RT Article
T1 Access denied: Research on sex in prison and the subjugation of ‘deviant knowledge’
JF Criminology & criminal justice
VO 20
IS 4
SP 451
OP 470
A1 Stevens, Alisa
LA English
YR 2020
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1786223104
AB Despite the fundamental necessity of gaining gatekeeper approval for prisons fieldwork, researchers rarely publicly acknowledge and analyse their failures to secure access. Drawing upon the Foucauldian-inspired literatures on the production and policing of new criminological knowledge, this article presents as a case study the Sex in Prison research project, instigated by the Howard League for Penal Reform, and for which permission to interview serving prisoners was refused. This denial of access, it is argued, resulted from a politically motivated attempt to prevent the acquisition of knowledge perceived as likely to be unfavourable to and critical of prison authorities, emanating from ‘deviant’ informants, using ‘deviant’ methods and obtained on behalf of ‘deviant’ penal reformers. The troubling implications for prisons researchers are explored. The article concludes by highlighting the potential of formerly imprisoned people, as participants in research, to circumvent the limits to knowledge imposed by prison authorities.
K1 Access
K1 Ex-prisoners
K1 Power/knowledge
K1 Prisons research
K1 Qualitative Research
DO 10.1177/1748895819839740