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Moral performance, inhuman and degrading treatment

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Moral performance, inhuman and degrading treatment and prison pain

Alison Liebling
Punishment & Society 2011 13: 530
DOI: 10.1177/1462474511422159

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Article
Punishment & Society
13(5) 530–550
Moral performance, ! The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474511422159

treatment and prison pun.sagepub.com

pain
Alison Liebling
University of Cambridge, UK

Abstract
Empirical research on the moral quality of life in prison suggests that some prisons are
more survivable than others. Prisoners describe stark differences in the moral and
emotional climates of prisons serving similar functions. The ‘differences that matter’
concern interpersonal relationships and treatment, and the use of authority, which lead
to stark differences in perceived fairness and safety and different outcomes for pris-
oners, including rates of suicide. These identifiable differences between prisons in one
jurisdiction may provide the beginnings of a framework for addressing the broader
question of standards being set by the European Court of Human Rights. Concepts
like ‘dignity’ and ‘humanity’ are difficult to operationalize and practise. Prisoners are
articulate about them, however, and know the difference between ‘feeling humiliated’
and ‘retaining an identity’. The worlds of ‘moral measurement’ and ‘human rights stan-
dards’ in penology should be brought closer together in a way that deepens the con-
versation about prison life and experience.

Keywords
degrading treatment, moral climate, prisoners, prison quality, standards

Introduction

Massive tariffs, young kids, I want to cry for some of them, you know, they’re in their
20s and they’re doing 30 recs [recommended tariff], where are they going? They’re old
men when they get out of here, if they ever get out. (Prisoner, in Liebling et al., 2011b)

Corresponding author:
Alison Liebling, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge,
CB3 9DA, UK.
Email: al115@cam.ac.uk

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Liebling 531

This is the very lesson I learned in three years spent in Auschwitz and Dachau, and in
the meantime it has been confirmed by psychiatrists in prisoner-of-war camps. Only
those who were oriented towards the future, toward a goal in the future, toward a
meaning to fulfil in the future, were likely to survive. (Frankl, 2000: 135)

This article begins with a case: a 60-year-old man in a maximum security prison. He
was high risk Category A, the highest security category possible, so ‘in deep’, with
major restrictions on what freedoms were possible (for example, he had to move
cells every 28 days). He was three years into a life sentence, with a 28-year tariff. He
was a well-known career criminal.1 Typically, for this new population, he had been
involved in a gun crime as an accomplice – the driver – and had been convicted of
‘joint enterprise’.2 He pleaded guilty at the trial, and felt considerable remorse. He
had not understood that the gun would be used, but he had attracted the same
sentence as ‘the man who pulled the trigger’. He said that returning to prison was a
‘culture shock’ and that he had no intention of seeing out his sentence: ‘I’ll be 80
before I can even be considered for release . . . I have seen old men end up in a
wheelchair in prison . . . I know I will never walk by a river again, taste freedom,
walk on a beach with my grandchildren’. At one point, he said, ‘I have had a noose
round my neck, but I didn’t have the guts to do it. One day I’ll save up my pills. I’ve
told my wife to just enjoy the grandchildren’. I had noticed a red sore on his head
and wondered whether this was the consequence of the prison’s unhealthy envi-
ronment. He referred to the sore later in the interview. ‘Do you know what’, he
said, ‘I am praying that it is cancerous.’
We talked for an hour-and-a-half. He had volunteered for the interview follow-
ing various informal exchanges, and was an articulate and helpful interviewee. He
talked about the new social arrangements, as well as new problems facing prison
officers, in a prison where 94 per cent of the prisoners are serving sentences of more
than 10 years. A total of 37 per cent of these prisoners in this establishment follow
the Muslim faith. He said he felt sorry for the youngsters in prison today: ‘twenty-
six years old, some of them, and they are serving sentences longer than they have
been alive.’ I had had the same thought many times. He gave examples of prison
officers bending the rules to bridge the gap between those rules and their own
human instincts:

Mr [officer] always lets me take half an ounce of snout [tobacco] to my mate in the seg.
They know I always have six or seven packets when I should have five. This is a jail.
You need a bit of give and take.

Not all officers were like that. Some were only too eager to do it ‘by the book’. On
the other hand, he referred to a fellow prisoner who was threatening and challeng-
ing the staff constantly: ‘He’s unemployed. He winds everyone up. They unlock him
for an easy life . . . back off from him.’ Here, his grievance was a different and less
helpful kind of under-enforcement. It is interesting that the phrase he used when
making his complaints was, ‘it’s a liberty’. His situation, and that of his more

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532 Punishment & Society 13(5)

challenging wing-mate, is all about liberty. His survival strategy was to smoke
regularly a ready supply of heroin.
His story illustrates the argument developed in this article that prisons are places
where the principles on which human life and liberty depend are tested to the core.
They are inherently depriving and painful, and deeply complex. They have become
more inhuman and degrading (in England and Wales, in conditions of high secu-
rity) than they once were.
In Principles of European Prison Law and Policy: Penology and Human Rights,
the authors describe release decisions as ‘of existential importance’ to prisoners
(Van zyl Smit and Snacken, 2009: 316). They argue that there now exists, at the
European level, a carefully developed set of penological principles supported by the
European Court of Human Rights, the Council of Europe and the European
Committee for the Prevention of Torture. These principles include using impris-
onment as a last resort and the recognition of all rights not explicitly removed by
the fact of imprisonment.3 Imprisonment is imposed ‘as and not for punishment’,
and ‘no other pains should be deliberately imposed’ (Van zyl Smit and Snacken,
2009: 352). Growing co-operation on these principles, and their application in
practice, suggests something of a lobby like the movement abolishing the death
penalty. This body of law and policy represents ‘a fundamental commitment in
Europe towards recognising that prisoners should not be degraded but treated with
dignity and mercy’ (2009: 383). Europeans ‘define themselves’ through this kind of
commitment to human rights principles (2009: 384). There are limitations to this
body of law. Various of the principles could be interpreted more radically, and the
European Court of Human Rights could adopt a more proactive approach, espe-
cially to the principle that imprisonment is only used as a last resort. There are
legitimate critiques of human rights models aspirations (e.g. Dembour, 2006). One
difficulty is the lack of any deep understanding of or agreement about what the
most important terminology means in practice. What constitutes ‘inhuman and
degrading treatment’, as experienced by the prisoner? What is ‘prison pain’? Or
‘cruelty’? What is the modern prison experience like for prisoners? Do those who
hold prisons legally accountable confuse material for psychological experience?
How do we account for the growing gap between apparently ‘evolving standards
of decency’ at the European level (Van zyl Smit and Snacken, 2009, p. 369), and the
harshening direction of punishment practices within individual jurisdictions?
I explore some of these themes below, drawing briefly on studies which identify
aspects of prison life that ‘matter most’. Empirical research on the moral quality of
life in prison suggests, among other things, that some prisons are more survivable
than others. Can these identifiable differences between prisons in one jurisdiction
provide the beginnings of a framework for addressing the broader question of
standards being set by the European Court of Human Rights? Prisoners describe
stark differences in the moral and emotional climates of prisons serving apparently
similar functions. The ‘differences that matter’ are in the domain of interpersonal
relationships and treatment, and the use of authority, which lead to stark differ-
ences in perceived fairness and safety, and different outcomes. For example, very

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Liebling 533

high but variable levels of distress, shown to be highly correlated with institutional
suicide rates, can be explained by significant differences in levels of respect, fairness
and humanity shown to prisoners by staff. It is clear that concepts like ‘dignity’ and
‘humanity’ are difficult to operationalize. Prisoners are articulate about them, how-
ever, and know the difference between ‘feeling humiliated’ and ‘retaining an iden-
tity’. Can the two worlds of ‘moral measurement’ and apparently abstract ‘human
rights standards’ in penology be brought together in a way that deepens the con-
versation about, and reform efforts around, prison life and experience?
There is another dimension to ‘treatment’ requiring elaboration, illustrated in
the case above. Prisoners are struggling to find meaning or hope at the earliest
stages of long and indeterminate sentences served in highly restrictive conditions of
maximum security. The very structure of the environment is un-survivable. This is
a new and distinctive development. These findings also have implications for our
understanding of the meaning of terms like ‘inhuman and degrading’ treatment,
‘torture’ and ‘prison pain’.
The argument proceeds as follows: the first section describes how I came to
think in terms of the concept of moral performance; the second illustrates how
this precipitated a return to a longstanding interest in suicides in prison, armed
with a clearer methodology on the prison environment. This led to the finding that
prison environments literally varied in their survivability and that the relevant
variables could be identified, all of which related to the manner of one’s treatment
in prison. The third part, drawing on recently completed fieldwork, outlines briefly
what prisoners have to say about the new struggle for psychological survival in
conditions of maximum security (Liebling et al., 2011a). This research has troubled
me more than any other study to date because of the pain and distress experienced
and the contrast with the same prison 12 years earlier. I then reflect on the relevance
of measuring the prison’s moral performance, and the nature of the sentence being
served, for ongoing deliberations about standards of treatment in prison.

Fairness, relationships and survival in prison

A growing body of empirical and theoretical work in penology has established that
concepts of fairness and legitimacy are critical to life in prison, with demonstrable
effects on order (Sparks and Bottoms, 2008; Sparks et al., 1996) and well-being
(Liebling, 2004; Liebling et al., 2005a). Staff–prisoner relationships – or the way
prison staff use their authority – contribute disproportionately to prisoner evalu-
ations of the fairness of their treatment. These findings are similar to those now
widely discussed in the policing and procedural justice literature (Tyler, 1990; Tyler
and Blader, 2000) although the emphasis in this literature (as well as in the peno-
logical literature, to begin with) is on compliance rather than on well-being. Ahmad
(1996), for example, argues that fairness in prison has three main components: the
fairness of staff; the fairness of the regime; and the fairness of procedures (for
example, disciplinary and grievance procedures). In a secondary analysis of
Ahmad’s data from three prisons, Bottoms and Rose found that perceived staff

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534 Punishment & Society 13(5)

fairness was seen as the ‘main determinant of perceived overall regime fairness’.
Perceptions of fairness in prison were ‘substantially more dependent’ on percep-
tions of staff fairness and staff–prisoner relationships than they were on ‘the objec-
tive quality of various specific regime features’ (that is material provision), or
prisoners’ evaluations of the fairness of these regime features:4 ‘In a very real
sense . . . staff embody, in prisoners’ eyes, the regime of a prison, and its fairness’
(Bottoms and Rose, 1998: 227).
Other studies have elaborated on this finding, showing that prisons vary signif-
icantly in their moral and relational climates, and that these variations lie in the
manner of their treatment by prison staff. Liebling and colleagues developed a
‘prison quality’ survey arising from an attempt to involve staff and prisoners in
the generation of a framework for measuring ‘what matters’ (that is, a set of
dimensions arising from organized conversations about what prisoners valued
most highly) and in the identification and wording of items in the questionnaire.
The key dimensions identified were primarily values relating to interpersonal treat-
ment: respect; humanity; fairness; order; safety; and staff–prisoner relationships.
What made one prison different from another was the manner in which prisoners
were treated by staff, how safe the prison felt and how trust and power flowed
through the institution. Prisoners’ well-being was to a large extent a consequence of
their perceived treatment. Prisons were more punishing and painful where staff
were indifferent, punitive or lazy in the use of authority (Arnold et al., 2007;
Crewe et al., 2011; Liebling, 2004). This is an important insight, with significant
implications for our understanding of prisons and our thinking about the work of
prison officers. How a prison feels is shaped to a large extent, as Goffman would
have argued, by the daily interactions that constitute that prison. The concept of
‘moral performance’ seemed to capture the kind of exercise devised, and the nature
of its findings. How morality works in each prison varies, and gives rise to an
identifiable social and emotional climate.
The basic conditions of imprisonment make it likely that these issues of inter-
personal treatment will arise. Staff ideologies and orientation towards prisoners
have practical consequences: when staff respect prisoners, they unlock them on
time, respond to calls for assistance and they try to solve problems. The absence
of respect and fairness is experienced as psychologically painful. Being treated
disrespectfully or without dignity generates negative emotions such as anger, ten-
sion, indignation, depression and rage. As vulnerable and dependent creatures,
human beings depend on acknowledgement (recognition) and justice as a condition
of human flourishing (Honneth, 1995). Their opposite, disrespect and indifference,
cause pain and damage.
These dimensions of prison quality are rated differently in prisons of the same
type, although some patterns arise, so fairness, humanity and personal develop-
ment are always rated lower than order and decency. The dimensions are empir-
ically related to each other: respect is correlated with fairness, which in turn is
correlated with order and well-being. These moral differences lead to certain out-
comes. One prisoner who was ‘not entitled to a pillow’ argued that indifferent

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Liebling 535

treatment ‘can turn you into a different person’.5 What he meant was that poor
treatment leads to negative emotions (as well as healthier, defiant ones). It is dis-
tressing and damaging for individuals.
The findings of a 12-prison suicide prevention study suggested that mean levels
of distress among prisoners were correlated significantly with institutional suicide
rates (Liebling et al., 2005a). Using mean levels of distress among prisoners as a
dependent variable, and holding imported vulnerability factors constant, identifi-
able aspects of the quality of life contributed to variations in levels of distress
across establishments.6 Relational variables, including respect and fairness, percep-
tions of safety (which were linked to perceived fairness and experienced as trust in
the environment) and participation in offending behaviour courses were linked to
lower levels of distress. In other words, we can demonstrate that some prison
environments are more survivable than others. Legitimate treatment may be liter-
ally a matter of life and death. These dimensions work via safety – so that what
makes a prison feel safe – the most important determinant of distress – is respon-
sive, approachable and respectful staff. As prisoners said in response to the ques-
tion, ‘what was the main reason why you were feeling distressed?’:

Just not being listened to I think, you know? It’s almost like you’re shouting and no
one’s listening to a word you say. (Prisoner, in Liebling et al., 2005b: 116)

They start shouting in your face and the attitude . . . when you ask them for things,
and they say, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it in a minute’ and you’ll go back and ask them and they
just see you as a nuisance and they don’t want to do anything for you. It just does
your head in. The decent members of staff that will do things, it must do their heads in
because everybody goes to them. The others . . . it’s like, shouting and bawling at you.
‘Get to your cell’, there’s no need for it. (Prisoner, in Liebling et al., 2005b: 120)

Several conclusions can be drawn so far. First, prisoners are enthusiastic par-
ticipants in moral conversation. Ground-up or ‘anchored’ measures work well in
statistical or aggregate tests and therefore help us to analyse and understand prison
environments better than we otherwise might (see Liebling et al., 2011c). Prisoner
well-being was higher where offending behaviour was being addressed as well as
where prisoners felt treated with respect, suggesting that prisoners feel better when
their future is being considered. There are good empirical as well as moral argu-
ments, therefore, for aiming for re-socialization and decent treatment, and for
holding prisons to account on those objectives.7 But there is an important stage
three to this argument, outlined below.

Doing long-term imprisonment: ‘Behind the slab’

I think the mornings are probably the worst time in any prison . . . just getting it
together. You know? (Prisoner)

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536 Punishment & Society 13(5)

In a study repeating a qualitative exploration of staff–prisoner relationships in

a maximum security prison in 1998–1999 (Liebling and Price, 2001) a new and
distinctive kind of ‘prison pain’ has emerged, consisting of a kind of existential
and identity crisis brought on by both the length and uncertainty of contem-
porary sentences, but also by the restricted facilities available (Liebling et al.,
2011a). The first study focused on the then mainly professional approach of
prison staff to their work, in the wake of traumatic escapes from the prison in
1994. Increased emphasis on relationships-for-intelligence, on ‘increasing the oil
that smoothes the flow of prison life’ and on following procedures carefully, as
well as an increase in resources, meant that, with some important exceptions,
the prison was evaluated as broadly legitimate by prisoners at the time, thanks
to a professional and supportive attitude among staff towards prisoners, a
manageable sentencing climate and an active and varied regime (Liebling
and Price, 1999).
Twelve years later a very different environment existed. Prisoners face sentences
they can barely survive psychologically, and have to make new and complex adap-
tations in order to do so:

Respondent: I approach it, I only look at what me next goal basically is, repatriation is
the route I’m going, you know, I have a hurdle to jump and that’s my next hurdle, I
don’t look at next year, I look at next week, you know? If I started looking at, I won’t
live long, you know, but if I have to do every day of this sentence, if I have to do the
package, the odds against me living, you understand me? If I started looking at that,
well then I might as well go down a big hole.

Interviewer: You set yourself smaller goals?

R: Yeah, I look at the next year, for instance, where do I want to be, right? Now if,
whatever, as everything gets knocked down, which it has done up to now, I find
another goal, you understand me? (Prisoner, in Liebling et al., 2011b)

The first thing is you give up. You realise you have to, you know, get through it
because you’ve got no other choice. And then . . . church helps. And I keep myself
busy . . . too busy sometimes (Prisoner, in Liebling et al., 2011b)

The combined effects of long and indeterminate sentences, a more controlled

and secure environment in which external agencies (dialogue groups, educational
and creative arts activities and other external visitors) are now unwelcome or dis-
couraged because they pose ‘security risks’ or appear ‘indulgent’, the constant
presence of risk assessment as a goal and activity, high levels of institutional anx-
iety about security and low levels of trust in the prison in general (as well as
periodic episodes of serious violence), have combined to leave prisoners feeling
more trapped, vulnerable and hopeless than they were; and so ‘tightly’ confined

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Liebling 537

(Crewe, 2009) that they feel unable to protest about minor infringements:

R: In every way you’re vulnerable. To anything . . . assaults, just being mistreated, to

anything. It’s not your own life . . . You can’t speak out. It’s too big a risk.

I: You’re having to selectively not respond to unfairnesses that you take for granted
. . . because you don’t think there’s anything you can do about it?

R: Exactly.

I: What helps you get through your sentence?

R: Knowing there’s a possibility of getting out quicker. Just do what they want you to do.

I: So conforming to things because that increases your chances of getting out?

R: Yeah. Play their game . . . they tell you you have to do something, you do it. Rather
than . . . confronting them or arguing with them, just do what you need to do to get
out (Prisoner, in Liebling et al., 2011b).

Prisoners found themselves waiting to be accepted onto courses for which they
had been recommended but rejected. Getting by meant becoming ‘submissive’,
‘passive’ and ‘compliant’. Prison life became a lie, a place in which no-one could
be real, and therefore no-one could be trusted:

It’s a game which the prisoner could never win because they’re the people who are
writing your wing reports . . . it’s all control and there’s nothing . . . safe, no haven,
everything’s reported back. Even the more positive relationships like the teacher rela-
tionships, they still are able to write reports about you and they are read out at
sentence planning boards . . . the unfortunate thing is . . . relationships disappear
and it feels like it’s more like playing a game, it’s almost like they’re training people
to be more deceptive . . . every relationship you’re forming is questionable because,
why are you forming that relationship? (Prisoner, in Liebling et al., 2011b)

Life in prison was all about risk, filling in forms, applying for courses and
getting the right assessment. To accomplish this, the right language, demeanour
and skills were prerequisites. Prisoners began coaching each other in self-mastery:

For that guy to have challenged it, if he did, I know he wouldn’t have got anywhere. If
he had challenged that, she would have just gone, ‘What are you talking about?’ and
he would have ended up swearing and that . . . It would have been all stupid, so he’s
just come on the Wing, he’s just telling everyone and we’re there thinking ‘oh, no one’s
made a complaint, no one’s . . . done it, how I would say, in the middle class way . . .
where you get your pen out.’

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538 Punishment & Society 13(5)

‘Street criminals’ – the new prisoner population – whose life worlds are carefully
described in Hallsworth and Silverstone (2009) – were ‘not clued-up in this sense’.
Their language and demeanour, devised for survival in poverty and marginality
outside, made young, fit and muscular male prisoners appear threatening and
uncontrolled inside: ‘And this is how these places run, like that. And if you can’t
. . . move like that, then you’re behind the slab, all the time, aren’t you?’ (Prisoner,
in Liebling et al., 2011b). ‘Behind the slab’ meant condemned to disadvantage,
excluded from dignity, living in a world of perpetual threat, on the edge of violence
and always being wrong footed in the process of progression (Charlesworth, 2000;
Jefferson, 2011). Our prisoner ‘students’ as they became, as we shared the literature
our full-time students read, described their lives outside in powerful detail. They
became articulate, with relevant studies before them, describing the new ‘hidden
injuries of class’ (Sennett and Cobb, 1993) on the street, in their schools, families
and neighbourhoods. Their bodies and language reflected the ‘absence of human-
ity’ in their experience (Charlesworth, 2000). Class mattered, in the detail as well as
the structure of prison life, making it impossible to learn and play by the new
prison rules. Their dignity was already injured, their integration never an option.
They were ‘creatures of circumstance’ facing an ideology of individual responsibil-
ity and self-creation. The anger and bitterness they felt about life on the street, was
brought into prison, a place where their language and identities were unrecognized.
In a climate in which relationships between staff and prisoners were distant and
tense, staff felt vulnerable too:

That evening after a full staff briefing . . . it was not long after an attack . . . He says
how are you? I says, ‘oh, I’m fine, but a bit disappointed.’ So he says, what do you
mean? I said, look, Governor, look around you . . . this was an evening. ‘Governor,
what can you see?’ He’s looking around and says, what do you mean? I said look, this
morning at the full staff briefing, you said prisoners feel vulnerable, they’re worried
about being attacked. He says . . . I don’t understand. I said you don’t see nothing, but
all these prisoners, all 42 of them are playing cards, pool, snooker, cooking, chatting
away and getting on. What’s your point? I said ‘Who’s the vulnerable one here? Who’s
worried? Who’s looking out for himself? Where are the other staff, Governor? Where
is my support?’ Well, they’re doing exercise, they’re doing gym movement. They’re
doing other things, the canteen, and I am on here all day, A-shift on my own. And he
couldn’t answer that. I said ‘I am the one who has to go up and down the landings,
answer a cell bell, looking around to see who’s about and who’s watching . . . making
sure that I don’t get taken hostage or stabbed because there’s nobody else here to keep
an eye on me’. And there isn’t, is there?8

This was not a healthy environment. Fear, powerlessness and hopelessness dom-
inated accounts of many lives in prison:

R: The day will come when they say ‘well you’ve got to go on B Wing or C Wing’ you
know?

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Liebling 539

I: And how will that make you feel?

R: Well of course it will gut me right? Because you know the bottom line, you see the
one thing I’ve realised, you can’t argue with the system, you know . . . especially
security, once they say this, you know, the only way you beat them is with paper,
you won’t beat them any other way, so arguing with them [is pointless]. (Prisoner, in
Liebling et al., 2011b)

The psychologically strong creatively challenged their situation but the

options and activities available were narrowing. Where they could, prisoners
found meaning and solace in education, work, football, the gym, music and cook-
ing together. But most of the time, the only solution to their frustrations and the
prison’s encroachments were ‘choosing one’s attitude’ (Frankl, 2000: 172)9 – a
challenge that made meditation and religious conversion particularly appealing
(see Maruna et al., 2006; Simon, 2001 on the appeal of religious conversion on
death row):10

R: when I first come to prison, I was on a wing with bloke called xx, and he’d done
twenty-odd years and I was going on a visit and someone had a fight on another wing
and visits got delayed fifteen minutes. I was really stressed . . . I want to see me kids
and he went ‘mate, don’t get stressed that bad. You cannot change it. Just be glad
when you get on the visit’. ‘Cause some of them ain’t actually getting a visit’ and that,
sort of, set the tone for me for the rest of my sentence, you know?

I: You learn not to get bothered?

R: Yeah. But at the same time as not getting bothered, you give up on things, you
know. And it’s horrendous. (Prisoner, in Liebling et al., 2011b)

We invited prisoners to give us five words to describe what life was like in this
prison:

Five words? [Pause] it’s hellish. [Pause] I feel pressurized. Like I’m very limited in the
things I can do, and like I’m, how could I say, robotise, yeah, like they’re trying to
control me with a joy pad or something, that’s how it feels and then, it’s hard for
anyone to . . . have anything done for you what you’re really satisfied with, the littlest
of things, some of the things they’ve done to me . . . would send some people crazy . . .
(Prisoner, in Liebling et al., 2011a: 20)

In ‘hell’, prisoners were disproportionately drawn to faith-based systems of mean-

ing. Conversion to Islam was one appealing option particularly where other
sources of meaning, belonging, friendship, recognition and trust were curtailed.
The prison had a 37 per cent Muslim population, many of whom had converted
while inside (see Hamm, 2009; Rasmussen, 2010).11 The ‘need for ideology’

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540 Punishment & Society 13(5)

(Erikson, 1965), for new moral frameworks and boundaries, was profound and
urgent.
In spite of their circumstances, prisoners talked about meaning, hope and the
future in compelling ways. They could grasp at meaning only by ‘freedom of
vision’, by ‘practising religion’ or by ‘making contact with people’. There were
exceptions, in a special unit for the ‘Dangerous and Severely Personality
Disordered’, in the segregation unit, where staff worked together with a sense of
purpose, on an elderly prisoners’ wing and among prisoners who ‘found educa-
tion’. But those at the early stages of long indeterminate sentences were shattered,
disoriented and unable to see meaning in their situation or environment. Frankl
argued that identity is available only through the pursuit of meaning – humans are
directed towards self-transcendence or absorption in other-directed action, whether
this is through love or fulfilling a purpose. Humans have an ‘irreducible and pri-
mary concern’ with this ‘will to meaning’ (Frankl, 2000: 85) and with the search for
an authentic identity (Erikson, 1965, 1968): ‘Man is a being who is reaching out for
meanings to fulfil and other human beings to encounter’ (Frankl, 2000: 103).
Feelings of meaningfulness help humans to survive and flourish. Lack of
meaning and purpose, on the other hand, is soul destroying, breaking the
‘narrative centre of gravity’ (Erikson, 1968) and is associated with suicide,
addiction and aggression. ‘Life-trashing sentences’, as Simon (2001) has
called them, make meaning and identity extremely difficult to create or sustain.
In a newly divided prisoner population, few collective identities were on offer.
This was a new situation.

Psychological survival revisited

Cohen and Taylor (1972) argued in Psychological Survival – a ‘collaborative’
research project on ‘how people survive in extreme situations’ carried out in a
maximum security wing during 1968–1971 – that there might be similarities
between the feelings long-term prisoners described and other situations character-
ized as ‘survival in extreme situations’. They presented an account of how distur-
bances to the ‘smooth flow’ of ordinary life are repaired in most ordinary
circumstances but now and again, the problem encountered is so extreme that
one’s sense of self, or view of the world, is placed at risk: ‘They break the web
of meaning we have built up around ourselves and at the same time show how
fragile this web is’ (Cohen and Taylor, 1972: 43). People usually ‘pick up the pieces’
and gradually meaning returns – other surviving domains are called in to provide
reassurance – losing oneself in one’s job, or retreating into the family. What is
distinct about prison, they argue, is that long-term prisoners cannot grasp at these
other domains. People talk of ‘going grey overnight’. Life is literally transformed.
The authors suggested that the traditional penological literature does not reach
deeply enough into these questions of meaning and survival. How do individuals
maintain a conceptual universe? How do they develop a plausible account of their
situation and the environment in which they live? How is life in this environment

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Liebling 541

given meaning? Their critique of traditional penology, and the questions they
addressed in their study, have become increasingly pertinent. The themes they
identified as being of most significance to prisoners were friendship, privacy,
time, fear of deterioration and loss of identity.
We found a very similar kind of ‘existential crisis’ (or ‘crisis of self-narrative’, as
Maruna et al. (2006) put it) faced by prisoners entering a maximum security prison
with very long sentences. The circumstances were considerably harsher than those
depicted by Cohen and Taylor:

What’s happening here, you getting me? I’m thinking, I’ve been convicted and not just
convicted for a little . . . I got thirty-one years, you get me? It’s like, massive sentence.
I’m thinking, I can’t believe this and I was really, really, really, down . . . I’m talking
. . . I’ve got the church chaplain come to see me, I’m saying listen, I’m not angry at
him, but I’m just saying look . . . I just cannot accept this . . . so I’m thinking . . . what
am I going to do? Thirty years? I can’t do thirty years. When I get out . . . what’s the
point in getting out? An extra two . . . thirty years? I might as well stay in prison. I’m
saying to myself well, there’s no point in living, then, is there? You might as well just
go and cut your wrist or whatever. What’s the point? What’s the point in living your
life . . . in jail for the rest of your life? What’s the point in that? So I’m really down.
(Prisoner, in Liebling et al., 2011b)

The prisoners in Cohen and Taylor’s study were serving around 10–15 years
each. The average time served on a life sentence at the time was nine years and
concerns were growing about the handful of prisoners serving over 15 years. By
comparison, contemporary prison sentences are regarded as awesome, and com-
pletely unmanageable:

R: A lot of people said it would be immediate, like, lads that have been in prison
before said once you get sentenced and your remand’s over you’ll feel like a weight’s
been lifted, and when I got eleven years I was, like, no, I won’t. It doesn’t feel like a
weight isn’t there . . . You’re doing all maths like . . . I get out in 2013. My little girl’ll
have secondary school in September . . . six months before, so I’m distraught about
that, you know, not being there for that. My boy’s eighteen two weeks before I get
released. So all them things going through your head . . . I’ll miss my sister’s wedding.
Stuff like that. All in that hour of waiting for a bus. You don’t feel no weight being
lifted but then . . . actually, now, I’d got three years left two days ago. I actually feel
now that it’s getting somewhere, a weight’s being lifted.

I: In comparison to a lot of the guys in here who don’t know when they’re coming out?

R: I do not know how they get up in the morning. Lads I’ve spoken to . . . twenty-five
years . . . I doubt . . . some of them even know they’re never getting out, you know. I
don’t know how they go to sleep at night. I mean, I have trouble, but I don’t know
how they do it. (Prisoner, in Liebling et al., 2011b)

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542 Punishment & Society 13(5)

Table 1. Revised prison survival themes

Themes in Cohen and Themes as revised in Liebling

Taylor et al. (2011a) Additional themes

. The passage of time . The (uncertain) length of . Humanity, relationships

. The making and time and its passage and fairness
breaking of friends . The problem of trust . Power and security
. The fear of . Fear and safety . ‘The Street’ (communica-
deterioration . The role of risk tion, class, politics and
. The role of self- assessment (and labelling) discrimination)
consciousness . The remaking of identity . Hope, meaning, making
. The loss of identity progress, getting out

We shared this sense of ‘awe’ at the length of sentences being served, and
became, like prisoners, almost unable to raise the question. Occasionally, during
a long, casual conversation through locked gates at lunch time, prisoners would
mention their tariff. ‘How do you do it?’ . . . ‘I go to the gym’, came the stark reply.
It was painful to meet so many healthy, vibrant 26-year-olds, who talked of their
nightclub ‘hustling’ lifestyle, the CD they had in the charts and their network of
imprisoned brothers, cousins, nephews and mothers, who were serving sentences
with minimum tariffs of 30 years. It made no sense.
We were careful in the questions we asked, and in the areas we felt able to probe.
Some of the themes raised in the regular afternoon discussion group and the long
interviews to follow were similar to those raised in Cohen and Taylor’s study. But
we found that matters of identity, meaning and the future were of far greater
salience to prisoners, mattered in slightly different ways, and lay at the heart of
prisoners’ experience in contemporary maximum security prisons. These revised
survival themes are outlined in Table 1.
The passage of time was significant, but had become ‘unthinkable’ and uncer-
tain, as indeterminate sentences proliferated. The new mix of prisoners – younger,
the majority Black and minority or of mixed race – bringing into prison with them
the dress, language and conflicting codes of the street, coming from or converting
to newly ‘risky’ categories of faith or ideology, left staff feeling out of their depth,
keeping a distance and the prison feeling under-policed. Trust was low all round.
Prisoners and staff expressed fears for their safety.
In this unsafe environment, the experience of being scrutinized and assessed was
life-sapping. Privacy, identity and dignity interacted:

I’d say it’s this whole thing of Officers having the power to dictate your . . . write ups,
observations . . . all this security . . . you know, remarks that are made by these
Officers. So literally we’ll be sitting at a table and you’ll see the Officers sit [near]
you and staring at you, you automatically feel uncomfortable. You break up every-
one. Everyone goes to their cell. You end up feeling humiliated and the privacy’s gone.

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Liebling 543

You just feel useless. To get away from that is the biggest thing, just to get away from
that power that they have over you. (Prisoner, in Liebling et al., 2011b)

The last thing prisoners worried about was stagnation – they were preoccupied
by achieving an acceptable new public identity (for freedom), as well as by adopting
an acceptable (partly covert) identity for their immediate survival in prison.
Prisoners did not talk of losing their identity but of having to reshape it, in certain
circumscribed and prescribed ways. They were faced with new existential problems
(their permanent rejection, in their current form) and had to change. No one
mentioned the ‘fear of deterioration’. It is paradoxical that in the era we refer to
as late modernity, where privileged individual identities are in flux, offenders are
coerced into forms of ‘identity work’ that feel inauthentic and imposed.12 The
deprivation of liberty now incorporated the deprivation of meaning and biography,
the interruption of chronology and the re-channelling of the self into a narrow and
closely prescribed blueprint. Rod Caird (1974) worried about the right of prison
administrators to encourage prisoners to ‘lead a good and useful life’, but here we
heard the effects of the new right to label and reshape the offender’s identity as ‘a
good risk’ or a ‘bad risk’, where good is vaguely defined and yet assumed to be
precise, and the process of the formation of healthy identities is poorly understood
(e.g. Welchman, 2000).13 The risk reduction model of change on which these prac-
tices are based is increasingly thought to be in opposition to what is known about
the desistance process (Bottoms and Von Hirsch, 2010; Maruna and Immarigeon,
2004).14
The maximum security prison we re-evaluated in 2010 had changed dramatically
from the one we explored in 1998. The deprivation of meaning, the reshaping of
identity and declining levels of trust were experienced as dehumanizing and ‘hellish’
by prisoners. There was little room for relationships or kindness. Many scholars, as
well as prisoners, have observed that kindness can be a life-changing gesture
(Liebling et al., 2005a) but acts of kindness were construed in this setting as failures
of vigilance or acts of betrayal. Prisoners were scathing in their critique of ‘courses’
as representing any attempt to improve their future prospects except in the nar-
rowly instrumental sense of knowing they had to do them to stand a chance of a
reduction in their risk assessment score. Armstrong (2010) has suggested that
human interaction and the process of change depend on the change agent acknowl-
edging her own struggles and disappointments as well as offering a model of sur-
vival that includes failures and vulnerabilities. This concept of humility in the
change agent was unthinkable in a climate of ‘conditioning’ and ‘intelligence’.
The model of change in vogue is of distant, judgemental, narrowly skilled special-
ists (often psychologists) unwilling to expose their own humanity, condemning
errant prisoners for their bad decisions and behaviours. Sincerity is regarded as
dangerous and trust, kindness or care as naı̈ve. As McNeill (2010) suggests, change
is brought about not by ‘the impact of sanctions’ but the ‘imprint of people’.
Dostoyevsky argued in Crime and Punishment, being ‘good’ requires ‘experiencing
good’. How have we come to consent to such a merciless model of imprisonment?

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544 Punishment & Society 13(5)

Simon offers us the beginnings of an explanation, proposing that in advanced neo-

liberalism, cruelty becomes ‘a resource for political authorities and communities’
seeking to establish ‘a new moral economy’ (Simon 2001: 140).

A new penology unbecoming

We appear to have returned to the ‘dehumanizing moment’ of 1993, when Home
Secretary Michael Howard declared that prisons should be ‘decent but austere’, but
we have lengthened and deepened the punishment and removed hope, and any
emphasis on the possibilities for becoming, from professional criminal justice prac-
tice and discourse, at least at the deep end. Some exceptional prison staff still do
some life changing work with individual prisoners. But they do it unrecognized and
unguided in the margins of the bleak official framework, and they are often selec-
tive in the choices they make to go the extra mile. In the current penological
climate, a new generation of prison staff like prisoners less, and keep their distance
more. Prisoners understand that they are the ‘dangerous other’ – or they fail to
understand that, and tie themselves up in labels and categories that are highly
damaging to their prospects for freedom.
The new context is one in which prisoners face tariffs of 20–30 years, restrictions
on what sorts of activities pass a new ‘public acceptability’ test and the cultural
challenges of a population who are 52 per cent Black and Minority and 37 per cent
followers of the Muslim faith, with unprecedented scrutiny of their behaviour and
demeanour in prison following from that mix. Concepts of trust, relationships,
fairness, legitimacy and safety have emerged at the core of prison life dynamics,
reinforcing the argument that questions of interpersonal treatment are among the
most important matters of being human as well as the most important aspects of
prison life. Dimensions of the prison experience relating to meaning and identity
have not yet been satisfactorily developed into measurable quality of life items but
clearly should be. We send people to prison as and not for punishment, do not
officially intend it to be humiliating or degrading and we claim to use imprisonment
as a last resort. Some new punishment practices are moving a long way from these
fundamental principles, in ways it is sometimes difficult for external critics to
detect.15
Recent penological scholarship has included promising examples of moral and
empirical evaluations of prison regimes (see, for example, Birgden and Grant, 2010;
Franke et al., 2010; Liebling et al., 2011c) and of the principles that should guide
external scrutiny of prison conditions (Coyle, 2002; Evans and Morgan, 1999;
Lazarus, 2004, 2006; Lippke, 2007; Morgan and Evans, 1999; Simon, 2001; Van
zyl Smit and Snacken, 2009; and see Simon, 2011 on the ‘revitalization of dignity as
a value’ in the California prison case, Brown v. Plata: 251). These agendas should
be developed and integrated, so that a better grasp of moral (and immoral) penal
practices can be accomplished, for the purposes of critique and implementation.
Improvements in meaningful measurement, around conceptually relevant dimen-
sions, will help in the analysis of the lived prison experience, in the documentation

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Liebling 545

of improvements or deteriorations in this experience, in explaining variances and in

the forging of international comparisons (see Landman and Carvahlo, 2010, for an
important recent contribution to and synthesis of the measuring human rights
literature in general). Finding a properly grounded language in which to deliberate
about justice, humanity and degradation in prison is an important first step in any
attempt to identify and reduce violence (Dembour, 2006).
This article constitutes the beginning of a dialogue on how empirical evidence on
the prison experience may help to clarify the meaning-in-practice of critical terms
like ‘dignity’, ‘torture’, ‘humiliation’ and ‘resocialization’. As Aung San Suu Kyi
said in her Reith Lectures on Liberty: ‘Freedom is not just a concept to be captured
through philosophical argument . . . it is something concrete that has to be gained
through practical work’ (BBC Radio 4, 27 June 2011). That moral philosophers,
legal scholars, penologists and prisoners agree on the centrality of such concepts to
human experience suggests that it is worth the effort needed to take this agenda
further forward.

Conclusion: Prisons, human rights, torture and well-being

Three conclusions can be drawn. First, the experience and the pains of long-term
imprisonment have changed since Cohen and Taylor carried out their study of
long-term prisoners.
Second, respect, care, fairness, meaning and personal development in prison
matter, in a deep way, shaping, and if absent, damaging our identities as human
beings:

A social and political theory that works from such atomistic premises [that human
beings are selfish and individual creatures] cannot account for human beings’ consti-
tutive dependency on non-instrumental social relations for many aspects of their iden-
tities and agency that touch upon their integrity as moral subjects and agents. Human
beings’ moral subjectivity and agency stands in need of the recognitive relations of
care, respect, and esteem with others in all phases and spheres of life. (Van den Brink
and Owen, 2007: 3)

The absence of any means for meaning-making and identity formation in prison,
and the imposition of indeterminate and unthinkably long prison sentences to
which these experiences are linked, might arguably constitute inhumane and
degrading conditions.
Third, legitimate authority matters:

[O]rder and safety are essential not just for life to carry on but also for people to live
well . . . Political stability and order, the rule of law and justice, are decisive to hap-
piness . . . It is hard to overestimate the value of strong, stable and protective and
legitimate governance to human well-being. (Mulgan, 2007: 45)

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546 Punishment & Society 13(5)

Prisons constitute a ‘special case’ of the use of power. What it is to feel treated
inhumanely is difficult to conceptualize, and to compare internationally, but there
are strong signs that the task is not out of reach, particularly if ‘grounded’
approaches are used in the development of empirical measures. One of the prob-
lems with prisons is that ‘the dignity of man is based on his (sic) freedom’ (Frankl,
2000: 80) and that this is by definition taken away in the act of imprisonment. This
is painful and damaging in itself. But there are degrees and varieties of freedom,
different types of deprivations of liberty and different experiences of their loss.
What prisoners experience may be a long way away from what is assumed in
many legal challenges. The pains of imprisonment may vary by institution, juris-
diction and culture, and historical period, but some ‘essential features’ of impris-
onment and generalized responses to those features also exist. Carefully collected
empirical detail on these matters, within an evolving moral and conceptual frame-
work, and extensive dialogue between prisoners and staff, social researchers, official
and oversight bodies, and activist and campaigning organizations, is essential.

Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Helen Arnold and Christina Straub for outstanding research assistance,
and to Peter Scharff Smith, Andrew Jefferson and Dirk Van zyl Smit for insightful com-
ments on a draft of this article.

Notes
1. Details have been changed to protect his identity.
2. The principle underlying the common law notion of Joint Enterprise is that when a
gang assaults a victim, those members who do not physically participate, but lend
encouragement to the crime, are as guilty as the chief perpetrator and will receive a
similar sentence. It is not a new offence but has become more widely used.
3. In Hirst v. United Kingdom:

Prisoners in general continue to enjoy all the fundamental rights and freedoms
guaranteed under the [European Convention on Human Rights] save for the
right to liberty . . . For example, prisoners may not be ill-treated, subjected to
inhuman or degrading punishment or conditions contrary to Article 3 of the
Convention; they continue to enjoy the right to respect for family life, the right
to freedom of expression, the right to practise their religion, the right of effective
access to a lawyer or to court for the purposes of Article 6, the right to
respect for correspondence and the right to marry. (Van zyl Smit and
Snacken, 2009: 347)

4. It is possible that this is the case above a basic material threshold.

5. Prisoners in small units saw ‘being treated fairly’, and as a ‘human being’ as
the most significant factor in their personal development (Scottish Prison Service,
2002: 4).

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Liebling 547

6. Prison quality measures explained 45 per cent of the variance in distress; imported
vulnerability variables explained 15 per cent (Liebling et al., 2005a, 2005b).
7. Prisoners in Germany have a ‘right to re-socialization’ (consistent with human
dignity) which includes ‘the freedom to develop one’s personality’ (Lazarus,
2004: 40–45). These principles should be limiting and humanizing (Van zyl Smit,
personal communication, 2010). Their effects in practice remain unexplored.
8. The safety of and conditions for prison staff are also an ‘article 3 issue’ (Van zyl
Smit, personal communication, 2010).
9. ‘If one cannot change a situation that causes his suffering, he can still choose his
attitude’ (Frankl, 2000: 172) – ‘attitudinal heroism’, in the terminology cited in
Frankl’s account.
10. Isaiah Berlin (1969: xxxix) warns that this kind of internalization of freedom, or
spiritual freedom, can be confused with fundamental freedom, justifying
oppression.
11. Hamm (2009: 669) argues based on research in the USA that, in contrast to the
‘alarmist stance’ whereby conversion to Islam in prison is associated with increased
risk of radicalization,

once on the path to restructuring their lives – down to the way they eat, dress,
form support systems and divide their day into study, prayer and reflection –
Muslim prisoners have begun the reformation process, making them less of a
recruiting target for terrorists than other prisoners, and less of a target than
alienated street corner youths of the urban ghetto.

The complex relationships between conversion to Islam (and other faiths), the
changing nature of the prisoner community, and the contemporary prison experi-
ence, is explored in Liebling et al. (2011a).
12. A Radio 4 programme on 8 March 2010 included comments by teenagers that ‘you
don’t know who anybody is’ as a result of the multiple and staged identities on
Facebook and webcams. The added difficulty for prisoners is that their inauthentic
identities might slip, with risks to their futures, and the constraints on real processes
of identity change.
13. The problems of how to create and enable . . . new forms of mature identity are
urgent and challenging . . . how to keep in touch with and discover one’s identity
and integrity and at the same time find a coherent world view and socially viable
role. (Welchman, 2000: 5–9).
14. [R]ehabilitative success is often achieved not through rehabilitative programmes
or skilled supervision (helpful though these might be), but through offender self-
help. Successful elements in the development of self-generated desistance are
first, various ‘cognitive transformations’ offenders make (such as developing a
new willingness to change following the onset of adulthood; or responding
positively to ‘hooks for change’); and second, the positive impact of social
bonds such as romantic partnerships and employment opportunities . . .
Successful features of these self-generated approaches are: they tend to look

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548 Punishment & Society 13(5)

forward to future goals, leaving offending behind [and] they focus on the
strengths that an individual can bring to . . . his/her future, ‘rather than empha-
sizing and hence potentially exacerbating psychosocial deficits’. (Ward and
Maruna, 2007: 109; Bottoms and Von Hirsch, 2010, paraphrased).

15. Courts are better at recognizing ‘legal citizenship’ than social or moral aspects of
citizenship (Van zyl Smit, personal communication, 2010).

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Alison Liebling is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Director of

the Cambridge Institute of Criminology’s Prisons Research Centre. She has pub-
lished Suicides in Prison (1992), Prisons and Their Moral Performance: A Study of
Values, Quality and Prison Life (2004) and (with Shadd Maruna) The Effects of
Imprisonment (2005), and recently, a second edition of The Prison Officer (2010), as
well as widely in criminological journals. She has recently completed a study of
public and private sector prisons, with Ben Crewe, and a repeat of a study of staff–
prisoner relationships at Whitemoor high security prison.

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