The Rise, the Fall, and the Reinvention of the Prison Ethnography

This chapter traces the emergence, maturation, and subsequent decline of ethnographic studies of prisons and jails in the United States. It provides a summary and overview of classic and contemporary prison ethnographies and identifies key issues and themes that animate qualitative research on prisons and carceral facilities. These include questions about the forms that punishment, surveillance, and control take, the ways that incarcerated men and women experience, resist, and make sense of the conditions of confinement, and the impact incarceration has for their relationships with families, communities, and one another. The chapter considers the dramatic reduction in the number of ethnographic studies of prisons and jails at century’s end and identifies how punitive policies associated with mass incarceration made it all but impossible for ethnographers to gain entry to carceral institutions. Contemporary ethnographers have reinvented the form by documenting practices and ideologies of control in alternate carceral spaces including visiting rooms, drug treatment programs, and group homes. A summary of recent work is included, along with a review of the ways that contemporary ethnographers foreground issues related to race and gender inequality. The chapter concludes with a discussion of prison ethnography in Europe where ethnographers enjoy greater access to carceral facilities and have considerable influence over public policy. For comparative purposes, I include a summary of ethnographic research from Ireland, the United Kingdom, and France.