Abstract
This chapter explores how masculinities are shaped by inter-prisoner and institutional power in the prison. It starts by examining the relationship between the young men and the institution, and how institutional power affected most elements of prisoners’ lives, resulting in feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness. The second section discusses the power dynamics between the prison staff and the young men, highlighting discrepancies in the implementation of the privilege scheme, favouritism, and how some young men were able to 'play the system'. The final section examines practices that the young men had adopted to resist institutional power. It shows how they practiced resistance collectively and individually in both the public and private domains.
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Notes
- 1.
The NIPS’s Progressive Regimes and Earned Privileges Scheme (PREPS), introduced in Hydebank in 2006. See Chapter 3 for a more detailed discussion on the physical organisation of Hydebank and the spatial arrangement of the enhancement regime.
- 2.
Pseudonym.
- 3.
During the Troubles, ‘politically affiliated prisoners’, who asserted that the acts for which they were charged had political motivations and were often committed in their capacity as a member of a paramilitary organisation (also see Scraton, 2015), were at first granted ‘special category status'. This meant that they were separated from ‘ordinary criminals’ and opposing paramilitary groups and allowed to wear their own clothes and associate freely. From 1976, ‘special category status' was revoked and politically affiliated prisoners were treated in the same manner as prisoners in the general population: they were required to wear prison uniforms and could not associate freely, etc. (McEvoy, 2001). Republican politically affiliated prisoners immediately campaigned for restoration of ‘special category status’. ‘Blanket protests’ (refusal to wear prison clothing) were followed by ‘no-wash’ or ‘dirty’ protests (during which prisoners smeared excrement around their cells), and culminated in hunger strikes. Margaret Thatcher’s unyielding Conservative Government would not accede to the Republican prisoners’ demands and in 1981 ten hunger strikers starved to death (Beresford, 1987; McKeown, 2001). These protests were acts of collective resistance against an institution that was formally responsible for prisoners’ health and safety.
- 4.
In 1983, 38 politically affiliated Republican prisoners escaped from the Maze prison. This was the largest ever escape of prisoners from a prison under the control of the British state (McEvoy, 2001).
- 5.
This is a credit system. Prisoners purchased a product and paid for it at a later date. If they missed payment, they were required to pay double the original purchase price (often called ‘double-bubble’).
- 6.
Also known as a punched pocket, these are transparent plastic bags slit at the top and with a perforated edge, normally used to hold documents.
- 7.
An extract from July’s field notes illustrates my own interaction with a mouse in the prison. ‘I was spending the day with the prisoners that were doing the industrial cleaning certificate. When we got back to the office some of the young men said they saw a mouse and had jumped on top of tables and chairs and were screaming and shouting. Upon seeing the young men screaming and jumping my instant reaction was to jump on top of the nearest chair in the office. They said the mouse had run under the table and into where all the cleaning products were kept. Fintan evidently was not scared of mice, he was laughing at us and began looking among the varying cleaning products for the mouse. He was pulling out bottle after bottle to no avail. Behind all the bottles, there was a pipe lying on the ground not attached to anything, Fintan said “I bet ya it’s in that”. At this point, myself and the other young men had got down from our safe spots and were crowded around the pipe. He moved it with his foot and nothing came out. Upon encouragement, he then picked it up to look inside it and shouted “aw fuck it’s in there” at the same time flicked the pipe towards where myself and the other young men were standing. A mouse came flying out of the top of the pipe, landed in front of us, and scurried through us and under a filing cabinet. Again, every single one of us jumped up onto chairs and tables screaming as the mouse disappeared’.
- 8.
Obsessive compulsive disorder.
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Murray, C. (2023). Institutional Power and Resistance. In: Young Men, Masculinities and Imprisonment. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33398-9_6
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