According to the 11th World Prison Brief, more than 9 in 10 (93%) of the world’s prisoners are male (Warmsley 2016). While over recent years there has been a small but significant increase in the proportion of female prisoners globally, male prisoners still constitute the vast majority of prisoners in all 223 prison systems in independent countries and dependent territories considered in the World Prison Brief. Globally, among those countries where data are available, the highest proportion of male prisoners is found in African countries, in which 97% of the prison population is male, while in the Americas, this figure is at its lowest, at 90% of the prison population in the USA and 92% in the remainder of the Americas (Warmsley 2016). Thus, for all of the jurisdictions which feature within the chapters of this book, this picture of male predominance within penal systems is consistently reflected.
While these figures somewhat crudely illustrate the importance of gender per se within criminal justice systems globally, they conceal the fact that the highly gendered nature of the prison world is often taken-for-granted, and rarely fore-fronted or explicitly acknowledged. The central aim of this book is to illustrate and analyse the complexity of the consequences principally within prison systems, of the incarceration of such a high proportion of men and particularly to question what an analysis of the various performances of masculinity that occur within prisons can contribute to our understandings of them as gendered spaces.
The authors of the chapters in this book draw on recent advances in theories of masculinities to explore and analyse the ways in which prisons shape performances of gender within (male) prison settings, and in some cases following men’s release from prison. The book includes contributions based on original data collected from prison settings in England, Australia, Scotland and the USA, as well as contributions which take a broader methodological and conceptual approach to understanding masculinity. Most of the chapters focus on adult male prison populations, although one considers young men within a young offender institution. Cumulatively, the chapters in this collection illustrate the importance of developing a nuanced and theoretically informed understanding of masculinity within prison research.
This edited collection considers the gendered experiences of imprisonment for men, through a diverse examination of prison masculinities . Performances of masculinity play a significant role both in linking gender and crime prior to prison (Collier 1998; Messerschmidt 1993) and, subsequently, in shaping the experience for male prisoners serving a range of sentences (Sabo et al. 2001). While previous work on prison masculinities (cf. Sabo et al. 2001) has illuminated aspects of the gendered nature of male imprisonment, this has largely focused on aggressive, hierarchical, emotionally detached and violent elements of the performance of masculinity within prisons. While these aspects of masculine performances remain widely evident in prisons (as is reflected in many of the chapters that follow), previous literature has tended to overlook some of the more subtle, nurturing and emotionally engaged performances of masculinity in prison. This book will consider the ways in which recent advances in masculinity studies can more fully illuminate these aspects of the performance of prison masculinities, adding greater nuance to our understanding of prison masculinities.
Origins of This Collection
In March 2015, the Stoney Brook University, New York Centre for the Study of Men and Masculinities, hosted the International Conference on Masculinities: Engaging Men and Boys for Gender Equality , in New York. At this conference, a panel session organised by one of the editors of this book (Matthew Maycock) was composed of six presentations responding to the panel theme, namely new perspectives on prison masculinities. The panel aimed to give an overview of the field of prison masculinities research , reflecting on recent developments in masculinities theory generally, and in research on masculinities in prisons more specifically. Several of the presentations at this panel session in New York (those by Matthew Maycock, Anna Curtis and Tony Evans) were subsequently developed as chapters for this book. Initial conversations at this conference highlighted the need for a book that reflected, and reflected on, recent developments in masculinity studies within the context of penology.
What Can the Study of Masculinity Contribute to Penology?
Through the conversations initiated at the New York conference, it became clear that the recent development of the field of masculinity studies was beginning to influence contemporary prison-based research. Replicating a wider ‘malestream’ within the social sciences (Gilligan 1982; Morris 1987), studies of prisons have largely focused on male prisoners, reflecting the fact that the majority of prisoners are men (as noted above). However, historically these studies tended not to explicitly consider and problematise the gendered experience of men of prison (Morgan 1986). Newton (1994) explored some of these issues and made an early contribution to strengthening the case for explicitly examining masculinities within penology:
Aspects of masculinities are clearly found in, and help to explain, aspects of the sociology of prisons for men: in, for instance, the hierarchies of domination that are formed in prisons, in codes of solidarity, in expressions of sexuality. (Newton 1994, 194)
Subsequently, a wide range of research has explored aspects of prison masculinities, in some ways in parallel with the development of the field of men and masculinity studies more broadly. Principal among these is the book on Prison Masculinities edited by Sabo et al. (2001). This made a significant and continuing contribution to the field of prison masculinities. In their introduction to this collection, Sabo, Kupers and London stated that the importance of masculinity within prisons had tended to be overlooked within criminology and by prison staff, highlighting the ways in which masculinity influences the behaviour of prisoners. However, the book tended to focus on ‘ultramasculine’ aspects of prison masculinities:
Prison is an ultramasculine world where nobody talks about masculinity. (Sabo et al. 2001, 3)
Thus certain masculinities were foregrounded, particularly those linked to violence and a wider range of negative associations and behaviours (including the continuation of crime). According to Sabo, Kupers and London , this overtly negative interpretation of prison masculinities is formed through a range of factors and actors within and around the prison context, resulting in the predominance of certain patterns of (negative and harmful) performances of masculinity within prisons. This results in:
…collusion of prisoners, police, corrections officers, corporations, and legislators in supporting certain patterns of masculinity. (Sabo et al. 2001, 3)
Throughout this earlier collection, hegemonic masculinity is consistently used as the principal theory to guide the analysis of prison masculinities, reflecting the predominance of this theory at that time within the field of men and masculinities. Sabo, Kupers and London suggested that hegemonic masculinity :
…reflects and actively cultivates gender inequalities, but also allows elite males to extend their influence and control over lesser-status males within intermale dominance hierarchies. (Sabo et al. 2001, 6)
While this provided an important context for the area of prison masculinities, Sabo, Kupers and London ’s valuable collection is now over 15 years old. In the intervening time, there have been important developments in theories of masculinities (such as ‘inclusive’ masculinity, as considered below) and substantial critiques of hegemonic masculinity in conjunction with a significant expansion in empirical prisons research. These changes, and the continued incarceration of over 9 million men internationally (Warmsley 2016), warrant a new, updated source on prison masculinities that reflects these developments. Furthermore, the Sabo, Kupers and London collection is largely US focused, while the chapters in the current collection have a wider geographical reach, which we hope will enable an analysis of, and reflection on, the implications of penal jurisdictions for performances of masculinity in a wider range of countries.
Certain commonly held positions emerge from the prison masculinities literature outlined above. Principal among these commonalities is the notion that prison masculinities are multiple and complex. Furthermore, existing literature in this area illustrates that specific performances of masculinities are shaped by the prison context. So, despite prison masculinities being connected to performances of masculinity that are not shaped by prison contexts (reflecting, in part, the increasingly porous nature of contemporary penal systems (Baumer et al. 2009; Crewe 2009; Moran 2013)), there is s...