What do times of crisis reveal about the “total” nature of prisons? Analysing the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis within the Scottish prison system
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/26338076231165116 |
| Author | Matthew Maycock |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
What do times of crisis reveal
about the “total”nature of
prisons? Analysing the impacts
of the COVID-19 crisis within
the Scottish prison system
Matthew Maycock
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Abstract
Times of crisis within prison settings either at a system-wide level during times of riots or
during pandemics or at more personal levels during time in segregation can be particularly
challenging times when the prison can feel more “total”than other times. Goffman’sinfluential
work outlines a particular interpretation of the parameters of the total institution, of which
prisons were one manifestation. In the years following its publication, a wide range of research
has sought to subvert the notion that prisons are total institutions, suggesting a greater per-
meability of contemporary prison walls. This article calls for a re-consideration of this dismis-
sal, and a reconnection and critical engagement with Goffman’s original parameters within the
context of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdown. The response to COVID-19 in
prison settings, resulted in may prison jurisdictions rolling back on policies that, to an extent,
had subverted prisons looking and feeling “total”, through the increased “porosity”of prison
wall. Through the analysis of 19 letters received from 8 people in custody in one Scottish
prison, there emerges a reframed and reconsidered permeability of prison walls. For the par-
ticipants in this study, the experiences of the COVID-19 lockdown complicate much of the
recent critique of the relevance of the total institution as a theoretical frame to analyse con-
temporary prisons. Ultimately this paper argues, that through analysing the response to the
COVID-19 pandemic, it is possible to observe a more essential and “total”characteristic of
contemporary imprisonment. This has been obscured through decades of penal reform,
but the total parameters of prison spaces emerges more clearly during times of crisis.
Keywords
Prison, Goffman, the “total instutition”, COVID-19 in prison, crisis within prison
Date received: 11 September 2022; accepted: 3 March 2023
Corresponding author:
Matthew Maycock, Criminology,School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Robert Menzies Building, Room w428,
Wellington Road, Clayton VIC 3800, Australia.
Email: matthewmaycock@hotmail.com
Article
Journal of Criminology
2023, Vol. 56(2-3) 234–252
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/26338076231165116
journals.sagepub.com/home/anj
Introduction
Prison systems have been described as systems in “crisis”(Evans, 1980; Fitzgerald & Sim,
1980; Toch, 2007), in some instances, this has been in reference to the crisis of overcrowding
(Cox & Rhodes, 1990; Losel, 2007; Sessar, 1994). The prison crisis literature has explored
aspects of “crisis”at multiple levels within prison settings, either personally through prisoners
spending time in segregation or in mental health crisis, as well as system-wide form of crisis,
for example, during riots, outbreaks of infectious diseases, etc. A common thread emerging
across these studies is that times of crisis at these different levels are often associated with
increasingly restrictive and/or closed-off conditions within prison. At an individual level,
when people are moved to the segregation units or protection wings of prisons, the prison
regime is far more constrained and cut off (Brown, 2020; Shalev & Edgar, 2015). There has
also been analysis of responses to riots and other forms of disorder in prisons are considered
as times of crisis, that similarly are associated with greater restrictions on the prison regime
(Adams, 2016; Carrabine, 2005; Colvin, 1992).
Through the analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 in the Scottish prison system, this article
provides new insights into the implications of times of crisis within prison settings, and what
times of crisis at other times in prison tell us about the nature of contemporary imprisonment.
Within the particular context of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated crisis within prison
settings, this article extends the above literature. Times of “crisis”and what this justified in rela-
tion to more a punitive and restrictive prison regime, is explored through the analysis of the
impacts of COVID-19 pandemic within the Scottish prison system. The response to the
crisis that the COVID-19 pandemic represented within prison settings by governments and
prison administrators overnight has eroded the many years of more progressive reforms
within prison systems, that had brought prisons and the communities around them closer.
Therefore, this article argues that times of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic reveal a
more fundamental and “total”quality of prison settings.
This article uses Erving Goffman’s theory of the total institution, originally outlined in his
book Asylums (1961), a theory that remains widely debated and contested within contempor-
ary penology (Davies, 1989; Farrington, 1992; Mac Suibhne, 2011; Moran, 2013, 2014;
Schliehe, 2016). In recent years, this debate has tended to suggest a declining relevance of
the theory, emphasising an increasing porousness and permeability of prison walls (Baumer
et al., 2009; Ellis, 2021; Moran, 2013), with the extent to which prisons are discrete spaces
that are distinct and separate from community contexts brought into question. This article
re-examines Goffman’s theory of the total institution in light of the impacts of COVID-19 in
prison settings, and critically engages with the influence that prison administrators have in
terms of the extent to which prisons are porous and connected to communities, or not. This
is of critical concern in terms of the analysis of the experience of imprisonment, given that
as Sykes indicated, one of the main deprivations or frustrations of imprisonment relates to
“isolation from the free community”(Sykes, 1958, p. 79). This article argues that through
considering times of crisis within prison settings, it is possible to analyse the potential for
prisons to be more or less total.
Across diverse areas of analysis, this literature implies that prisons have an increasing reson-
ance or synergy with community contexts, with a closer and an increasing number of connec-
tions between custody and community(Comfort, 2009). This article critically engages with this
trend within the devolved Scottish penal context (Croall et al., 2016; Morrison, 2016, 2012;
Maycock 235
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