Abstract
In this chapter, ethnographic data is used to demonstrate how staff and prisoners identify someone as dying. The primary concern of this chapter is to explore the influence of occupational culture on the preferred terminology used to describe the dying incarcerated individual: ‘prisoner’, ‘patient’ or ‘person’. These different constructions are shown to impact on priorities for how the dying individual is treated. Stigma, the deprivation of autonomy and the overriding security concerns of the prison are shown to be relevant considerations when the dying individual’s status as a prisoner is foregrounded. Constructing the dying individual as a ‘patient’ or ‘person’ is seen to assist with extending sympathy, something further enabled by constructing the prisoner as part of a family. It is however demonstrated that sympathy could still be expected from staff when the individual regarded as a ‘prisoner’ is known to be facing death from natural causes in prison custody.
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Robinson, C. (2023). Constructing the Dying Prisoner. In: Dying in Prison. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27103-8_4
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