Pains & Possibilities in Prison

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2010 53: 307Acta SociologicaMalene Molding Nielsen

Ethnographic ResearchPains and Possibilities in Prison : On the Use of Emotions and Positioning in

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Pains and Possibilities in Prison

On the Use of Emotions and Positioning in Ethnographic Research

Malene Molding NielsenUniversity of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

abstract: The article describes the complexity of researching staffprisonerrelationships ethnographically, and scrutinizes how the complexity linked to theresearch process may inform an analysis of relationships in prison. I argue that

ethnographic research comes with uncertainty and insecurity, because theparticipation of the researcher, as an informed and involved outsider, requiresshifting social engagements in relation to which the researcher constantly has toguard and disguise information and positioning to observe confidentiality and

build trust. I demonstrate how the experience of the researcher mirrors andresembles the insecurity and uncertainty that accompanies prison relationships thatI characterize as relative. I explain why it is therefore difficult to distinguish

between insider and outsider, front and back, public and private, trustful andcautious and friend and enemy, and how this results in a constant guarding anddisguising of information and positioning among officers and prisoners. Finally,I argue that while social relativity provides uncertainty and multiple loyalties thatcontribute to the low trust environment of the prison, it also makes possible thecompromises, discretion and flexibility required to ensure a tolerable humane flowof everyday life by providing for management of both personal and social agendas.

Keywords: emotions and positioning in ethnographic researchu low-trust environ-mentsu officers and prisoners u prison ethnography challengesu prison pains u

prison relationships

Introduction

The strains and conditions of imprisonment and of working as staff in prison have beenextensively addressed in recent years (see, e.g., Liebling, 2001, 2004; Crawley, 2004; Arnold,2005; King, 2007; Bennett et al., 2008; Crewe, 2009). Despite calls for descriptions of the complex-ity of conducting research in violent environments (Liebling, 1999; Liebling and Stanko, 2001),accounts of the strains and conditions of researching prison life often fade away in field notes,memories and private conversations. Yet they carry potential in terms of scrutinizing epistemo-logical premises of research. Field experience, knowledge and position are closely related, and

by allowing ourselves to reflect critically on this, we may unveil important analytical insightsabout our object of inquiry.

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This article is one result of an ethnographic study of the officerprisoner relationship as itunfolds in everyday life in an open Danish prison. While there has been an often politicallymotivated tendency in criminological and sociological research to focus on offenders (Liebling,2001), and in prison ethnography to concentrate on either staff or inmates, this study includes

both groups. This implies that the researcher, simultaneously, sought to establish an ethno-graphic presence in the everyday lives and interactions of officers and prisoners. It is experiencesfrom working ethnographically like this that the article discusses.

The purpose of the article is twofold. First, it is to critically scrutinize the challenges of build-ing trust and ensuring confidentiality while conducting participant-observation among officersand prisoners in an environment characterized by intimacy, secrecy, distrust, anger, tension,addiction, distress and a thriving presence of crime. Second, it is to demonstrate how these chal-lenges may provide insights into defining features of prison relationships, i.e. their relativity anduncertainty; features that result in a constant guarding and disguising of self and other. Theintention is to stimulate discussions on the use and potential of ethnographic research in a prisoncontext.

In using the emotionally straining conditions of the fieldwork experience to unfold the rela-tivity and uncertainty that frame relationships in prison, the intention is to both emphasizeand capitalize on emotional aspects of knowledge production that together with other datacontribute to the analysis. I do this by describing the pains and possibilities of relationshipsin prison, and the guarding and disguising that accompanies them. Moreover, I seekan understanding of relationships through emotions that come together with uncertainty,guarding and disguising.

In the first section, I lay out the methodological starting point for this analysis and the reflex-ive approach that has guided it. In the second section, I describe challenges I was confrontedwith in, simultaneously, conducting participant-observation among officers and prisoners; chal-

lenges that are straining because they point to social dynamics and characteristics of the prisonenvironment that are beyond the control of the researcher. Yet they constitute the available pros-pects for researching the officerprisoner relationship ethnographically like I did. I describe inthe third section the implications of my liminal presence that became my entry point and thatthus shaped my social engagements with officers and prisoners. This takes me to an allegoricalpresentation of prison everyday life that depicts the complexity of social interaction and relation-ships. It also sets the stage for a disclosure of epistemological issues relating to knowledge andpositioning, data access and the ontology of relationships in prison. Hereafter, I describe how,immersed in the social landscape of the prison, I devised strategies for circumventing social com-plexity and, finally, I explain how these resemble and reflect social relationships in prison in a

broader sense.

Methodological departure

In this article, I draw on the sociologist John Laws work on methods (2004) and on selectedcontemporary debates on epistemology in ethnography (Jenkins, 1994; Hastrup, 2004a, b, 2005).

In arguing for a symmetrical approach to science that embraces different kinds of scientificrepresentations of reality, Law calls for social science representations that capture the messy,unclear and incoherent characteristics of social life as a complex of realities that overlap, interfereand are partially connected (Law, 2004: 245, 61, 66). In responding to Laws call I emphasize thepresentation of my material as allegory, i.e. the art of meaning something other and more than

what is being said and which thereby holds two or more things in concert that do not necessarilyjoin together. As such, allegory carries the potential of making several realities visible at once(Law, 2004: 88, 97), and, in so doing, depicts the non-coherence that characterized the conditionsI studied.

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Law argues that whereas conventional talk about method is closely associated with rules andnorms of best practices that often become indistinguishable from lists of dos and donts and thatoffer more or less bankable guarantees for a secure arrival at a scientifically defined destination,methods go beyond the way we usually imagine them (Law, 2004: 40). They do not discover anddepict realities but participate in the enactment of them (Law, 2004: 40, 45) by silencing someaspects and giving voice to others. From this constructionist perspective realities are notexplained by practices and beliefs, they are produced in them (Law, 2004: 59) and, in so being,they point to scientific viewpoints, conventions, ways of working and ways of being (Law, 2004:10, 40). While I agree with Law that we as researchers contribute with constructions of realities,including social and natural theories about realities, it does not mean that the ethnographic fieldis constructed as opposed to being real. It means the field is contingent upon analytical objectiveand scale (Hastrup, 2005: 139).

In linking methods with both ways of working and being and enactments of reality, Lawsapproach resonates with recent ethnographic conceptions (Jenkins, 1994; Hastrup, 2004a, b) ofthe relationship between epistemology and ontology. In emphasizing the relational character

of knowledge production, they elucidate how ethnographic knowledge connects to a particularepistemology where the relation to the object or the mode of knowing bends back into the objectitself (Hastrup, 2005: 143).

Furthermore, they take the relational character of knowledge further than Law by accountingfor the embedded nature of ethnographic understanding. They argue that in doing fieldworkethnographers immerse in social relationships in order to feel their nature and directive force.It is through such incorporated engagements that ethnographers relation to their object ofinquiry is installed as part of the object when the ethnographic understanding begins to emerge(Hastrup, 2004b: 460, 464, 468; Hastrup, 2005: 143). As such, relational aspects influence the pro-cess by which facts are established, and epistemology and ontology converge (see Rosaldo, 1993:

16896; Hastrup, 2005: 143). It is from this perspective, the situation of the fieldworker is char-acteristic of the conditions being studied (Jenkins, 1994: 442). In following this line of argument,to understand is, therefore, also to acknowledge and systematically seek to reflect on ones ownparticipation and presence in the field.

It is beyond the scope of this article to provide a complete analysis of my participation andpresence in prison during the entire fieldwork period. Instead, I describe emotional experiencesand conditions of my fieldwork process that have a dominant presence in my data, and that,therefore, provide one important perspective on my fieldwork presence and participation.I do this by locating emotionality within concerns of inter-subjectivity that rail against theseparation of (objective) knowledge from (subjective) experience (Pickering, 2001: 485).

The knowledge I produce, as a result of my field engagement and the analytical journey thatfollowed, is best described as being rooted in a phenomenological understanding of fieldwork asa being-in-the-world. As such, my being was not located in myself as a subject or in the object ofinquiry but in between, in my relationship with the world (Gieser, 2008: 302). In reflecting on myown participation and presence in the field, I therefore analyse aspects of my relationship withpeople who populated the field and use this analysis to inform my discussion of, what I call,determining characteristics of relationships in prison.

The empirical material presented in this article was collected in relation to an explorativestudy that scrutinized the officerprisoner relationship and the implications of this relationshipfor both officers and prisoners experiences of living and working in prison. Access wasformally granted through the Prison and Probation Service and consultations with the prison

Governor and the Security Coordinator. In preparing for the study I made a series of familiariza-tion visits (11) to different kinds of institutions under the Prison and Probation Service thatinformed my engagements with officers and prisoners. I also held meetings with staff andprisoners representatives (spokesmen) where the project was presented and discussed along

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with my presence in prison everyday life. In this process especially staff expressed resistance,scepticism and researcher fatigue that they related to negative experiences with previousresearchers who they felt had violated safety, focused solely on prisoners and patronized and

bypassed them as a staff group. Initial and actual access to staff was, therefore, establishedthrough a dialogue where staff articulated what was especially important for them regardingmy presence in their everyday life. This resulted in initial and ongoing assurances about impar-tiality and confidentiality, and an agreement about issues relating to my appearance (dress code)and my ongoing dialogue and communication with them about the project and my whereabouts,among others. Staff resistance and the general researcher scepticism partly accounts for myawareness of the need to balance my time and attention relatively evenly between staff and pris-oners without appearing to be taking sides.

The study was conducted in an open prison for male prisoners in Denmark during a10-month period divided into two phases. I spent the initial nine weeks (Phase 1) conduct-ing informal interviews and participant-observation of staff-to-prisoner, staff-to-staff andprisoner-to-prisoner interactions covering all periods of the day and all days of the week.

I conducted the second phase over a four-month period specifically focusing on everydaylife and interaction in and around two wings.1 During this phase I randomly selected halfof the prisoner and half of the officer population on the wings and conducted formal inter-views. I also interviewed the Prison Governor, the Wing Head and the Deputy Head. Intotal I conducted 19 formal interviews with prisoners, 13 with prison officers, 2 with repre-sentatives of middle management and 1 with a senior manager. All but one of the formalinterviews were recorded and transcribed, and I systematically made notes of participant-observations from both fieldwork phases.

Building trust from a third position

To illustrate the challenge of building trust as an ethnographic prison researcher, below I includea field note extract of my conversation with one prisoner, Samuel, along with a brief note on thestaff discovery of his creative approach to avoid testing positive for drugs.

Thursday evening I meet Samuel in the kitchen. His pupils are expanded. He has obviously taken drugs.Samuel tells me he is going on weekend leave the next day, i.e. Friday.

Samuel: I bet I have to make a specimen.Interviewer: You have to get hold of some clean urine then?Samuel assures me that getting hold of clean urine is no problem, he actually produces it himself: All

you do is empty a cigarette, put the tobacco in a coffee filter together with salt and pour water through

the filter. That makes it look like urine. Billy (i.e. another prisoner) was caught using this technique. Heused a tiny bag to contain the liquid. He got five days for it (i.e. in solitary confinement). I am clever,although everybody (i.e. other prisoners) thinks I am mad. I use a syringe, without a needle that is, andI pour the liquid into it, hide the syringe at the left side of my prick and release it. Then you will notnotice it in the mirror. You just have to pretend you have problems urinating. That makes them (i.e. offi-cers) feel uneasy. After all it is not the most exciting part of their job to oversee us producingspecimen . . . Thus far I have never tested positive for drugs.

Interviewer: Your technique sounds complicated.Samuel: Yeah, but that is the rule of the game.Samuel and I continue talking for a while before Samuel is locked up and I leave prison.

Three days after my conversation with Samuel, I check into the office and spot Samuels name on

the list of prisoners in solitary confinement. I learn that Samuel was caught cheating with the speci-men on Friday as he was about to go on leave. I panic as I fear Samuel will think of me as an infor-mer; a person he and other prisoners will, therefore, not be able to share their everyday life with inthe future. I am terrified of losing the rapport and trust that I had gradually and painfully built


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with prisoners during months of hard work and, thereby, also my access to data. I am afraid ofbeing judged and condemned by the same criteria that prisoners apply to each other.

In recalling prisoners initial reaction to my presence where they would hide mobile phonesand talk would discontinue when I showed up, I had come a long way. By continuouslyassuring them about my confidentiality and systematically ignoring the presence of mobilephones, drugs or other illegal activities, with time prisoners took fewer precautions in mypresence. At the time when Samuel and I meet in the kitchen, prisoners would regularly

be on the phone in my presence, exchange information about illegal activities and make com-ments such as: remember, you have to observe your professional secrecy. Despite theincreasingly relaxed behaviour of prisoners I decide, nevertheless, to explain the unfortunatesituation to the prisoner spokesman on the wing and some of the long-term prisoners whomI have known since I commenced my fieldwork. They respond by saying that a situation likethis was bound to happen. Furthermore, they assure me that they have not heard any nega-tive talk, so far, and will explain my situation if they do. When I explain the coincidence toSamuel, he tells me it is OK but we never talk again. Whether this is due to resentment, him

leaving prison shortly after or a coincidence I do not know.Although the focus of my research was not on crime but on the relationship between prison

officers and prisoners, observations made by the criminologist Ferrell on researching crime andcriminality resonate with my experiences in prison. Ferrell notes that whether through directparticipation in illegal activities, witnessing criminal behaviour or simply the knowledge thatconstructs them as accomplices to crime, criminological field researchers have regularly crossedthe lines of legality in developing important and influential accounts of crime and criminality(Ferrell, 1998: 24).

By virtue of my everyday presence in prison I could not avoid getting information aboutcriminal activities such as drug dealing or taking and the related coping strategies of

prisoners, like Samuel, who regularly took drugs. As my exchange with Samuel illustrates,I became involved as I accessed information, and I ran the risk of being perceived asan informer; a risk which ultimately could imply losing access to my informants and myfield.

In institutionalizing my presence on the wing among prisoners I continuously had todemonstrate my trustworthiness. Simultaneously, I was aware that I would be unable to controlthe occurrence of incidents that could raise doubt about my intentions similar to the one whereSamuel gets caught cheating just after he has confided in me how he is planning to circumventthe monitoring of his drug use. The interconnections between deviance, law, crime, criminal jus-tice systems and field research are complex, and the challenge of simultaneously interacting

with and observing officers and prisoners while building some degree of trust with both groupswas significant. This was exacerbated when prisoners who knew me were released, new pris-oners arrived or they moved between the wings and I had to introduce myself again. It was a

balancing act where I had to demonstrate that I was not investigating crime but collecting infor-mation about everyday life in prison where criminal activity constituted only one of many para-meters that shaped daily interaction. In addition to ignoring ongoing criminal activities inprison, I sought to do this by focusing my attention on other aspects of prisoners lives and

by primarily asking general questions about crime, criminal conduct and hierarchies. In sodoing, I sensed the presence of crime and the many precautions that prisoners made to circum-vent house rules and the law. To safeguard trust and my access to the field, however, I had toavoid exploring ongoing criminal activity in great detail; a compromise that points to possible

limitations in my material.In a similar vein, there were compromises I chose to make in terms of the kind of data I ended

up collecting from staff and that might have influenced the insights into the officer job that myanalysis provides. The kind of information I increasingly would refrain from accessing related


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Partial impartiality

Ferrell notes that where conflict between legal authorities and criminals not only predates theresearchers participation, but pervades the situations within which the researcher operates,there is little chance of having it both ways, of working honestly, openly and empathetically

with both criminals and legal control agents. Time and again researchers must align them-selves more with one group than with the other, and then must live out, at least temporarily,a decision as to whose side they are on (Ferrell, 1998: 33). I only partly agree with Ferrell. I

believe that the extent to which a researcher is working honestly and openly depends on thescope of the research, and the extent to which the fieldwork collaboration and conditions aretransparently set out by both the researcher and key stakeholders at commencement of thefieldwork period.

Furthermore, in working ethnographically in prison, like I did, you do not necessarily choosesides but plan your presence knowing that this requires a shifting engagement and positioning.It is an engagement and positioning that goes beyond official and jurisdictional definitions of

groups, and where some people trust and share aspects of their world with you, as a researcher,while other people do not, depending on personality, social positioning in a broader sense, rap-port and experience.

Such shifting engagement and positioning becomes an entry point to the field characterizedby what I call partial impartiality. As in other social settings, physical locations and social rela-tions are not neutral in prison and although you seek to emphasize impartiality, your imparti-ality is constantly challenged. When interacting with prisoners and officers you inevitably getaccess to information that temporarily position you as a kind of insider because you possess insi-ders knowledge, like I had knowledge of Samuels planned trick or staff decisions regarding,e.g. cell searches or other planned events in prison. And in carrying insider knowledge and inengaging with both officers and prisoners, as I did, the tensions and dramas of everyday lifein prison include and affect the researcher involved.

While moving between different social positions typically comes with ethnographic fieldwork(see, e.g., Kondo, 1990; Hasse, 1995; Ergun and Erdemir, 2010), the level and kind of tension thatcharacterize such movement in diverse fieldwork contexts differ. In conducting participant-observation among officers and prisoners in a prison, like the one I observed in this study, mov-ing between positions is strenuous because these positions are symbolically charged and oftenill-assorted.

Although you claim impartiality as a researcher, in practice you constantly move between dif-ferent positions that temporarily make you partially engaged. It is from such changing positionsthat a researcher, as an individual, evolves with the social in a subtle interplay in which the

researcher must make an effort to address the mutuality of the whole and the part in whateverway these are defined (Hastrup, 2005: 13840). In my case this led to an acknowledgement of theimportance of discretion, the relativity and diversity that characterized relationships in prisonand also the uncertainty that goes with it.

Inspired by lessons generated from other prison researchers who have emphasized theimportance of seeking to divide, as evenly as possible, research time and effort between staffand prisoners (Liebling, 1999: 1556), I sought to divide my time and attention as evenly asI could. Despite these efforts I was nevertheless confronted by challenges similar to thoseoutlined by the criminologist Alison Liebling, i.e. a sensation of not being able to breakdown barriers and gain the full trust of prisoners while simultaneously experiencing that

I did not have enough contact with staff (Liebling, 1999: 155). While Liebling relates thisto a question of having sufficient time, I believe that my feeling of insufficiency in termsof trust and time reflected my temporary presence and position. I was betwixt and betweenofficers and prisoners, carrying confidential information across borders of symbolically


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charged locations defined by the jurisdictional split, among others. I was an involvedoutsider with partial impartiality. This liminal position that is defined as in between, andyet involved, is paradoxical. Simultaneously, it involves inside and outside engagementsand positioning; engagements and positioning I experienced as one strain of conductingfieldwork in prison.

Navigating reality: Strains of managing confidentiality

Ifallegory is the art of meaning something other and more than what is being said (Law, 2004: 88),and representation is allegory because it comes out of something other and more than the realityit seeks to describe (Law, 2004: 89), I unfold extracts from my field notes allegorically in this sec-tion. As allegory, the detailed content of the extracts is less important than what they allude toand represent. As allegory they allude to what I consider important epistemological issues relat-ing to knowledge and positioning, data access and ontology of relationships.

To provide a break from everyday life inside prison and expose prisoners to life outside,

outings are organized regularly for small groups of prisoners accompanied, typically, by oneofficer. Such outings may be initiated by prisoners with assistance from one or more officersor vice versa. Subsidized by the prison and formally approved by management, these outingsrequire initiative, organizing skills, effort and a sense of local politics. A number of houserules determine what kinds of outings are considered acceptable. Outings classified as luxur-ious are, for example, not endorsed. What exactly luxurious outings are is not always entirelyclear, however, and therefore the Outing Endorsement Manager has to determine what sheconsiders appropriate in relation to each outing before it is finally approved. The followingextracts from my field notes illustrate the kind of data I would typically access as an everydayparticipant observer; in this case, information about a planned outing.

Prisoner AAt midday I meet Prisoner A, who enthusiastically tells me how they (i.e. a relatively small group of

prisoners and one officer) are going on an outing in the afternoon. First they will visit a couple of localsights and then they will close the day at a restaurant where they will pay the equivalent of approxi-mately 40 per person for a nice dinner. A adds that Prisoner C (one participant) has cancelled becausehe just received a large bill equivalent to approximately 8,000.

Prisoner BPast midday I meet Prisoner B, who is furious because the outing that everybody thought was

endorsed has been cancelled. He tells me that Officer 1, who was originally going, was now unwell andtherefore unable to come, but that Officer 2 had volunteered to accompany the group instead. B also tellsme that when Officer 2 asked for permission to go instead of Officer 1, the Outing Endorsement Managersuddenly decided to cancel the trip altogether.

The Outing Endorsement ManagerI am in the office of the Outing Endorsement Manager and not sure why the outing has been can-

celled. I decide to make an inquiry without giving away details of the trip, as I am not entirely sure whatthe Outing Endorsement Manager has been told by other stakeholders. The Outing Endorsement Man-ager explains that she has cancelled the outing because Officer 2 says it involves a visit to a restaurantwhich she (i.e. the Outing Endorsement Manager) considers luxurious and also inappropriate becauseonly a minority of prisoners can afford to participate.

The Outing Endorsement Manager lets me know she finds the outing and everything surrounding it

rather strange. First, in the description of the outing, it states that the outing is a visit to a cinema, whichis what she initially endorsed. Second, she wonders why Officer 1 who is unwell cannot find anybodyto substitute for her. And third, she finds it puzzling that Officer 2 chooses to propose he accompanies


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prisoners on the outing instead of helping out Officer 1, who is on duty, despite being unwell, and whotherefore needs a substitute. I agree it sounds somehow strange.

Prisoner CAt the other end of the prison I pass Prisoner C, who cheerfully tells me they (i.e. a group of prisoners)

are going to a nice restaurant in the afternoon.

Officer 2As I am checking out, I meet Officer 2, who tells me that he is also heading home. He is not willing to

wait any longer for possible changes relating to the outing. He says he finds the episode (i.e. the outingand the organization of it) confusing.

Prisoner BI am on my way out of the prison when I once again meet Prisoner B, who confides in me that in an

attempt to persuade Officer 2 to go on the outing, Officer 1 had told Officer 2 that he (Officer 2) would geta superb menu at the restaurant. With a sly and informed attitude, Prisoner B adds that he and Prisoner A

had cleverly managed the participation of prisoners in relation to the outing by telling them they had topay the equivalent of 40 for the meal, which meant that they basically got rid of all prisoners who couldnot afford to pay and who they did not want to come. In reality, however, they only had to pay 10.

As should be evident, each account adds new and surprising insights into the organizationand content of the outing. What was initially a cinema trip turned out to be a tour to localsights and a nice restaurant or vice versa depending on where you first got information aboutthe outing. What should be an outing ideally accessible to a broad segment of the prisonerpopulation turned out to be a carefully planned and exclusive event attended only by aminority. In addition, what an officer would be expected to do, according to officer codesof conduct; namely maintaining officer solidarity versus all outside groups and showing

positive concern for fellow officers (Kauffman, 1988: 11014) appeared not to apply to Officer2s take on things: as Officer 2 was heading home, Officer 1 was unwell and remainedso while on duty. Furthermore, for a person with limited knowledge of prison life, other sur-prising features could be added. It could, for example, be considered surprising that prisoners who you would initially think of as a relatively united and homogeneous group of stake-holders are in fact a very heterogeneous group in which some devise strategies to excludeand deceive others.

These seemingly surprising insights allude to general features of everyday prison life thathave been observed by other researchers as a diluted sense of solidarity among prisoners(Crewe, 2005: 177), and the existence of diverse and, at times contradictory, officer management

approaches (Goffman, 1961; Gilbert, 1997; Liebling, 2004; Tait, 2009). It is in alluding to such gen-eral characteristics of prisoner group solidarity and officer working practices that my field noteextracts unveil parts of their allegorical qualities.

As a person exploring social relationships, the accounts left me with a series of questions that Iwas both puzzled by and curious to know the answers to. I had, for example, often observedPrisoner C with Prisoner A, and I was therefore puzzled by the fact that Prisoner C had cancelledhis participation. After all, 10 is a relatively small amount to pay for an outing compared to a billfor 8000. Surely Prisoner C could afford that. Or was Prisoner C actually one of the prisonerstold the price was 40? Was he meant to be excluded? But why should he be excluded as an out-sider, if he was normally in company with Prisoner B, an insider, who was involved in organiz-ing the outing? Had somebody moderated reality when they told me that Prisoner C cancelled

his participation because he had just received a bill for 8000?In unravelling the social politics of the outing I was dealing with an object that wasnt fixed; an

object that changed shape and problem as it moved through different contexts (Law, 2004: 81).


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For example, prior to cancellation of the trip, an issue among a small group of prisoners wasto launch an outing that was officially an open-to-all event while ensuring that a careful fil-tering of participants was in fact and informally in progress. As a result the outing would, inthe presence of management and some staff members, have been presented as an open andnon-luxurious event, whereas in relation to uninvited prisoners a different and more costlyscenario was launched. Furthermore, as was also the case with the planned outing, uncer-tainty would typically prevail regarding which staff and prisoners would have insider andoutsider knowledge in terms of the actual cost and possibly also the actual destination of theouting. It is, therefore, not surprising that the Outing Endorsing Manager and the officersinvolved found the organization of the outing, and its related logistics, confusing andstrange.

The multiple and, at times, inconsistent accounts that make a social event like the outing poseschallenges in terms of observing professional ideals for confidentiality because information suchas we are going on an outing to a restaurant and we are going on an outing to a cinema or thecost will be 40 or 10 becomes classified and sensitive as it changes hands. How do you ask

questions or talk about seemingly innocent issues without giving away potentially exclusiveinformation in a context where loyalty, solidarity and the distinction between inside and outsidekey players are unclear and where seemingly innocent information may lose its innocence whenit changes hands? From this perspective, clarifying, friendly, conversing or other innocent kindsof exchange, involving a researcher like me, could give away information pointing to conflictingand secretive social positions, e.g. prisoners excluding and deceiving other prisoners, or staffwho may or may not be aware of a planned outing to a fancy restaurant.

On the interface of truthfulness, lies and secrets

Lying is a slippery concept. Making a lie has consequences not only for the dupe but also for theliar, and after a while a statement that began as a lie may no longer fit easily under its initial rub-ric (Barnes, 1994: 1011). Lying is not simply the opposite of telling the truth, we may speak sin-cerely in good faith, thinking that we are telling the truth and yet be in error. Therefore, lies canconsist of both true and false statements (Barnes, 1994: 12). As a researcher my role was not toestablish one truth but to observe and acknowledge what appeared to be an institutionalizedpresence of multiple and often incompatible versions of reality in relation to which I wouldobserve some being rooted in action and others as accounts only.

Although I was not obliged to share information as, for example, loyalty to a friend may callfor, my ethnographic presence required I asked questions and participated in everyday life and,

in so doing, shared information. Simultaneously, and from an ethical point of view, I could notdisseminate information indiscriminately, such as the information I got access to through myrelationship with Samuel and the information I had access to through my observing presenceat, for example, staff meetings. As I became familiar with the intricacies and complexities ofeveryday life in prison, I therefore found myself guarding and subtly disguising not only infor-mation that for obvious reasons was sensitive, but, increasingly, also information that appearedinnocent, such as that related to the planned outing.

In other words, I was working with discretion in a front or a half-way house between literaltruth and bald lie, understood as either not speaking at all about delicate matters or as refurbish-ing facts so that they wore an innocent face (Albert, 1972: 90) intended not to create upheaval andsafeguard my own position by guarding trust and observing confidentiality. My careful man-

oeuvring and shifting engagement and loyalties in everyday prison life made me a participantand co-producer of a multiple reality where not only I, but also officers and prisoners, were con-stantly guarding and disguising information, multiple loyalties and, ultimately, our own posi-tions and agendas.


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Epitomizing relationships through guarding and disguising

The resemblance between my guarding and disguising, and the guarding and disguising of peo-ple who populated my field is not surprising. Although I was a researcher and outsider, I wasinvolved, and in being involved I entered into relationships with people in the field that

resembled and reflected their relationships as the sociologist Richard Jenkins observed whenhe noted that the situation of the fieldworker was characteristic of the conditions being studied(1994: 442).

As the accounts of the outing illustrate, prisoners guard and disguise information from eachother in order to safeguard their social position as, e.g. executives with social and economic capitalgoing on an exclusive outing. At times the guarding and disguising are related to relatively harm-less events, like an outing, other times the guarding and disguising relate to more delicate matters,e.g. the placing of drugs in somebodys cell which may have fatal implications when or if discov-ered. To manage the strains of being involved, some prisoners deliberately position themselves inways so that like I they avoid getting access to information about illegal activities that might get

them into trouble. As one prisoner noted: When people talk about where to hide drugs, well,already then will I leave the room, to avoid a situation where they may accuse me of stealing it.Among prisoners the guarding and disguising of information and positions not only relate to

crime but also to the prisoner code of conduct that has a historic presence and legitimacy in its ownright, and that emphasizes the importance of not interfering with other inmates, never ratting,never stealing and exploiting other prisoners, being a tough man and never siding with orshowing respect for prison officers and their representatives (Sykes, 1958: 87108; Crewe,2007: 125). Although the code represents an ideal and does not reflect everyday practice(Sykes, 1958: 81; Crewe, 2005: 126), prisoners have to strike a balance between nurturing theirindividual interests while appearing to be observing the prisoner code of conduct. I observethat this is typically done by blowing life into the code and its formality, e.g. when prisonersendorse sanctions against an informer whereby they show their hand and publicly seal pris-oner solidarity and loyalty. The complexity of the constant guarding and disguising is exacer-

bated by the fact that prisoners simultaneously have to abide by internal prisoner powerstructures that unveil themselves in the privileges of some and deprivations of others.

As the accounts of the outing also allude to, the guarding and disguising of self and other gobeyond prisoners interaction with each other and extend into other spheres of life: their relation-ship with staff. Prisoners are aware that establishing a good relationship with an officer enhancestheir privileges and chances of obtaining positive reports (Crewe, 2009: 2). For prisoners expedit-ing their release or simply improving their position, everyday life and status inside prison, care-fully planned interaction with staff is therefore required. At times this results in avoidance of

contact with staff, other times it involves developing rapport or signing up to, for example, edu-cational programmes with the purpose of signalling a willingness to reform in order to fulfil for-mal criteria that may prepare an early release. From this perspective, there may be good reasonsfor interacting with staff. Therefore, closeness to staff does not necessarily mean that a prisoner isuntrustworthy or violating the prisoner code of conduct, but it makes it hard to distinguish thereliable from the unreliable (Crewe, 2009: 5).

Also staff are constantly on guard. As contact persons for designated prisoners and, therefore,involved in individual prisoners case work, and as managers of control and dynamic security,officers carefully observe their own presence and whereabouts in prison. To conduct quality casework and maintain security and control, officers depend on the collaboration, good will and

some degree of bonding with prisoners. Simultaneously they have to interact with prisonersin a friendly and forthcoming way while appearing to comply with officer professional idealslaid out in their code of conduct that provides a road map to officer solidarity by demanding


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a professional distance to prisoners and an explicit loyalty to staff, among others (Kauffman,1988; Liebling, 2001; Crewe, 2007).

For the most part officers and prisoners observe or pay lip-service to their codes of conduct toeliminate any doubt about their loyalty. In so doing, they relate to the codes to help themselves asindividuals, as has been observed elsewhere (Jimerson and Oware, 2006: 445). I also hear themmentioning the codes when they describe themselves as officers and prisoners, respectively.When this happens the codes are means for officers and prisoners to craft themselves and theirformal categories of being in prison. In other words, the codes do not predict behaviour. They aredevices that officers and prisoners draw upon individually and collectively.

As with the prisoner code of conduct, the officer code provides an ideal for social interactionin an environment that is far from ideal. It is an environment where discretion, trade-offs andcompromises are necessary ingredients in the smooth running and intimacies of everyday prisonlife, often at the expense of officer accord, acceptance of each others management approachesand, ultimately, solidarity. I hear staff expressing, they cannot trust prisoners and that they

become sceptical from working in prison. Staff also tell me they do not trust or are not comfor-

table with all of their colleagues, and that they lack confidence in management; articulations thatare matched by uncertainty, worries and secrecy. As a result, the daily practices of officers areshaped by a careful guarding of management approaches and information about their own, theircolleagues and prisoners everyday activities.

It is against this background that the distinction is blurred between front and back, privateand public or what John Law, inspired by Goffman (1959), has described as the division

between reality and artifice or back and front stages (Law, 1994: 169).The social space in which everyday prison life unfolds is complex not just because accounts

of reality are multiple, but also because the insideroutsider boundary is dynamic and rela-tive. While a person may, in one situation, be taken as an outsider approached with caution,

the same person may, in another situation, be taken as an insider who must be treated trust-fully as was the case with my own shifting engagements and positioning as an ethnographicresearcher. This relativity, I believe, is one factor that makes social relationships in prisonchallenging because it goes with uncertainty, guarding and a sense of non-coherence. Para-doxically, social relativity, simultaneously, provides a social necessity and comfort that keepsit all together by allowing flexibility, multiplicity and discretion to shape everyday life andmaking it possible.

Relativity evokes multiple loyalties that are nursed in daily interactions and surface inaccounts of reality that are often diverse and inconsistent. Similar to the accounts of the plannedouting they seal and classify, disguise and guard relationships, loyalties and realities while,

simultaneously, making them objects of inquiry and puzzle.Prisons are low-trust environments (Crewe, 2009: 5) where no one is as secure in the affectionsof a superior or inferior as to be able to afford the luxury of speaking or acting the unedited truth.This does not imply that friendships do not exist, empathy is not expressed or that people onlyand intentionally plan to deceive each other to secure themselves. It implies that it can be diffi-cult to differentiate reliable from unreliable, friend from enemy, truth from dishonesty, trustfrom distrust and front from back. It also implies that formal categories such as officers, prison-ers or managers that an outsider would think of as separate and distinct categories of beings arein fact intertwined in ways that challenge conventional ideas and ideals about relationships inprison. Furthermore, it points to the necessity of adopting a relative understanding of prisonidentity, relations and positioning. Finally, in demonstrating how such an understanding is

linked to both insecurity and uncertainty and pains and possibilities, it adds new dimensionsto conventional descriptions of the pains of imprisonment as deprivations beyond the loss ofliberty (Sykes, 1958: 65).


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Concluding observations

This article is one answer to calls for descriptions of the complexity and emotional intricacy ofconducting research in violent environments; descriptions that in relation to my ethnographicresearch have analytical potential that I have pursued simultaneously. The purpose of the article

was therefore twofold: namely, to analyse what I experienced as the major challenges related toconducting ethnographic fieldwork in prison among officers and prisoners, and to use myscrutiny of these challenges to unfold defining features of relationships between staff andprisoners.

One starting point for the analysis has been the embedded and embodied nature of the ethno-graphic fieldwork experience that by virtue of its engaging quality reflects and resembles char-acteristics of the conditions being studied. It is from this perspective, I have argued, thatrelational aspects influence the process by which facts are established. In analysing the strainsand conditions of simultaneously conducting participant observation among officers and prison-ers, I have argued that the building of trust and the adherence to professional confidentiality

ideals constitute two separate, yet closely connected, challenges that characterize ethnographicprison research similar to mine.The challenge related to building trust concerns the liminal yet involved position of the

ethnographic researcher. The involvement of the researcher is characterized by partialimpartiality and shifting engagements and positioning as an informed outsider who isconstantly challenged by being discredited as an informer and potentially losing rapport andaccess to the people who populate the field. I have also argued that while movement betweendifferent positions comes with ethnographic work, the level and kind of tension that characterizesuch movement differ. In a prison context where distrust, crime, secrecy, distress, anger andpotentially also conflict characterize everyday life, such movement is strenuous because theshifting positions are symbolically charged and often ill-assorted.

The challenge of adhering to confidentiality ideals has to do both with the involved andliminal nature of researching the officerprisoner relationship ethnographically, and themultiple and at times inconsistent versions of reality that dominate social life in prison. They areversions of reality that are challenging to manage while observing confidentiality because theethnographic fieldworker, as an involved participant, becomes caught up in social politics and,in so being, may come to unveil versions of reality that have potentially damaging implicationsfor people in the field.

These straining challenges that evoke uncertainty and insecurity are partly beyond thecontrol of the researcher who has, nevertheless, to constantly and consciously manageand attend to them by guarding and disguising engagements, information and positioning.

The shifting engagements and positioning, however, simultaneously provide for the field-work experience and the opportunity to scrutinize relationships from multiple viewpoints.It is from this perspective that the challenges hold both pains and possibilities for theresearcher.

Furthermore, I have argued that my relationship with officers and prisoners, and the chal-lenges that my presence in the field posed, epitomize local relationships in a broader sense.My insecurity, shifting engagements and my guarding of interaction, information and position-ing mirrored the insecurity and the shifting engagements and guarding of people who popu-lated the field. Officers and prisoners likewise watched their positions and the possibility ofredefining or withdrawing from them in order to successfully manage relationships, alliances,

personal agendas and a smooth flow of everyday life.Prisoners had to strike a balance between observing their ideal code of conduct by paying

strategic attention to it, manage their personal position vis-a-vis prisoner internal social hier-archies and attend to their relationship with staff. While at times this resulted in an avoidance


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of contact with staff altogether, other times it resulted in developing rapport and nursing therelationship to constructively facilitate staffprisoner daily cooperation and coexistence orpositive reports.

Also staff had to carefully and consciously manage their presence. Through a constantguiding and disguising of information, positioning and engagements, they sought to nurseofficer solidarity and collaboration in an environment where their ideal code of conductwould be constantly threatened by daily compromises, rule-bending, internal conflicts overthe management of daily life and their diverse kinds of relationships with prisoners. Theguarding and disguising of staff also related to management who many did not trust or didnot feel confident with.

The guarding and disguising of both officers and prisoners were matched by feelings of inse-curity and uncertainty that pointed to multiple loyalties and senses of solidarity which surfacedin inconsistent and ambiguous accounts of reality. These painful and straining emotions comewith being and working in an intimate and violent environment, like a prison, where relation-ships, social and personal agendas are not always clear and where the distinction between insi-

der and outsider, front and back, public and private, trustful and cautious, friend and enemy isrelative and dynamic.

Finally, I have argued that while social relativity provides uncertainty and multiple loyalties,it also makes possible the compromises, discretion and social flexibility that is required to ensurea tolerable humane flow of everyday prison life by providing possibilities for officers andprisoners to manage and attend to both personal and social agendas.

Notes

This research project was generously funded by the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and

Innovation. I am especially grateful to Professor Margaretha Jarvinen (Department of Sociology, University

of Copenhagen) for her constructive and incisive comments, and PhD Fellows Therese Heltberg andMorten Frederiksen (University of Copenhagen) for their insightful feedback on a draft version. I also thank

the anonymous reviewers for their inspiring commentary on the text. Finally, I am indebted to the Danish

Prison and Probation Service for providing access to Danish penal institutions and to the Governor, officers,

prisoners and managers who let me into their everyday life and made my fieldwork possible.

1. These wings did not offer any drug, alcohol or related treatment schemes. A special wing was estab-

lished in the prison to cater for prisoners who voluntarily wanted to enrol in such programmes.

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Biographical Note: Malene Molding Nielsen is an anthropologist and PhD Fellow at the Department ofSociology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. While her PhD project explores the officerprisoner

relationship, she is, as an anthropologist, specialized in the street life, learning and survival strategiesamong urban poor in East Africa.

Address: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, ster Farimagsgade 5, DK. 1014Copenhagen K, Denmark. [email: [email protected]]


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Pains & Possibilities in Prison