Exploring how prisoners experience work: A discursive practice approach

Abstract

Studies on prison work have long held the view that giving inmates the chance to work influences their lives and forms a critical component in their rehabilitation. Thus, the frequently touted benefits of prison work include but are not limited to, reducing idleness, financial benefits, skill acquisition, personal character reformation, desistance from crime, and cost reduction. The belief in the efficacy of prison work in providing these benefits has aided in hatching a copious body of practical and theoretical cottage industry of journal articles and books on prison work that extol its values and contributions to rehabilitation, subsequently stipulating suggestions for the working conditions of prisoners. In spite of the popularity of prison work in prisons across the globe, there is still not much empirical evidence about how the procurement of the work flows through the prisons and the ensuing possibilities associated with the process for inmates to comprehend and incorporate into their performance. Drawing on the contemporary turn to practice in social theory as a lens, and conceptualizing practices as the analytical starting point for theorizing work, this study provides a fresh empirical articulation on prison work and rehabilitation by demonstrating how prisoners engaged in working outside the prison walls come to understand work, their motivation to participate and engage in the work, and how the work they do may contribute to their rehabilitation. Developing the thesis’s contribution in the context of Ghanaian prisons, five prisons served as the empirical research sites. Adopting an interpretive approach and an exploratory qualitative research design, the main data for the inquiry were collected from 60 inmates, 20 prison officers, and 10 ex-offenders using semi-structured interviews and observations. Analysed through the reflective gaze of microstoria—the sharing of contemporaneous stories on prison life and work as recounted by prisoners—the thesis sheds light on the lived experiences of prisoners, emphasizing the discursive situated practices that come together to define work in the prisons, and how this work is organized. This was supplemented with publicly available data in the form of Ghana government prison policy documents, prison websites, and newspaper articles on prisons. The study presents three main findings. First, emphasizing how external labour work is organized in the prison, the study found that inmates who participate in external labour activities had to qualify by serving either one-third or one-fifth of their sentences as a precondition for prison work or hard labour respectively. Additionally, inmates had to have exhibited good behaviour as proscribed by the environment of the prison during the time served, as witnessed by other prisoners and officers alike. This highlights the forms of integration in the various climatic conditions in the prisons, which is indicative of the acceptable conduct required of participants who engage in external labour activities. Once an inmate passes this stage, they are seen as duly qualified and are called into a gang and assigned to an officer. Second, using the potlatch system as the analytical starting point, the study highlights property rights, rules of earning and holding positions, and reciprocal exchanges as played out in external labour activities. The active engagement of officers in sourcing jobs for inmates propels inmates to work assiduously in their quest to reciprocate the gifts and kindness that the officers have bestowed upon them. This account highlights the power relations embedded in external labour and is suggestive of the impact of the job sourcing process on the inmates’ perceptions regarding the nature of the jobs which are found in the informal sector and are characteristic of fragmented, flexible and 3D (Dirty, Demanding and Dangerous). While it is undeniable that the sourcing process creates fierce competition for status and prestige among the officers, it also provides several other significant junctions which contribute to the general welfare of inmates in the prisons. Third, the study found that the transgression transparency employed by the prison service, such as publishing the names of inmates who ‘misbehave’ at the gate, making the transgressions of the said inmates known to others, and suspending such inmates from taking part in external labour activities, means that transgressors are prompted to progressively engage in a coactive procedure that facilitates the development of mutually acceptable behaviour. Consequently, inmates are assisted to personally engage in acceptable behaviours espoused by the prisons, hence creating a personal narrative control of their own accord in an effort to enable behavioural change, leading to rehabilitation. Thus, personal narrative control helps inmates to take charge of their rehabilitation and prompts others who engage in or hope to engage in external labour to learn from them. Overall, the study demonstrates the relevance of external labour activities as a promising intervention that, although improperly implemented in the prisons, reinforces the need for a positive, holistic approach to the rehabilitation of inmates in prisons. Thus, external labour refocuses our attention from the dyadic prisoner–officer relationship to a more complex triad of the prisoner as a worker, the officers as middlemen and at times employers, and the state as the general overseer, shedding more light on the varying means by which inmates can be rehabilitated in prisons. A series of practical and policy implications are also suggested to help boost and improve external labour activities and support the rehabilitation of inmates in the Ghana Prisons Service. The study ends with a number of directions for future research.