The depth of imprisonment
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474520952153 |
| Author | Ben Crewe |
| Published date | 01 July 2021 |
| Date | 01 July 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The depth of
imprisonment
Ben Crewe
University of Cambridge, UK
Abstract
Based on a large, comparative study of prisoner experiences in England & Wales and
Norway, this article explores the concept of the ‘depth of imprisonment’ – put most
simply, the degree of control, isolation and difference from the outside world – in two
stages. First, it sets out the various factors that contribute to ‘depth’ i.e. its core
components. Second, it outlines the most frequent metaphors used to communicate
depth, highlighting the ways in which these metaphors bring into focus a range of ways
in which the basic fact of imprisonment – the deprivation of liberty, and the removal of
the individual from the community – is experienced. In doing so, the article also makes a
case for the adoption of conceptual metaphors as a means of describing prison systems
and regimes, and thereby attending to the ways in which prisoners experience some of
the most fundamental elements of incarceration.
Keywords
depth, freedom, imprisonment, metaphor, restriction
According to James Fernandez:
Every anthropologist knows that the really fine ethnographies are sensitive to local
figures of speech, the chief of which is metaphor. [Metaphors] lie at the base of inquiry
and animate it. (Fernandez, 1986: 28–29)
Certainly, prisons are replete with metaphor. In describing their experiences, pris-
oners very often use metaphorical terminology to evoke their existence, reaching
Corresponding author:
Ben Crewe, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 9DA, UK.
Email: bc247@cam.ac.uk
Punishment & Society
2021, Vol. 23(3) 335–354
!The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474520952153
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for what Fludernik (2005: 3–4) summarises as ‘correlative areas of human experi-
ence comparable to prominent features of the carceral situation’. As Michael
Carrithers (2009: 40) notes, ‘Metaphors widen our understanding by ‘bring[ing]
in another domain of thought to a topic or speech’, or, to quote Fernandez (1986:
11) again, by moving from ‘the inchoate [...] to the concrete’, that is, to something
that can be grasped beyond its local meaning. In the context of the prison, because
metaphors are both expressive and comparative – providing vivid representations
that communicate shared qualities between different domains of experience – their
analysis offers the possibility of better understanding the textural qualities of
imprisonment. Not only do metaphors help prisoners convey aspects of confine-
ment that might otherwise be difficult to communicate; they also bestow a means
of organising what is communicated into coherent themes.
Based on a large, comparative study of prisoner experiences in England &
Wales and Norway, this article explores the concept of the ‘depth of imprisonment’
– put most simply, the degree of control, isolation and difference from the outside
world – in two stages. First, it sets out the various factors that contribute to ‘depth’
i.e. its core components. Second, it outlines the most frequent metaphors used to
communicate depth, highlighting the ways in which these metaphors bring into
focus a range of ways in which the basic fact of imprisonment – the deprivation of
liberty, and the removal of the individual from the community – is experienced. In
doing so, the article also makes a case for the adoption of conceptual metaphors as
a means of describing – and, potentially, comparing – prison systems and regimes.
The ‘depth’ of imprisonment
In his 1988 analysis of British and Dutch penality, Contrasts in Tolerance, David
Downes observed that comparative accounts of imprisonment tended to focus on
sentence length, but that prisoners themselves were concerned with the nature of
their punishment as well as its ‘amount’. In seeking to capture this distinction,
Downes introduced the concept of the ‘depth’ of imprisonment, an idea that he
refined four years later, to emphasise the relationship between the institution and
the world beyond it:
By depth of imprisonment is meant the openness of the prison life to the outside
world, both in terms of the actual opportunities for contact with family and friends by
visits, home leave, letters and the telephone, and also by the permeation of the insti-
tution by outside world agencies, whether recreational (visiting pop groups, etc.),
informational (access to the media, newspapers, etc.) or social (visits by students,
politicians, academics, etc.). (Downes, 1992: 15–16)
As King and McDermott (1995) subsequently highlighted, this definition of depth
corresponded with the way that prisoners used phrases like ‘being in the deep end’
to refer to high-security prisons and highly-controlled conditions, often connected
to substantial sentence lengths. While King and McDermott dwelled only briefly
336 Punishment & Society 23(3)
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