The Conversation: review of the Gateways to Justice report

I was recently interviewed by The Conversation about the Australian Research Council Linkage Project “Gateways to Justice: improving video-mediated communications for justice participants” report. This was a very comprehensive study using innovative experiments and proposing important improvements and guidelines for video conferencing in the justice sector.

http://theconversation.com/higher-quality-court-videolinks-will-improve-justice-outcomes-study-15453

Court closures in England

Interesting to read about the number of court closures in England:
http://www.justice.gov.uk/about/hmcts/courts

I'm not sure if this process is yet complete but the proposal is to close 93 magistrates' courts and 49 county courts in England and Wales. Thanks to contacts from the British Society of Criminology Post Graduate Community, and my researching mother, who have sent me a variety of links about the court closures, for example, Highgate in London:
http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/highgate_s_magistrates_court_closes_its_doors_for_good_1_1753891

Since I last looked at this website it seems the network of Virtual Courts has expanded, not surprising given the number of court closures:
http://www.justice.gov.uk/legal-aid/areas-of-work/crime/magistrates-courts

Google image search 02/07/13

Great images of derelict courts and buildings:
http://www.locationworks.com/search/index.php?search=court

Also in Ireland:

Crumlin Road Courthouse in Belfast:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/slinky2000/6329909078/

The Human Voice

http://www.hmkv.de/_en/programm/programmpunkte/2013/Ausstellungen/2013_His_Masters_Voice.php

The human voice has been the subject of several exhibitions in recent years. His Master's Voice explores the performativity of voice and language, speech acts and utterances. Of interest to my research is the consideration of how the voice is connected to the body and what happens when the spoken word is severed from the speaker. On the website, there is a great exhibition guide to download in both German and English.
If you happen to be in Germany, it opens 22 March at HMKV at Dortmunder U

Leonie-Reygers-Terrasse
D-44137 Dortmund.

SUPERMAX

As I write about my experience of conducting interviews within the carceral world, I'm interested in describing the unique attributes of custodial space that emanate from penal architecture and prison culture. For my research, an understanding of this environment is important in considering the shifting space of the criminal justice system from the perspective of inmates; a shift from the courtroom dock to the prison video booth.


The ideological underpinnings of prisons vary from the overtly punitive and coercive, to those that focus upon incapacitation and social exclusion, to those that seek rehabilitation. In NSW, Corrective Services espouse values of justice and equity in their management of correctional centres, including the humane treatment of inmates, as well as ensuring their safety, welfare and positive development. These values need to be balanced with the goals of reducing recidivism and enhancing community safety.

Nevertheless, prisons are non-neutral and closed finite spaces. I suggest that spaces of incarceration fall within the 'hostile spaces' excluded from Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space 1994. Prisons present a highly controlled, surveilled, de-humanised and potentially dangerous environment, the antithesis of a poetic space, yet embedded with phenomenological qualities that impact upon inmates.  Incarceration within an environment of solitary confinement or in 'supermax' conditions radically diminishes human sensorial experience. This ABC story on Goulburn's Supermax is from 2005 but provides some interesting insights into this particularly opaque world.

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2011/08/16/3294815.htmhttp://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2011/08/16/3294815.htm

Plunging into the belly of the beast

While my thesis primarily focusses upon the embodied experience of inmates who appear in court by video link from prison, I'm also reflecting upon my embodied experience of conducting a prison ethnography – an immersion of my body into a 'hostile' environment for the purposes of gathering evidence and rich verbatim data for my thesis. I argue that places of incarceration are non-neutral, closed finite spaces that create specific phenomenological experiences, spatial relationships and human responses (Bollnow 1963: 18-19) for both inmates appearing remotely in court from prison, and for a researcher visiting to gather evidence.

I question what I, as a researcher, have gained from my physical entry into the opaque carceral world, plunging into “the belly of the beast” (Wacquant 2002: 385-9) and my subsequent process of reflection. Yvonne Jewkes argues that the researcher may be actively reflexive of their personal encounter while still maintaining academic standards of epistemological and theoretical engagement (Jewkes 2012: 72). By interrogating the self and the lived experience of conducting prison research, the reflexive researcher may add humanity to data, animate the dynamics and nuances of the highly charged environment of a prison to more fully articulate and critique the penal system. 

Well, that's what I'm aiming for ...

http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2011/02/west_new_york_police_charge_qu.html

accessed 06/03/13

A friend and PhD candidate, also involved in prison research, has just sent me a link to this recent publication: 

Imprint: Criminologische Studies
Available
€ 25,95
ISBN: 9789057182631
216 pages
Publishing date: 15/02/2013

• Contents
• Google Book Search

THE PAINS OF DOING CRIMINOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Kristel Beyens, Jenneke Christiaens, Bart Claes, Steven De Ridder, Hanne Tournel, Hilde Tubex

http://www.aspeditions.be/article.aspx?article_id=THEPAI818J&langue=en-gb

According to the link: 

"Handbooks of research mainly focus on research methods and techniques and leave the person of the researcher out of focus. This book explicitly starts from the experiences of criminology researchers and tells about the ‘pains’ they encounter when doing research. By giving voice to the researchers themselves, this book fills a gap that is rarely touched upon in the classical textbooks. These tales of the field bear witness to the often hidden difficulties and pitfalls of doing research and focus on often-neglected questions. What does it mean to do research in a hyper masculine environment such as a prison? What are the challenges to get access to a police organization or to private intelligence organizations and private security companies? How does a researcher cope with her/his own emotions during fieldwork? How does an ex-convict experience the process ofbecoming a researcher? What are the hidden or unexpected problems of publishing? What are the challenges of doing comparative research?

These are only a few questions that are dealt with in this book, which is written by researchers for researchers and students. Although it starts from a criminological perspective, researchers from other disciplines will also benefit from the sharing and comparing of similar experiences.

This book is written by scholars of the Criminology Department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. They are all members of the research group Crime and Society (CRiS)."

I'll add this to the ever-growing 'must-read' pile.

Transcription: voices from prison

Now that I've completed my interviews with inmates about their subjective experience of video links, it's time to transcribe the audio recordings. It is such a slow process as I'm aiming to create an accurate record of their voices, with all the idiosyncratic phrasing, paraverbals and utterances that come with conversation. As I go backwards and forwards through the recordings, I recall each person's face and body language. Their (now) disembodied voices reveal something of their personality or emotional state during the interview: despair, distress, powerlessness, resignation as well as apathy, distrust and considerable humour. I've also become aware of the background noises - the sounds of incarceration as prisoners and officers interact (not always politely), doors slam, announcements or reprimands are made over a PA, and then there's the slightly invasive muzak ('The first cut is the deepest') of Gloria Jean's cafe at one correctional centre.
I recorded 31 interviews and I've now transcribed 21 of them ... only ten more to go! Here I am contemplating spending more time in front of the computer screen:

Ethnography and Voyeurism

As I've now completed my fieldwork in prison, it's good to reflect upon the experience. The ethical tensions of prison ethnography cannot be ignored, and this has come up in discussions over the last couple of days with academics and other doctoral candidates. Is prison ethnography inherently coercive and voyeuristic? Or does it represent an opportunity for researchers to be the ears and eyes that can reveal a world inaccessible to most? More stuff to contemplate.

Grounding Law

I've been at the Melbourne Doctoral Forum on Legal Theory 'Grounding Law' which has been a really well curated conference featuring diverse and challenging theoretical papers. I presented in the first panel 'Techne and Technology' with my paper 'Video Conferencing from Prison: Reconceptualising the Place and Space of Criminal Law'... much discussion and response followed, useful to the ever-evolving thesis.

http://www.law.unimelb.edu.au/index.cfm?objectid=DCA83080-2698-11E1-B6610050568D0140&diaryid=6227

Art & Surveillance

As I'm in the process of drafting a paper "The artist as voyeur" that probes how surveillance is appropriated by artists both as a methodology and canvas, it was great to come across this issue (how did I miss it?!):

http://www.artlink.com.au/issues/3130/art-26-surveillance/

Luckily,  a back issue was available and has just arrived in my PO box. Now, off to read ...

The Choir: story from a South African Prison

Currently on SBS TV is The Choir directed by Michael Davie. Apparently shot over several years, the film shows the story of Jabulani Shabangu, both a victim and perpetrator of crime and now incarcerated in Leeukwop Prison, South Africa. He is recruited into the prison choir that goes on to compete at the National Prisoner Choir Competition. The story tells of the transformative possibilities of music and immersion in a new community, even within the closed environment of prison.

http://www.sbs.com.au/films/movie/3304/The_Choir
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929735/plotsummary

Watch the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g59RZCsxEkA