Doctoral Dissertation Research: Under the Penal Gaze: An Empirical Examination of Penal Consciousness Among Prison Inmates

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to more fully understand the relative impacts of two different styles of correctional management - indirect and direct supervision - on incarcerated populations. Indirect supervision is characterized by minimal face-to-face contact between officers and inmates and is often practiced in prisons with traditional, linear-style housing designs. In contrast, direct supervision entails more frequent interaction between officers and inmates in podular housing units with large common areas. Direct supervision is a relatively new inmate management strategy that has been lauded as a "best practice" by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the American Correctional Association, and the National Institute of Corrections. This research uses a comparative, qualitative design to understand the nuances and workings of both direct and indirect supervision. It does so by using data from in-depth interviews with prisoners to establish a framework for the new concept of penal consciousness - defined as the ways in which prisoners understand and orient to their incarceration as punishment - and then exploring penal consciousness among different populations of prisoners in different settings. By utilizing a penal consciousness framework to better understand direct supervision, this research improves upon the largely atheoretical work on direct supervision that has approached inmate management in a vacuum, divorced from current theoretical understandings of carceral environments. Further, its qualitative design expands the scope of inquiry to encompass a fuller, more contextualized view of how prisoners experience and orient to incarceration as punishment. Through its comparative, qualitative design, this research informs the theoretical, empirical, and policy literatures on incarceration by bringing to the fore the interpretations of those who are punished in order to develop a more complete understanding of the contours of punishment as both a lived experience and a state project.