Reviews: The Prisoner Society: Power, Adaptation, and Social Life in an English Prison
| Date | 01 September 2010 |
| Published date | 01 September 2010 |
| DOI | 10.1177/02645505100570030903 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
and criminal activity. However, there are also some that have overcome incredibly
challenging beginnings to their lives. For example, we meet Nasir, an asylum seeker
from Somalia who was briefly enticed into a gang but found a more positive pastime
in basketball, and Willie who had become involved with gangs and dropped out of
school but who broke away from the negative influences in his life to get a job as a
mechanic. These antecedents provide even the most militant members of the
anti-youth brigade with food for thought regarding the challenges that face young
people in contemporary society.
Deuchar could have strengthened his position by forging tighter links between
those individuals that have overcome the myriad issues that have dogged their lives
and the approaches and strategies they have employed to do so. Although the book
posits the argument that a lack of social capital amongst marginalized youth can
make the status, identity and social bonding offered by gangs appear more
attractive, it doesn’t explicitly explain the reasons why some of our young people
managed to reject the pull of gangs. In presenting an overview of sport and youth
mentoring initiatives, Chapters 8 and 9 read as being somewhat divorced from the
lives of the 50 individuals that have navigated us through the book. Furthermore, the
initiatives are presented to us as examples of ‘good practice’ (p. xvi) without any
evidence of evaluation or objective scrutiny by independent researchers. Their
success in tackling social exclusion and building social capital is ‘proven’ with a
handful of quotes from youth workers, teachers and young people. A more rigorous
and in-depth look at the objectives of these initiatives and the extent to which these
are being fulfilled would be beneficial to youth workers and policy makers looking
to implement strategies in the future.
Gangs, Marginalised Youth and Social Capital contributes towards a welcome
and thankfully growing body of literature that seeks to explore the views of young
people in their own words. These voices are important and in echoing Deuchar’s
concluding plea, it is indeed time that ‘politicians, journalists, members of the estab-
lishment and the general public around the world stop demonising young people
and start listening to them’ (p.156).
Emmeline Taylor
Research and Evaluation Officer, Greater Manchester Probation Trust
The Prisoner Society: Power, Adaptation,
and Social Life in an English Prison
Ben Crewe
Oxford University Press, 2009; pp 528; £60.00, hbk
ISBN: 978–0–19957–796–5
In his book The Prisoner Society: Power, Adaptation, and
Social Life in an English Prison, Ben Crewe describes in
detail the findings of his ethnographic case study of HMP
Wellingborough, a Category C prison in England. Such
Reviews 343
To continue reading
Request your trial