Spatial Closeness

As has been pointed out previously, there has been very little research which has explored where family relationships have been carried out entirely within the prison estate, either within the same prison or across different sites. The intergenerational nature of offending features in research which sees parental imprisonment as a risk factor for a child’s future offending, but not in respect of whether this increased risk then results in both family members serving a sentence at the same time and what this means for life within the prison and the experience of family. Similarly, the focus on sibling imprisonment has seen an emphasis on the potential relation between one sibling’s offending behaviour or imprisonment and another’s, rather than the experience of both being imprisoned together.

An exception to this is da Cunha’s (2008) research within a women’s prison in Lisbon. She reflects on a national retail-drug trafficking policy and the policing of it, along with related judicial proceedings and sentencing which has resulted in a figure of between one-half and two-thirds of women in the prison also having family members inside. While previous research has highlighted the existence of family members’ concurrent incarceration (e.g. Fleisher, 1995) none has gone on to look at this, or any potential implications of it, in any detail.

All prisoners who enter the prison system in Scotland are required to respond to a series of questions on what is known as the Core Screen of the Integrated Case Management System (SPS, 2007). Currently, none of these questions are about identifying presently incarcerated family members.

There are examples of both inter- and intra-prison family relationships for the young people who took part in this research. Looking at where these are within the same establishment, of the ten young people I spoke to who were currently within a YOI, two had previously served a sentence at the same time and in the same place as their brother and two were step-brothers who were both currently in the YOI but had not had a relationship previously, though they did know of each other.

The two sets of brothers who had had a relationship prior to their imprisonment did not share a cell and were housed in different wings of the prison. This was due, in one case, to one brother being sentenced and one being on remand so housed in separate wings, and in the other, one was under the age of eighteen so housed in a separate part of the YOI to those who were eighteen and over. It is unknown whether, were both brothers sentenced and over the age of eighteen, they would be permitted to share a cell, though Chris did intimate that he would like to:

Chris: I, I says to him about getting a dub up [sharing a cell] wae him but obviously ‘cause he was younger, know what I mean, he was seventeen, I was nineteen […]

Kirsty: Would you have liked to have-,

Chris: Aye, I would’ve preferred to be there, you know what I mean, so I could support him and he would be there for me and stuff like that, you know what I mean, so I knew he was alright.

Therefore, the main time they would have contact with each other would either be where both would attend the same visit (this was a special arrangement made by staff as remand and sentenced prisoners would usually have different visiting times) or where they would pass each other within the establishment:

“So my work party is, like, right across from his so we would, I’d walk by him, ‘Yeah, oh what’s happening’…” (John)

Being within the same YOI, therefore physically close together, had both positive and negative effects for the young people I spoke to. Both the young people who had served a sentence at the same time as their brother, having also had a relationship prior to this, spoke of the need to, and the consequences that can potentially arise from, having to ‘back your brother up’. John used the word

“stressful” when asked what it was like when his brother was also in the YOI.

This was due to the fact that there was the potential for losing his privileges and being removed from the open side of the prison should he have to ‘back his brother up’, something he felt obliged to do should he need to.

“It’s a bit, like, the first time he came in obviously my stomach dropped, but you just, every time he comes out, just drops basically.” (John)

"Because if he ends up fighting wae somebody, know what I mean, I, I said to him, ‘I mean I’ll have to back you up and that’, and he’s like, ‘No, no because you’re in the open side and that tae’. But it’s still ma brother, you know what I mean.” (Chris)

This behaviour may be similar to what would happen anywhere, where family back each other up, but the potential consequences are greater when this happens in prison, e.g. a move to solitary, loss of privileges, impact on their sentence length. Where one sibling is sentenced and one is on remand this may also place a differential in the consequences of this behaviour. The person who is sentenced, particularly for a longer term, may now be on the open side of the

prison and have the potential to lose this status and other privileges which they have earned up to this point in their sentence. Here, where loyalty outside of a prison may be seen as a (positive) feature of family relationships, within a prison it has the potential to be far less beneficial, or desired. John spoke of staff not wanting siblings to have a lot of contact due to the “fights” that could follow their need to back each other up.

While Chris spoke of the potential difficulties of having a sibling within the YOI with you he also spoke of being glad to see his brother when he returned (as he has a few times during the time Chris has been within the YOI):

"...I was just, know what I mean, I was glad to see him, know what I mean, ‘cause I’d just came in […] It was kinda like a homely feeling when I seen him, know what I mean, ‘cause I know I’ve got somebody in here that I kin trust, you know what I mean. ‘Cause there’s no many people in here you can trust, know what I mean…”

"I missed him when he was oot but when he was in here I didnae want him in here, you know what I mean, so it felt weird.”

There are two elements from Chris’ description here that I think are important.

The first is the fact that elements of prison life could seem homely. Even without other family members being inside with them prisoners can construct improvised homes for themselves within the prison (Crewe et al., 2014) and use words such as house or its synonyms (e.g. gaff) to describe their cell as my participant Declan did. I would argue however, that this is different to sharing the prison space with a member of your family you either currently or previously have lived with outside of the prison. Where Comfort (2008: 99) spoke of prison as “Papa’s house […] a domestic satellite” and Codd (2008: Title) spoke of families as being “in the shadow of prison”, here certain family relationships are done entirely within the prison walls, not merely a satellite or within its shadow.

It also shows that the relationship between prison and family is not simply one-way, prison impacting on families as is the dominant narrative, but instead is a two-way interaction where family can also change the prison, and prisoners’

experience of it. By looking at intra-prison relationships in more detail this may be one way to explore this further

The second element is that of the idea of trust, which is explored in greater detail in Section 7.4.2.2 below, where I consider aspects of emotional closeness through this concurrent serving of a sentence within the same establishment.

Practical elements of closeness can also come from the fact that, as Chris went on to speak about, he saw more of his brother when they were both within the YOI than since his brother had been released:

"But noo, you know what I mean, now that he’s gone I do miss him quite a lot, know what I mean, because I, he disnae obviously come up that much for visits and that ‘cause he’s always working quite a lot. But it’s hard,

‘cause he doesnae know his way up here properly either so it’s a bit hard for him, know what I mean, he’s only, I think he’s seventeen, eighteen now.”

The distance to a national YOI, as well as, as has been discussed in Chapter 5, the other draws on young people’s time, can mean that they do not tend to come and visit as often as perhaps younger children or partners. Therefore, when two siblings are within a YOI, for some this is a time when they actually see more of each other, as perhaps they would when both are at home and part of the same social group.

Where relationships take place in a prison, and are between two people who are currently within the prison estate, or even those who have previously had this contact with the system, the prison and staff within it can then mediate and influence this relationship in a variety of ways. One way in which the prison can exert a level of control when both members are within an institution is by making the contact behaviour dependent, whether explicitly or implicitly. While contact between a parent in prison and their child (under 18) is now a right for the child rather than a privilege for the parent this does not seem to be the case where the parent and child are both within a prison (one of the young people in the YOI I spoke to met this criteria by being aged 17 and having a father in

prison). There is also no recognised right for siblings to have contact, whether one is outside or both are inside the prison. Where inter-prison family visits are mentioned within The Prisons and Young Offenders Institutions (SCOTLAND) Rules 2011, Section 63(8) states that a prisoner is entitled to receive a visit from a person who is a prisoner detained at another prison only in exceptional circumstances and where the Governors of the two prisons must give consent.

Two of the participants in this research illustrate how decisions around intra- and inter-prison contact can be, or is at least perceived to be, behaviour or attitude dependent:

“So I see him [his brother] aw the time and I speak to him and that tae.

So they’re alright wae that, the staff, know what I mean, the staff know I’m awright, I’m quiet, I just get on wae ma sentence, so it’s awright […]

There’s rules, aye, sometimes it’s like that, some staff are like that but see some of the staff that I got on wae, they’re like that, aye, well we’ll get you doon to see your brother and that so it’s awright…” (Chris)

This is in contrast to John:

“So, the officers doing the hall, they werenae very happy about it but we still got down once a week, once every two weeks, which was awright”

although he [his brother] then goes on later in the interview to say “So, again, they, they would take him doon to my hall and I’d speak to him, sitting in this wee office room, and then, I think that was, like, the only time that I got, like, to sit doon and have a chat wae him but, other than that it was just me and him and ma parents and that. […] And they try and make you not see him as much as they can, just because they know that you’ll back each other up, more fights, all that.”

When I asked Ryan about whether he was going to try and get a visit with his dad who is in another prison, and asked if you have to go through a process or everyone gets it, he replied:

Ryan: I hink so, because I’ve got hunners of reports for fighting and stuff like that anaw.

Kirsty: Ah right, so that’s gonna, like, count against-, Ryan: Aye.”

In similar ways to those discussed in Chapter 5, the prison’s decisions around what family is for or what may be ‘good’ relationships can see family mediated, and behaviour punished, in ways it would not be outside the prison walls.

It also raises the themes of control and safety; themes it could be argued are present within both the institutions of prison (e.g. see Crewe, 2009) and the family but for which the underlying rationale behind them differs. The young people within this research had control exerted over them by parents or caregivers, by prison staff/the wider prison regime and at times both. While arguments could be made for both forms of control having an underlying aspect of safety to them, that which is generated within and by the family will usually be influenced by bonds of love and affection which can mitigate some of the harsher aspects of control as felt by the young person. Where the control occurs in a prison, and despite the rhetoric around care and nurture, particularly within Young Offender Institutions, these types of familial affection bonds do not exist, and the greater pressure to maintain order and control can be magnified due to a number of reasons. For young people who are within a prison at the same time as a family member, the prison can replace the family as the sole institution exerting control in their lives. Where both are serving a sentence, whether in the same or different prisons, control is completely given over to the prison around how and when relationships can be carried out. The safety and security of the prison and the prioritisation of its regime is paramount, with no external forces such as work or school playing a role in how the relationship is or when and how it can be carried out. Where familial imprisonment literature fails to explore these inter- and intra-prison relationships in a more qualitative way, and where there is more of a focus on the imprisonment rather than the familial aspects of the experience, we can end up concentrating on the predictive forces of a family member’s imprisonment without considering the effects and implications for the conduct of a family life for these individuals.