‘King, Warrior, Magician, Lover’: Understanding expressions of care among male prisoners
| Author | Ben Laws,Elinor Lieber |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1477370819896207 |
| Published date | 01 July 2022 |
| Date | 01 July 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370819896207
European Journal of Criminology
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370819896207
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‘King, Warrior, Magician,
Lover’: Understanding
expressions of care among
male prisoners
Ben Laws and Elinor Lieber
University of Cambridge, UK
Abstract
Typologies of prison life in men’s establishments have tended to emphasize the most desolate
features of prison life such as aggression, violence, exploitation, and stark displays of individualism.
Without seeking to contradict these positions, we suggest that competing narratives of care
are also operating in male establishments in England and Wales. Through combining data from
two recent, but separate, semi-ethnographic studies of prison life in two prisons (total n =
43), we present a completely different kind of typology based around Moore and Gillette’s
(1990) archetypes of masculinity, called: ‘King’, ‘Warrior’, ‘Magician’, and ‘Lover’. This archetypal
framework foregrounds the role of care in prison and the different manifestations of communal
relations among prisoners. Building on recent developments in prison sociology that have
explored the nexus between imprisonment, interpersonal relations and masculinity (see Crewe,
2014), this article argues that care is a fundamental feature of prison life that takes on a wide
range of forms, including: paternal roles, intellectual expertise, information sharing and close
physical bonds. This complicates linear depictions of prison life that are emotionally stolid.
Keywords
Care, emotions, prison typology, archetypes
Introduction
In their landmark essay ‘Thieves, convicts and the inmate culture’, Irwin and Cressey
(1962) describe the social organization of prisoner subgroups. A particular strength of
this essay is the observation that ‘much of the inmate behaviour classified as part of the
prison culture is not peculiar to the prison at all’ and that it is the ‘fine distinction between
Corresponding author:
Ben Laws, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 9DA, UK.
Email: bwrl2@cam.ac.uk
896207EUC0010.1177/1477370819896207European Journal of CriminologyLaws and Lieber
research-article2020
Article
2022, Vol. 19(4) 469–487
“prison culture” and “criminal subculture” which seems to make understandable the fine
distinction between behaviour patterns of various categories of inmates’ (1962: 142). In
spite of this admirable balancing act between indigenous and imported factors, the lan-
guage and terminology used by the authors to describe these ‘types’ often essentialize the
most pejorative aspects of prisoner masculinity. For example, the authors speak of
‘hoods’, ‘toughs’, ‘gorillas’, and emasculate particular subgroups of prisoners who are
termed ‘fags’ and ‘queens’ (1962: 149). Although some of this work is a product of its
time, the linguistic register still appears in more recent accounts of prison life. Though
not a typology, Carceral’s (2006) autobiographical book includes chapters titled
‘Guerrilla Warfare’, ‘Wild West’, ‘Beat Down Crew’ and ‘The Zoo’. A recent typology
by Dirga, Lochmannová and Juříček (2015) in a Czech prison argues that prisoner rela-
tions revolve around power and control, and the authors categorize prisoners as ‘Kings’,
‘Fools’ and ‘Workhorses’. All of this language invokes images of imprisonment as unwa-
veringly barren, lawless and absent of care. That such categorizations still hold currency,
relatively unmodulated by the passage of time, suggests that they must accurately
describe some features of the prison environment. Indeed, prisons in England and Wales
have seen increases in violence in recent years (Ministry of Justice, 2019). Recent high-
profile disturbances in a number of prisons in England – including HMP Birmingham
and HMP Bedford – have signalled a far deeper problem of entrenched instability and
disorder (HMIP, 2018a, 2018b).
Though we do not seek to disavow such operational realities and challenges, we intro-
duce a different kind of typology in this article that seeks to complement pre-existing
accounts. This is necessary because most prisoners do not live in a perpetual state of fear.
And, even within the most Spartan accounts of prison life, alternative feeling scripts are
expressed. Indeed, a number of prisoner biographies convey textured and emotionally
differentiated reflections of prison life – even where the general tone remains decidedly
bleak (Boyle, 1977; James, 2003; Wyner, 2003). For example, Wyner (2003), writing in
the context of a women’s prison, relates the importance of joy and humour, which func-
tion as a kind of emotional catharsis: ‘we find ourselves in fits and giggles over the least
humorous thing as the tension we are holding in is released’ (2003: 114). Similarly,
Erwin James (2003) describes feeling tenderness and empathy towards a fellow prisoner
who was allegedly abused in a care home: ‘Toby sat with his head bowed as he told me
this. He started to tell me more, and then his upper body began to shudder, and I realized
he was crying. I understood that those tears had been a long time coming. I placed my
hand lightly on his shoulder, and I cried too’ (2003: 62).
Two existing typologies in the literature form an important context for this study and
warrant further discussion. The first typology, by Gresham Sykes (1958), is apposite
because it sets out to describe ‘the structure of social relationships’ rather than personal-
ity traits and individual characteristics (1958: 106). Sykes distinguishes between 11 dif-
ferent categories, or ‘argot roles’, in The Society of Captives. They are: ‘the rat’, ‘the
center man’, ‘the wolf’, ‘the punk’, ‘the fag’, ‘the gorilla’, ‘the merchant’, ‘the ball
buster’, ‘the tough’, ‘the hipster’ and ‘the real man’. Many of these roles include various
kinds of aggressive masculinity, involving ‘the employment of violence or the threat of
violence’ (1958: 102), that subsequent prisons research has examined in detail (Edgar
et al., 2003; Scraton et al., 1991; Sim, 1994; Toch, 1998). In all but one of Sykes’
470 European Journal of Criminology 19(4)
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