositional) roles, statuses and positions to individuals—such as prisoners and independent researchers from the outside—and dampening the specific form of epistemological violence already inscribed in the prison context, in order to facilitate moments and conditions for encounters between simple ‘human beings’ (Hostettler et al., 2016; Marti & Hostettler, 2018, 2016). I wish therefore to nuance the often-repeated argument regarding the necessity of taking sides, by considering the establishment of trust between researcher and research participants as a relational and situated interpersonal process. In sum, I believe it is possible to gain access to ‘both sides’ (prisoners and employees) without simultaneously rendering a relationship with the ‘other side’ impossible.

More concretely, I understand moments where ‘normalcy’ is established as special space–time–actor constellations. These can be the making and holding of an appointment, such as having a cup of coffee together, where mutual respect and recognition are foregrounded through the negotiation of time and place and a consideration of the other party’s interests and obligations, rather than their role or status. The process of co-creation, through activities such as working together, making music, creating something together or even just playing games, where each faces the other as a game partner, can also promote moments of mutual acceptance, openness and trust. Finally, all situations allow for the redefinition and neutralization of symbols of power, such as holding and using a key, which, while it might a priori seem to foster distance between the researcher and prisoners, also offers opportunities for personal communication (for a more detailed description of these three moments see Marti & Hostettler, 2016).

On a more general level, I also tried to establish some degree of ‘normalcy’ by shaking the prisoners’ hands when meeting them, not if I was present for several weeks without interruption, but during my day trips. Through this action, I broke the internal rule according to which prison officers and prisoners must (for security reasons) keep physical distance and not touch each other, the exceptions to which (emergency situations or body searches) only highlight the power relations at the base of the prison system. However, this ordinary gesture of normalcy also provoked confusion on both sides: on two occasions a prisoner held my hand for too long (for a common handshake) and in a way I did not feel comfortable with. The fact that this happened both times in a surveillance camera blind spot suggests that both prisoners were well aware of what they were doing. In contrast, I also met prisoners who tried to avoid any physical contact with me. This led to clumsy situations, when handing over the birdie during badminton, for instance.

There were several prisoners who explicitly told me that I was ‘human’ and ‘normal’, that I was bringing the ‘human’ into prison, and that spending time with me made them feel ‘good’ and ‘normal’:

Playing parlour games or sports with prisoners always offered nice opportunities for the fading out of the prison context. […]. During a game, we faced each other as equal partners. Not necessarily in terms of personal talents and skills, but for sure in terms of status. Simon, with whom I used to play table tennis, once mentioned that he ‘always felt normal’ and ‘like a human being’ when we played table tennis together. (Fieldnotes, 18.8.2013)

You are a sincere, honest woman. […] You have the human inside you, which I miss so much in here. Although you came here first of all for your work, the fact that you decided to talk to us shows true interest, courage and sincerity. (Letter from a prisoner, 12.11.2017)

Such interactions generally took place after a certain period of time. Thus, (successful) ‘normalisation’ (i.e. the dimming of institutional effects) requires time. Furthermore, it also depends on the particularity of the context in which the interaction takes place. For instance, I spent time with both prisoners mentioned in the examples above during their leisure time, playing games or doing sport together, either in the courtyard or in the sports hall. These are places where they (and I) were less observed by prison staff and granted more autonomy.

However, there are also limits to this approach. For instance, the intention to ‘normalise’ the prison may not always be welcomed in the same way by the two partners in the interaction. I met prisoners for whom it was important to emphasize that from their perspective the prison is everything but normal, and that they could not be the person they ‘normally’ were. There are other potential limits to emphasize regarding this approach. For instance, for security reasons I tried to not disclose any personal information to prisoners. This of course leads to the question of whether ‘real’ and ‘simple’ encounters between ‘human beings’ can really be established. According to Oakley, during in-depth interviews, there is ‘no intimacy without reciprocity’ (Oakley, 1981, p. 41). Indeed, while this was never an issue during my first fieldwork trip in 2013, it increasingly became one—on both sides—during fieldwork for the PhD. While prisoners generally showed the need to talk about themselves and were grateful for my sympathetic ear, it also happened, though rarely, that they wanted to know personal things about me, for instance, whether I was in a relationship or married. I always evaded these questions (as recommended by prison staff) because I feared further intimate questions.

Generally, the prisoners who asked me such questions did not express astonishment about my reaction, probably because they were already used to this behaviour from prison staff. However, I always felt uncomfortable during such situations. I became particularly aware of the one-sidedness of the relationships I established and maintained with prisoners when one prisoner explicitly asked me in the presence of other prisoners, during an informal gathering, to finally ‘come out of my shell’. However, although I was aware from the beginning that the only thing I would offer them was an opportunity to talk, the need to not disclose personal information (in a way far beyond the general researcher’s need to maintain a certain ‘neutrality’ or critical distance from his or her research participants), especially during informal discussions, increasingly became an issue for me. It also made me aware of the fact that—in contrast to common assumptions—ethnographic research, depending on the context, does not necessarily increase in quality the longer we remain in the field.

Finally, there were also moments where I failed or did not want to ‘normalise’ the prison, due to my personal and ambivalent feelings towards the prison and the prisoners. These feelings sometimes came up and shook my professional sense of self, as illustrated by the following extract from my fieldnotes:

Right now, I would prefer to stop everything. I don’t remember why I wanted to do this at all […] I think I am struggling to find the right balance between closeness and distance. I am too involved emotionally, too open, in search of interpersonal connections, trust, etc. But at the same time, I should, however, face them [the prisoners] with suspicion (you never know …). Already this creates tension, which is difficult to handle. Then, I hear these horrible stories about all these cruel offenses, and at the same time I see and feel how degradingly prisoners are treated, what long-term imprisonment can do to a human being – another field of tension. Right now, I just want to leave, and not to return to this place. What would the victims and their relatives think of my work if they knew about it? This was going through my head today as well. (Fieldnotes, 12.2.2016)

As this example shows, there were moments in which the prison for me was simply and above all a ‘bad’ place and my interview partners ‘bad’ people. What I could not and did not want to ‘normalise’ included both the degrading treatment by prison staff and the offences these prisoners had committed—two elements that were, however, irrelevant to my research questions.

The fact that my research participants had been labelled as ‘dangerous’ and sentenced to indefinite incarceration (whether this was right in every case is, again, a separate question) and the general distrust the prison shows towards them (expressed in prison architecture, infrastructure, norms and rules) made me careful and cautious. For instance, whenever I entered the prison, I immediately switched on all my sensors. Certain prisoners themselves expressed an awareness of the label they were carrying and the general distrust they aroused. Especially during interactions that occurred in situations less directly surveilled by prison staff, some prisoners expressed their anticipated concerns and possible institutional reactions. Their statements worked as constant (although passing) reminders of the context in which we found ourselves. For instance, when one prisoner invited me to visit him in his cell, he immediately added that ‘of course’ the door would remain open all the time (Fieldnotes, 15.2.2016). Another prisoner was concerned about us being out of sight of the prison officers’ lens:

While searching for an appropriate place to have an undisturbed conversation with one of the prisoners during their break [that they generally spend outside in the courtyard], I proposed the bench that was furthest away. He agreed but expressed his concerns: he wanted to know whether it was ‘not too far’ for me to go there. Of course, he wasn’t referring to the geographical distance, since it was a matter of several meters only, but to security issues. (Fieldnotes, 21.4.2016)

Yet another prisoner made use of the cracks offered by such situations by playing with his label of being ‘dangerous’ in a provocative way:

Today, the same prisoner as yesterday approached me during one of these short moments when I was sitting alone in the prison officers’ office (which is not monitored) with the staff all far away. Standing on the doorstep, he asked me in a provocative way if I was not afraid of being here in this unit, among all these ‘monsters’. I indeed felt uncomfortable but tried to remain calm and friendly. (Fieldnotes, 13.5.2013)

At the same time, I also created situations in which prisoners’ label implicitly became an issue. During my visits to prisoners in their cells, I sometimes entered them (for which I needed approval by staff), but more often I remained on the doorstep, which did not require any permission and made me feel more comfortable as well. A couple of times, prisoners asked me to enter, adding that they ‘would not do me any harm’. I generally responded to this remark with a smile, saying that I appreciated the offer but preferred to remain outside. By not wanting to enter a prisoner’s ‘home’ as a ‘guest’, I of course stressed the fact that visiting them in their cells was not a ‘normal’ meeting, but an encounter between a ‘harmless’ citizen coming from the outside and a ‘dangerous’ offender held in prison. The supposed dangerousness was implicitly also an issue (for both sides) during the situation illustrated in the following extract from my fieldnotes, in which my intuitive and non-verbally expressed mistrust provoked an immediate reaction by a prisoner:

This afternoon, as we agreed in the morning, I had quickly visited [a prisoner] in his cell. He wanted to give me a document he had mentioned. Together with a security officer, I went to [his] cell. […] He gave me the document and asked the officer if he could briefly have a chat with me. The officer agreed but wanted us to remain in the hall. So we remained in the hall, at the entry of his cell. […]. At some point, I inquired about the time saying that I probably should go now. He handed me a small bottle of mineral water, which he had put into the water-filled lavabo for cooling, asking me if he could offer it to me for my way home. I hesitated for a moment, which he seemed to notice, he said: ‘There is nothing in it, just water’, I took it and thanked him. With my fingers, I instinctively checked whether the cap was untouched. We said good-bye and he thanked me for the visit. […] The first thing I did after I had left the prison was to throw the bottle in the dustbin and wash my hands. (Fieldnotes, 1.9.2016)

1.1.1.2.3 Some Thoughts on Gender

While gender probably matters in any ethnographic research, it certainly has particular significance when a female researcher conducts fieldwork in prisons for male offenders. At least, this is what I was told again and again. I encountered many situations (at academic conferences and seminars, during get-togethers with friends and family members) where the fact of me being a ‘woman’ (above all, as I was often told, a ‘small and slender’ one) doing research with (‘dangerous’) ‘men’ (among whom were numerous sex offenders), in prison where they deal with the deprivation of (hetero-)sexual encounters, provoked numerous concerns and questions. It was also an issue that was taken up by the media. I received several inquiries from newspapers interested in publishing a story about ‘the female researcher in a male prison’; I rejected almost all of them on the grounds that this strong focus on gender distracted from the content and main goals of my research project. I do not claim that gender does not matter in my research. However, from my experience it was much more an issue for the people in the outside world than for the prisoners. Nevertheless, of course the particular context of the prison, a male-dominated area, did shape my research practice.

That I was a woman researcher entering a men’s prison was first taken up by the prison management, who formulated specific codes of conduct regarding my physical appearance. A few weeks before starting my fieldwork, I received a message from the prison management which, among other things, asked me to wear clothes that were ‘appropriate’ to the locality, in the sense that ‘shoulders must be covered. Not allowed are tank tops, belly shirts, short trousers or skirts’ (letter, JVA Lenzburg, 16.4.2013, my translation). I believe I would have dressed like this anyway, since I expected this dress code from an institution where the staff wear uniforms, and I did not pay special attention to this remark at the outset. However, the issue of clothing turned out to be a permanent preoccupation. Interestingly, clothing was never an issue for one of my male colleagues who also conducted ethnographic prison research—either on the part of the institution or for himself. My constant concern was that my female body would, through inappropriate clothing, become an issue. For this reason, in addition to following the prison’s request, which basically boiled down to not showing too much skin, I tried not to wear clothing that accentuated those parts of my body that are commonly perceived as female. For example, I never wore tight trousers or a tight blouse. Even when I went jogging with prison staff over lunch time, I avoided wearing tight or short sport pants. I also never wore bright or striking colours (commonly ascribed to women) but preferred black, blue and grey. My intention was to somehow preventively ‘neutralize’ gender (Hirschauer, 2001) by ‘reducing’ my femininity (Sloan & Wright, 2015, p. 152) through my appearance, in order to render gender differences as irrelevant as possible during the research process. I found this important in order to gain and maintain my professional credibility as a researcher but also to avoid endangering my reputation as a (‘serious’) woman in this particular male-dominated research context.

To the extent that I could comprehend it, from the prisoners’ point of view, the fact that I was a woman—one who was not a prison officer—mattered in the sense that it allowed them to experience and to perform masculinity in a way that was most likely rare for them. Hence, while I generally tried to ‘neutralize’ gender, during our interactions inmates did mobilize gender as a ‘relational category’ (Hirschauer, 2001) of difference that allowed them to establish gendered relations between us. For instance, there were several prisoners who openly expressed appreciation for the possibility my presence gave them to ‘finally talk to a woman again’. There was one prisoner who added that he had ‘almost forgotten how to talk to a woman’ (Fieldnotes, 16.2.2016). Although there were female officers (although few in number), this statement made clear that my status as a penal system outsider was of particular importance—indeed, it was the most important aspect as it connected to the experience of some degree of ‘normalcy’, as mentioned above. Moreover, interacting with me also allowed prisoners to play various masculine roles, such as the role of the ‘gentleman’ who protects me from ‘rude’ fellow prisoners and ‘cruel’ male conversation. For others, it was possibly an opportunity to express certain feelings and show their ‘weak’ side, which, as I was told, is often difficult in prison, a ‘homosocial institution’ (Crewe, 2014, p. 431) where prisoners generally ‘mask’ emotional expression and put on ‘fronts’ of bravado and aggression (Crewe, 2014, p. 430), as signs of weakness may identify prisoners as ‘vulnerable’ (Fieldnotes, 16.2.2016). I noticed, furthermore, that some prisoners were strongly perfumed when meeting me. Maybe this was part of their daily routine, or perhaps it was part of their ‘impression management’ (Largey & Watson, 2006 [1972], p. 35) when meeting a woman—more specifically a woman not part of the penal system. All these experiences taken together led me to assume that meeting a female researcher from the outside was basically a welcome change in the prisoners’ everyday lives. Yet, given the deprivation of heterosexual relationships in prison, it is possible that some saw in me a ‘projection surface’ for personal (sexual) desires and fantasies. If this was the case, these were not disclosed to me.

On a different note, a few times prisoners (as well as staff members) tried to benefit from my presence to (re)live the experience of flirting. While some studies describe flirting (or sexuality in general) as an inherent part of fieldwork, I never considered ‘playing’ (Kaspar & Landolt, 2016, p. 108) with my sexuality during fieldwork—especially not in prison. Nonetheless, I had to deal with some attempts at flirting during my research encounters. As pointed out by Kaspar and Landolt (2016, p. 116), such unexpected moments can be experienced as ‘both threatening and pleasant; [they] can facilitate data collection or impede it; it can balance power relations or enforce or reverse the asymmetry’.

During fieldwork, I experienced both implicit and explicit demonstrations of interest. One prisoner once tried to flirt with me by redefining the interview situation as a date. He managed to ‘smuggle’ (although it was probably allowed) a Coke, two cups, and cookies into the room, and brought with him a lot of pictures of his family which he had been hiding under his sweater. In the middle of the interview he suddenly interrupted me and asked:

Simon::

But tell me, what did you actually think when you saw me for the first time?

Irene::

(laughing)

S::

Honestly, I always see you with a smiling face, I don’t know, whenever I see you, whenever we play table tennis, you always smile at me (laughing), you always bring sunshine to me.

I::

I don’t know; you obviously make me laugh.

S::

Really?

I::

So, what do you think about prison officers, how do you get along with them? (Simon, 11.9.2013)

At the end of the interview, he repeated his questions and I hastily switched off the recording device. Even though I did not experience the prisoner’s behaviour as particularly obtrusive, I was unsettled by his ‘reframing’ of our encounter, obviously aimed at creating intimacy between us in a way that did not correspond to my professional demeanour in prison. Moreover, given that this situation happened during an early stage of my research, I also worried about not receiving ‘proper’ answers to my questions (see also Kaspar & Landolt, 2016, p. 115). When handing the audio file to the student assistant hired to transcribe interviews for the end-of-life project, I somehow felt embarrassed knowing that she would hear that a prisoner tried to flirt with me, and I worried about her impression regarding my professional credibility.

The following extract from my fieldnotes illustrates an attempt to flirt that not only depicts the importance and influence of the prison context, but also the prisoners’ (possible) confusion about my interest in their lives:

In the afternoon, I went to [a workshop] where I met [a prisoner] again; I was sitting next to him, helping him fold envelopes. We were talking about this and that […] Then, he started flirting. He came physically close to me whenever he had to get up and get something. He told me that for the past 23 months he had been in prison, I was the first woman that came that close to him [I guess he meant physically], that he didn’t receive any visitors, and that this was a special feeling for him. He said he didn’t know whether it was the 23 months or me, but he thought that I was nice – ‘you are nice, aren’t you?’ he asked. I was embarrassed and replied, while laughing, ‘Yes, I think I’m nice’. He wanted to know if I want to have kids. He said that he knew that I didn’t have any [which was true at that time] because I didn’t wear a ring. I replied that ‘maybe I wouldn’t wear it in here, even if I had one’. This confused him. Why should I want to keep this secret? I didn’t give a clear answer and changed the topic of conversation. The same applied to the disclosure of my first name. When he asked me about it, I felt uncomfortable and quickly replied ‘just call me Ms. Marti’. He was even more confused. (Fieldnotes, 16.2.2016)

During qualitative research, and in particular during ethnographic fieldwork, the generation of rich data is strongly dependent on the researcher’s ability to create a friendly atmosphere. However, as this example illustrates, this can also cause confusion among research participants who may mis- or over-interpret the researcher’s intention. Although the encounter with this prisoner was generally a pleasurable moment which allowed us to co-construct some kind of ‘normalcy’ (as described above), his attempt to create intimacy between us led me to ‘re-position’ us again as prisoner and researcher. This became visible in my refusal to disclose any personal information, even information I easily share with non-prisoners.

More frequent were the occasions when prison officers would flirt with me. Interestingly, even though it was unexpected, it was much easier for me to handle this than when prisoners were involved. Although I tried to avoid such situations as well, no pre-defined images and stereotypes about these men framed these interactions. I was therefore much more relaxed and saw it more as a game. I felt ‘safer’ than with prisoners and less concerned about data collection.

To conclude, the question of gender was certainly a concern from an external perspective, and from the point of view of prison management. For me, it was an issue precisely because I did not want it to be one. Finally, for the prisoners it was also an issue, as encountering a person of the opposite sex provided them with a welcome change in their daily lives. However, in the end I think what was equally if not more important was the fact that I was a person from the outside world, interested in their lives and not interwoven with the penal system.

1.1.2 Face-to-Face Interviews

After completing my fieldwork, I conducted semi-structured interviews with prisoners, a few staff members and a small number of representatives of the penal enforcement authorities. My choice of interview partners among prisoners was mainly driven by the connections that I was able to establish during fieldwork. Almost all the prisoners I met were, in the end, willing to be interviewed; the three who refused stated that that they had already shared a lot of information with me during our informal discussions. A few more interview partners were organized by prison staff, and one prisoner asked his mate to let me interview him. I tried to provide those who agreed with as much autonomy as possible, meaning that I let them decide on the day and time of the interview (which of course still had to fit within the prison schedule).

All the interviews took place in a room provided by the prison—either in a social worker’s office or a room where prisoners receive visitors, such as the chaplain or psychotherapist’s room. In every prison, the management wanted me to carry an alarm device. I tried to handle this device with as much discretion as possible. For instance, I tried to avoid attaching it to my belt in front of the prisoners and to do so in the prison officers’ office instead. During the interviews, I tried to create a friendly atmosphere as much as possible, by not sitting down facing the prisoners, for instance, to avoid an arrangement similar to an interrogation. Moreover, whenever possible, I offered them some water to drink.

Between 2016 and 2017, I met with a total of 32 prisoners sentenced to indefinite confinement. I conducted in-depth formal interviews with 18 of these prisoners, ten prison staff members (including representatives of management, social and security services, as well as workshop foremen) and five members of penal enforcement authorities. For my analysis, I also included portions of the data that our research group gathered in the context of the previous project on end-of-life situations in Switzerland. These data included in-depth interviews with 17 prisoners (seven of whom I interviewed again in the context of the PhD project), 27 prison staff members and three members of penal enforcement authorities. I asked my interview partners to complete and sign an informed consent form before the interview. The interviews lasted approximately 90 minutes (the shortest 30 minutes and the longest three hours). All the interviews were recorded and transcribed and later coded and analysed. Before beginning the analysis, I gave a copy of each interview transcript to the prisoners. The intention behind this was not only to give my research participants the possibility to retract statements, but also to create a symbolic gesture of reciprocity in a context where all I could offer them was ‘a non-judgmental ear and an opportunity to talk’ (Waldram, 2009a, p. 5).

After an initial analysis of my data, I decided to collect additional materials that more explicitly investigated the prisoners’ relations to the various spatial settings in situ in order to extend and deepen my knowledge of their everyday experience of the various carceral contexts.

1.1.3 Walking Interviews

Inspired by Kusenbach (2003), I decided to conduct individual ‘walking interviews’ or so-called ‘go-alongs’ with some of the prisoners I had already interviewed. Conducting individual walking interviews at the final stage of my fieldwork was particularly useful to explore systematically, in situ and in real time, prisoners’ perceptions of the various everyday prison contexts as well as their sensory memories and imaginations (Pink, 2009).¹⁰ In contrast to the ‘classical’ semi-structured interviews that I conducted sitting at a table in a room provided by prison management and talking about particular places and activities while being somewhere else, in these follow-up interviews, I explored prisoners’ relations to the various carceral contexts by letting them give me ‘guided tours’ through their prison.

Conducting walking interviews in prison of course required permission from prison management, which I obtained from only one prison. In agreement with management, I was allowed to select the prisoners and to ask them in person to determine the time and the exact route for the walking interview. However, these details had to be approved by the management in advance. Fortunately, no changes were necessary, and we could conduct the prison tours as planned by the prisoners, under the condition that we were accompanied by a member of the staff. The reason for this arrangement was to guarantee my safety but also to have someone with us who was authorized to carry keys and unlock doors for us. In a preliminary meeting with the prison officer in charge, I asked him to keep, if possible, a certain distance during the interviews, to which he fully agreed. The duration for each interview was limited by management to 90 minutes. In total, I conducted six walking interviews. Again, all the interviews were recorded and later transcribed, coded and analysed.

During the walking interviews, as suggested by Kusenbach (2003), I tried to give the prisoners as little direction as possible. I sometimes let them comment on whatever came to mind while looking at or being in a particular place. I also made comments on things that struck me and asked them for their opinion or feelings about it. The prison management also allowed me to take a camera with me and to ask the prisoners to take pictures during the walking interview of things or places they found relevant. Inspired by a method called photo-elicitation (Rose, 2012), I wanted them to take pictures to sharpen their awareness and to make them look at their familiar environment in a new way. Also, the pictures they took and the conversations we had about them in situ provided me with additional information about their experiences. Finally, it offered them the opportunity to produce visual material, which I could later use as illustrations in my thesis. All the interviews were audio recorded and later transcribed. I decided to not take notes during the interviews, in order to create a more informal and relaxed ambiance. I noted my observations and reflections in my field notebook immediately after each interview.

As I discovered, using the walking interview as a research tool is particularly well suited to normalizing the prison context. Despite the limits set by the prison management, walking interviews allowed prisoners a certain degree of self-determination (regarding date and time as well as the route we took), something they very rarely experience in their daily lives. Specifically, during the walking interviews we generally visited places at unusual times (e.g. the courtyard in the morning instead of the afternoon) and for an unusual duration. We also took routes from one place to another that the prisoners are usually not allowed to follow (e.g. taking a shortcut generally only used by prison staff). Thus, walking interviews interrupted the ordinariness of prison life and let prisoners experience change and something exceptional. Finally, the possibility of creating a rather informal atmosphere during the walking interviews, remaining open and letting the conversation develop as spontaneously as possible, also helped to normalize (and maybe also humanize) the institutional context of the prison for a moment. As Leo suddenly said while we were walking around the courtyard together: ‘As long as I look upwards [to the sky], I actually feel free, or let’s say less imprisoned’. He laughed and added: ‘Or right now, when I can walk around like this, not knowing when exactly I have to go back in again or having an appointment at a particular time … when I can move a bit more freely than usual’ (Leo, 31.8.2017).

1.1.4 Documents

Finally, I also used a wide range of documents to generate data. These documents included official organizational documents produced by the prison and enforcement authorities (e.g. the prisons’ house rules and annual reports, or cantonal recommendations) that allowed me to grasp the institutional framework. They also included everyday internal prison documents, such as the planning of the inmates’ stays or staff reports, to get a better understanding of the prison norms and routines and the institutional handling of the prisoners. Finally, I also included private documents—that is, letters and writings the prisoners gave me.

1.2 Structure of the Book

Chapter 2 starts with a description of the legal definition of indefinite confinement—that is, indefinite incarceration and in-patient therapeutic treatment of mental disorders, and provides insight into penal policy. It further explores the perspective of the three groups of actors who most directly organize and shape prisoners’ everyday lives: penal enforcement authorities, prison management and prison staff. This section presents these actors’ formal tasks in the enforcement of indefinite confinement as well as their individual experiences and attitudes regarding these prisoners. Finally, I establish the two main features of life in indefinite confinement, namely indeterminacy and an institutionally established present, viewed from the perspective of those directly concerned: the prisoners. In Chapter 3, I present my theoretical framework. In this book, I analytically grasp the prison and the experience of imprisonment by using space, time and embodiment as key concepts.

Chapters 4–6 serve as the core of the book: they are entirely devoted to the prisoners’ lived experiences of prison life and their individual ways of doing indefinite time. Chapter 4 examines prisoners’ experiences of and in the prison cell. It starts with a description of the legal and institutional norms regarding the design, materiality and furnishing of the cell. It then explores the various meanings prisoners attribute to their cells, their individual experiences of being inside, and their ways of arranging their cells and doing time in this place where they spend most of their time, almost always alone. Chapter 5 is dedicated to prisoners’ experiences at work. It also begins with a short description of the legal and institutional framework of work in Swiss prisons and, specifically, in the prisons where I conducted fieldwork. I then explore prisoners’ experiences of these different work contexts and how this affects their corporal and spatial experience of imprisonment. I also shed light on prisoners’ various temporal experiences at work and the ways they rearrange institutionally established work rhythms according to their individual needs. Finally, I delve into the experiences of being a worker and how this affects prisoners’ sense of self. Chapter 6 focuses on leisure time. More concretely, it explores prisoners’ spatial, temporal and embodied experiences of and during the particular moment of the day that is labelled and organized by the prison as ‘leisure time’, taking place in a wide range of contexts where various temporalities and rhythms are produced. After a brief description of the legal and institutional norms regarding leisure time in Swiss prisons and a presentation of the internal rules and available leisure time activities in the prisons where I conducted fieldwork, I present the prisoners’ multiple approaches to doing leisure time, during which they have various opportunities to encounter the outside world.