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