Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This article examines the use of humour in a selection of prison radio shows in Australia. Prison radio consists of radio and other audio that involves incarcerated people and their communities, either produced inside prisons – limited to and targeting a prison-based population – or produced outside of correctional centres and broadcasting to a wider public. Drawing on approximately broadcast content from Jailbreak, Beyond the Bars, and Radio Seeds, we identified 30 humorous instances, of which 17 were best understood as examples of situational irony. Through a thematic analysis, we argue that situational irony in prison radio serves as both a coping mechanism and a subtle form of resistance, which gives a platform to narratives of desistance from crime and improving the quality of life condition inside prisons. Situational irony provides a humorous framing of the incongruities and restrictions inherent to prison life. While humour was not frequent across the data set, it offered moments of agency, levity, and collective resistance. This study contributes to growing scholarship on prison radio and suggests the need for further research into the editorial constraints that shape humour and expression in carceral media.

Keywords

prison radio situational irony humour Australian prisons community radio

Introduction

Humour is central in human interaction and is widely recognised as an important tool for social connection, critique, and resilience. In institutional contexts such as prisons, humour is a reported linguistic device widely used as a mechanism for both coping and resistance (Henman, 2001; Schmidt, 2017). This article explores humour in Australian prison radio, a genre of community-based media that provides incarcerated people with opportunities for storytelling, self-expression, and social commentary. Although humour has been examined in general prison settings, little is known about how it appears and functions in prison radio. We focus on one particular type of humour: situational irony, a form where the outcome contradicts expectations, producing a humorous effect grounded in incongruity.

The study draws on three community-based radio programmes: Jailbreak, Beyond the Bars, and Radio Seeds, examining humour not as entertainment, but as a social and psychological resource. Our aim is to investigate how situational irony is used in Australian prison radio as a strategy for coping, critique, and identity negotiation, particularly in a media context shaped by constraints on voice and content.

Humour, irony, and incarceration

Humour in general has been reported to be a common linguistic practice in prisons, among people incarcerated in prison, prison workers, or these two groups to one another. Nielsen (2011) claims that humour is an institutionalised aspect of prison life as it helps conflict avoidance, but other scholars emphasise coping mechanisms as the main reason for the use of humour in prison (Henman, 2001; Schmidt, 2017). In one instance, Schmidt (2011) presents an ethnographic account of the use of humour among prison officers to conclude that it functions to ‘find ways to negotiate their multiple occupational stressors’ (p. 613).

Other studies generally diverge between these two lines of analysis with some subtle variations in how to explain the phenomenon. For example, Laursen (2017) highlights the concept of soft resistance that is being accomplished by incarcerated people to fend off the psychological and rhetorical power of behavioural programmes. Terry (1997) goes as far as recognising humour as the principal means of negotiating and managing the gap between a ‘normal’ and a convict identity, inside prisons.

This paper focuses specifically on situational irony, a form of humour that relies on a schematic understanding, where people hold expectations about how events should normally unfold. However, in perceived ironic situations, an unexpected scenario arises that contrasts with these expectations (Lucariello, 1994, 2007; Shelley, 2001). This cognitive process underpins the recognition of a situation as ironic (Arab, 2024; Shelley, 2001). The link between humour in difficult situations and the use of situational irony has been described in the literature (see e.g. Shelley, 2001). Unlike other types of irony, for instance verbal irony, situational irony is a theory of events gone wrong (Lucariello, 1994). The incongruity is a shared underlying theme across many types of humour and irony. In the case of situational irony, we deal with an incongruity between what is expected and what is actually happening as the underlying reason for humorous effect and laughter. Incarcerated people operate within rigid institutional structures that often produce absurd or contradictory outcomes, as the examples below demonstrate. Such contradictions can become sources of ironic humour. Shelley (2001) describes irony as triggering bicoherence, where two incompatible frames are held simultaneously. In our study, this manifests when incarcerated people highlight the gap between official discourse and lived experience.

Humour also plays a psychological role as a coping mechanism (Henman, 2001; Martin and Ford, 2018). In the prison context, humour has been shown to help manage trauma, stress, and loss of control (Bonanno, 2004). Goffman's (1955) notion of ‘face’ is also relevant; laughter, particularly through self-deprecating humour, can serve as a form of facework or impression management in situations of shame or surveillance. Martin and Ford (2018) discuss in detail the psychology of humour as coping and how it can promote subjective well-being, resistance, and resilience. Kennison (2022) reports that in the literature in resilience studies, only a ‘few resilience researchers have described sense of humour as a distinct protective factor of resilience; however, humour researchers have long recognized humour as a useful way to cope with difficulties in life’ (p. 667). In her study, Kennison (2022) shows that the use of humour styles functions as distinct protective factors of resilience in relation to happiness in young adults. Furthermore, desistance theory suggests that ironic framing may be part of identity repair and re-narration (Villman, 2024). By using irony, speakers can distance themselves from their past while signalling awareness of institutional contradictions.

In the context of humour in prison, such a view postulates that humour helps individuals navigate the harsh realities of prison life (cf. Charman, 2013; Crawley, 2004; Garrihy, 2022; Inderbitzin, 2006; Nielsen, 2011; Schmidt, 2017). Experiments have even been designed, such as by Franzén and Jonsson (2024), to show that a mild form of joking – what they call ‘banal humour’ – among prison staff and incarcerated youth can constitute a form of affective practice. As incarcerated people navigate the tensions between institutional control and personal agency, platforms that allow for self-expression become essential.

Such platforms include prison radio, a genre that is understudied when it comes to the use and function of humour in this context. Rather, research investigating prison radio has mostly focused on its rehabilitative and educational impacts and its contributions towards public discourse on issues of law and order. This study shows how humour, especially in the form of situational irony, can function as a means for coping and resilience for incarcerated people. Before elaborating on these key points, the following section defines what prison radio means and outlines the key areas of research into the phenomenon.

Prison radio

Prison radio is a growing field, simply defined as radio and other audio that involves incarcerated people and their communities, often produced inside prisons – limited to and targeting a prison-based population – and sometimes produced outside of correctional centres and broadcasting to a wider public (Anderson et al., 2022). It is a highly varied genre with broadcasters, prison rights advocates, and incarcerated people across the world finding diverse ways to use radio and audio production to support prison communities. At one end of the prison radio spectrum, community, public, or internet radio stations broadcast magazine-style information-based programmes about criminal justice issues, with a focus on prison activism and privileging the voices of people with lived experiences of imprisonment. These can be heard by the general – non-incarcerated – public and, in theory at least, by incarcerated audiences, however this is dependent on access to a radio transmitter, having reception and being available to listen at the time of broadcast. At the other end of the spectrum, are radio stations that operate inside of prisons, providing training and employment opportunities for incarcerated people who produce news and entertainment exclusively for a prison audience. Somewhere in the middle, are request shows that facilitate song requests and dedications between incarcerated people, their friends and family and hybrid programmes produced inside correctional facilities but heard beyond prison confines, through podcasting, or traditional radio broadcasting.

Prison radio has been operating in different forms for over 40 years. However, scholarly attention to the genre only began in the 2010s (see e.g. Anderson, 2012; Bedford, 2014; Doliwa, 2013). Their research shows the value of prison radio is multi-faceted, with two key (and complementary) roles. By circulating alternative information, prison radio contributes to an ongoing dialogue about criminalisation and prisons, while direct participation provides opportunities to contribute to this exchange of ideas.

According to the literature, prison radio affords respect to the incarcerated through the recognition of their worth (Anderson and Bedford, 2017). It provides opportunities for education and rehabilitation (Gosztonyi, 2018; Grimes and Stevenson, 2012) and disseminates information about prison issues to promote issues of importance and interest within the prison environment, encourage accountability, and support incarcerated people to better navigate prison systems (Chan et al., 2019; Doliwa, 2013; Minc et al., 2007). When prison radio can be heard outside of carceral boundaries, it contributes alternate, and often humanising, perspectives of the criminal justice system to the broader public sphere (Cecil, 2023; Van Damme, 2023). Prison radio can also provide a valuable connection between audience and producers that bypasses many of the hurdles that restrict regular communications – helping to overcome alienation and maintain relationships and contact between loved ones, both inside and outside of prison (Benson, 2018; Bracknell and Kickett, 2017).

These radio stations and programmes have contributed to the life of many incarcerated people and in the context of Australia, research shows that since 1985, the Australian imprisonment rate has steadily increased by 130% (Battams et al., 2021: 619; Leigh, 2019). Another, more troubling aspect of imprisonment in Australia is the over-representation of Indigenous people in prisons. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data from 2012, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples made up 2.5% of Australia's general population but represented 27% of the adult prisoner population (Spivakovsky, 2016: 407). Despite public attention and various programmes over the past decade, the situation has worsened in nominal terms. As of 30 June 2023, ABS data shows that ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners accounted for 33% of all prisoners’ (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2023). This is also evident in our data and the study of humour, making it more relevant to investigate the role of humour as coping mechanism for incarcerated Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals.

Methods

In Australia, prison radio mostly operates through community radio stations, outside the confines and jurisdiction of correctional services. We identified six active prison radio projects, at the time of writing. Three are weekly request shows (Inside Out, Noongar Radio, Perth; Locked In, 4ZZZ, Brisbane; The Prison Show, Three D Radio, Adelaide), one is a weekly magazine-style programme with an activism focus (Doin’ Time, 3CR, Melbourne), one is a weekly nationally syndicated show that works with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people with a focus on health (Jailbreak, 2SER, Sydney), and the last is an annual project that collaborates with incarcerated Indigenous Australians (Beyond the Bars, 3CR, Melbourne). We chose to collect data from three of these programmes – Beyond the Bars, Jailbreak, and Radio Seeds. This decision was somewhat pragmatic, in that each of these radio shows provided unfettered public access to archived recordings. Furthermore, this sample represents a range of voices including Indigenous Australians, women, and both incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. Before discussing our findings, it is prudent to provide contextual information about each of these programmes.

Beyond the Bars

Beyond the Bars is unique in Australia, as the only prison radio project that works almost exclusively within prisons. It is an award-winning show that broadcasts each year during National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee Week (which celebrates the survival of First Nations culture and people in Australia), facilitated by 3CR Community Radio based in Fitzroy, Melbourne, in the state of Victoria. Each broadcast presents the stories, poems, songs, and opinions of Indigenous men and women from a variety of prisons within the Victorian corrections system. The radio shows are broadcast on 3CR-855 AM and streamed live at www.3cr.org.au. Archives are also available to listen to on the Beyond the Bars website and on compact disc. Beyond the Bars has been running since 2004 and was the first ever live-broadcast from inside an Australian prison.

Jailbreak

Jailbreak is a national weekly programme broadcast on Australia's Community Radio Network and produced at Sydney's Radio 2SER 107.3 FM, where it was established in 1996. It is guest-hosted by people of lived prison experience talking about life inside, and caters for varying tastes of music. It provides a service for incarcerated people linking families and communities across Australia through music, poetry, information, health promotion, and awareness raising. Jailbreak is funded by the Community Restorative Centre, an organisation providing support and information to people affected by the criminal justice system in NSW. Specifically, the Jailbreak Health Project is funded by NSW Health, to employ one full-time producer and deliver harm minimisation health promotion to listeners in custody and families at high risk of exposure to blood-borne viruses.

Radio Seeds

Radio Seeds was a magazine-style radio show, broadcast monthly on community radio station WOW-FM from 2017 to 2020. It was produced by Seeds of Affinity: Pathways for Women (SoA), a grassroots not-for-profit, organisation, comprised mostly of women of lived prison experience, that supports South Australian women trying to re-integrate into society after a jail sentence (Valentish, 2018). SoA advocates on behalf of women in prison, raises funds to support them on release, makes and donates toiletry products to women when they first arrive at prison, and provides a post-release network of support. Radio Seeds was an extension activity of SoA and was able to semi-regularly record women incarcerated at Adelaide Women's Prison, ensuring their voices were included in the programme. The radio show ceased during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Our data

We selected 2 years of programmes from these three radio programmes to represent them equally (see Table 1). Our choices were limited to the years that were available online or the producers could find and send for us. It is important to highlight that these radio programmes are produced with volunteer labour, or with minimal funding, mostly by people with lived experience of incarceration or activists, with limited resources for archiving. All of the programmes analysed were pre-recorded and edited prior to broadcast. While Beyond the Bars is often recorded live, the archived versions accessed for this study were edited.

Table 1.

Selected radio programmes.

Programme	Years selected	Total hours of programmes (min)
Beyond the Bars	2015 and 2019	204
Jailbreak	2021 and 2022	150
Radio Seeds	2017 and 2019	157

In total, we analysed roughly 8.5 h of programming. This breaks down as 204 min of Beyond the Bars, 150 min of Jailbreak, and 157 min of Radio Seeds. The audio was transcribed using Otter and was manually checked for any errors. To look for instances of humour, we initially checked all the transcripts for instances of laughter as the primary clue for instances of humour. This is a method that has been used before (Rarrick and Arab, 2025) and there are arguments in humour studies about how (social) laughter often signals an instance of humour (Glenn, 2003; Schenkein, 1972). There were a variety of ways that social laughter presented itself in the audio. In some cases, this may occur between the interviewee and the interviewer. On other occasions, the recordings were made within a group discussion. In addition to a search for laughter, the authors reviewed the selected programmes to mark any instances of intention to say something playful and humorous. The intention to say something humorous and its recognition by others is a central feature of the analysis of humour (see Dynel et al., 2016). Without an intent for humour or the recognition of such intent, it is difficult to discuss humour in interaction or at least what can be termed as successful humour.

We identified 30 instances in the 8.5 h of radio programmes that qualified for the above criteria (laughter or intention for humour). The details of these instances are provided in the Appendix. Instances of humour were analysed using the following four criteria:

A: Laughter is present following the utterance.

B: Humorous intent is evident through prosody, content, or tone.

C: Audience or co-speaker recognises the humour (e.g. laughter, response – it is important to note that there are some instances where the audio cuts right after the humour episode).

D: Cases of situational irony.

Of the 30 instances identified: 28 demonstrated clear humorous intent (B); 26 were followed by laughter (A); 23 had audience recognition (C); and 17 were identified as cases of situational irony (D). We focus our analysis on nine excerpts drawn from the 17 that qualified as situational irony. These excerpts were selected for their clarity, richness, and representativeness across different shows and speaker groups.

Findings

Examining the instances of situational irony across our data, we identified three key themes: institutional contradictions; coping and self-preservation; and identity. The following extracts from our data will show how situational irony frames the experience of incarceration through these thematic distinctions.

Irony and institutional contradictions

Humour on prison radio, in the form of situational irony, surfaces through accounts of everyday contradictions embedded in the institutional logics of incarceration. These are moments when the stated goals of correctional systems, such as rehabilitation, health promotion, or vocational training, are undermined by their actual implementation, producing ironic and often absurd experiences for incarcerated people. These contradictions reveal a disconnect between official discourse and lived reality, and it is precisely this incongruity that gives rise to situational irony (Lucariello, 1994; Shelley, 2001).

For instance, earning ‘overtime’ for prison labour at $2 a day, or receiving barbeque rewards for performative compliance with anti-smoking campaigns, exemplifies what Shelley (2001) refers to as ‘bicoherence’: holding two incompatible scripts in mind simultaneously. Other speakers highlight the irony of being subjected to occupational health and safety (OH&S) policies while smoking pesticide-covered bark due to nicotine withdrawal, or the bitter humour of being ‘lucky’ to see daylight in solitary confinement. These instances show how irony becomes a narrative tool for exposing institutional absurdities without overt defiance. The extracts that follow illustrate how incarcerated speakers frame these contradictions through humour, often marked by group laughter or tonal shifts.

Extract 1 comes from Beyond the Bars in 2019. IP1 provides factual information about how much people who are incarcerated are paid for their labour. Upon hearing this statement, it becomes clear that the situation deviates from what was previously expected (to be normal). Although IP1 does not appear to intend humour, the realisation that the situation is abnormal triggers laughter among the listeners. The [@] that appears in the transcript indicates an episode of laughter.

Extract 1:

IP1: Every jail's got these factories. So, Marngoneet, Loddon, wherever, whatever prison you go to, they've got nuts and bolts.¹

I: Do you get paid for it?

IP1: Yeah, it's not …

I: How much you get paid? If I am allowed to ask?

IP1: Well, you get paid, [@] you paid six bucks. [@] Yes. six bucks a day.

IP2: Slave labor [@]

IP1: Yeah. $6 a day. If you're lucky, you might get overtime. $2. [@]

I: Okay. [@]

IP2: And don't be late, or you get docked [@]

I: But it's something you can put on your, you know, on your curriculum or resume when you walk out of here?

IP1 & IP2: No, no, no.

I: No?

Extract 2 comes from another 2015 segment of Beyond the Bars, where three incarcerated participants discuss some of the challenges they face in a female prison. In this excerpt, one participant describes the pressure to quit smoking, despite the high levels of stress that make smoking feel necessary.

Extract 2:

well the other day they gave us some of them quit bottles and girls are walking around all day trying to do it for the cameras, with the cameras flying over the jail, they are all walking around with their drink bottles [@] and they’re giving them a barbecue tomorrow [@]. We look like sell-outs while the boys are locked down.

In this excerpt, the speaker recounts how they were given medication bottles to support quitting smoking as part of an initiative by prison officials within the context of a state-wide ban on smoking in correctional institutions. In response, some of the women ‘performed’ using the bottles in front of the security cameras, while it is suggested by the speaker they were only doing so to give the impression they were being compliant with the ban. Adding to the irony of this situation, the officials rewarded them with barbecue food the next day. The speaker humorously points out that this makes the women appear like ‘sell-outs’ in comparison to the incarcerated men, who remain locked down because they refused to comply with the smoking ban.

The situational irony in this example is underscored earlier in the monologue when the speaker highlights that people in prison rely on smoking to manage stress, not on programmes promoting quitting. Another layer of irony lies in the fact that prison officials offer seemingly enjoyable incentives – like ‘quit bottles’ and barbecues – while the incarcerated people perceive these efforts as bribery. These dynamics and the perception that follows further complicate the notion of well-being within the prison environment.

Later in the same segment, the same speaker recounts how some people resorted to smoking bark (the outermost layer of woody plants). She maintains an ironic tone throughout to emphasise the absurdity of the situation.

Extract 3:

But if this is all an OH&S thing, then like wouldn't it have been sensible to let us smoke? Then you got girls picking up bark and smoking it [@]. And like, we just sprayed with pesticides the other day, like you’re telling me about OH&S!

The speaker uses irony to mock the inconsistency between the prison's OH&S concerns and the reality of smoking bark – ironically, after the bark was sprayed with pesticides. This contradiction between what is expected and what happens in practice ridicules the imposed policies.

Extract 4 also comes from Beyond the Bars (2019), where a participant explains what it is like to be in solitary confinement (referred to as ‘the slot’).

Extract 4:

I: Can you explain the slot to listeners. I don't think they understand how isolated it is.

IP: No, no TV, no books, no pencils, no, no nothing. And

I: daylight, do you get any daylight?

IP: you'd be lucky enough [@] to get a little bit. Crap meals that are just probably better off eating out the pound or something… Yeah, because it's just ridiculous. The slot I was in, it was just beds on the floor, thin blankets. Big glass door in front of ya, nice big stage, er steel cage looking door and a rusty shower.

When the IP says, ‘you’d be lucky enough’, he laughs briefly which signals his own recognition of the irony. Here, his comment highlights situational irony, where the notion of ‘being lucky’ is starkly at odds with the conditions described, which are anything but fortunate. This example fits well with the broader theme of using humour and irony as a coping mechanism and a way to process traumatic experiences (see Martin and Ford, 2018).

Coping and self-preservation

Incarceration is marked by loss of autonomy and of privacy, social ties, and identity. In this context, humour can serve as a form of self-preservation, enabling individuals to reclaim a sense of dignity, control, and social belonging in spaces designed to suppress them. This section explores how incarcerated speakers use situational irony as a coping mechanism to manage the emotional burdens of prison life. In doing so, they create brief but powerful moments of levity, reframing situations of constraint, shame, or absurdity through laughter.

These examples reflect what Martin and Ford (2018) refer to as affiliative and self-enhancing humour, which are used to buffer stress and reinforce social bonds. While the prison environment restricts conventional outlets for resistance or self-expression, humour becomes a subtle channel through which speakers assert their agency and perspective. As Villman (2024) argues, these small moments of wit can also be part of desistance narratives, enabling individuals to construct alternative identities through playful re-interpretation of their circumstances. The extracts below illustrate how humour emerges in relation to physical vulnerability, social perception, and institutional expectations. These moments are not merely amusing anecdotes; they represent meaningful discursive strategies that help incarcerated people maintain psychological resilience and a coherent sense of self within a system that often seeks to fragment both.

Extract 5 comes from a 2015 episode of Beyond the Bars:

Extract 5:

Don't hold it against them because they just don't know. So I just think that, oh to look around and, we play footy in here, like, even in here we’re the best footballers [@]

In this example, the utterance is made by an incarcerated person accompanied by several of his peers. The statement ends in group laughter, recognising the incongruity between two contrasting schemata: the image of incarcerated people constrained by limitations and societal expectations, and the creation of a space in which they feel empowered. Even within the prison setting, they perceive themselves as playing football as if they were the best players. This instance illustrates how humour plays a role in helping people cope with challenging circumstances and maintain a sense of self-worth.

In Extract 6, taken from the Radio Seeds programme in 2019, an incarcerated woman describes the invasive nature of strip searches conducted after each visitation. This segment eventually leads to a humorous take on the experience as a coping mechanism. First, let us read the detailed account below:

Extract 6:

strip search procedure is you get asked to go into a room, got anything in your pockets. Usually, usually only ever have your ID after a visit and your pocket. So you give that to them. And you'll get told to let your hair out or go run fingers through your hair, check behind your ears, open your mouth that um see underneath your tongue in your mouth. And then next thing you will take your shirt off, give it to them, they'll check, take your pants off, like long pants, and they'll check that, meant to take your shoes off like before you start taking your clothing off. And then you'll be standing there with your bras and undies on and they'll ask you to turn around, check the bottom of your feet. And then next thing you have to take your bra off, keep on passing it to them, and then your underwear. You hold that to the side and then they'll ask you to cough and squat and then You start getting dressed again. And that's it.

After a brief music interlude, the participant lightens the tone, adding:

After a while you get used to it, at first, if you feel like, you know, it's an invasion of privacy, and how can they be allowed to do this, but after a few strip searches, you sort of start to see the funny side of it [@]. I guess if that gets you through it, and yeah, just try not to look at the officers in the eye. And a lot of us grow 70s bushes, so we've got the iron curtain there [@]. So [@] there's not much for them to see [@].

This example illustrates how humour functions as soft resistance that allows the speaker to regain a sense of control over an invasive experience. By jokingly framing the situation as having ‘not much for them to see’, the speaker uses irony to transform a de-humanising process into a moment of empowerment and shared laughter, effectively releasing some of the tension associated with the procedure. This use of situational irony highlights the resilience strategies incarcerated people develop to cope with institutional intrusions on their privacy.

The final selected extract in the theme of coping and self-preservation, comes from Jailbreak and illustrates a conversation between an interviewer and an incarcerated person.

Extract 7:

IP: there's some good programs here. I'll do some reading and writing here sometimes, learning about certain months of the year like Spring and Autumn Winter and Summer and all that stuff.

Music interlude

IP: Yes I am a gardener … I grow marijuana.

I: That would be illegal

IP: I guess so, tomatoes strawberries because of the gardening that I do, teacher taught me, I didn’t know about the seasons and that

In Extract 7, when IP states, ‘Yes I am a gardener … I grow marijuana’, the unexpected juxtaposition of a seemingly wholesome hobby with an illegal activity inside the confines of a prison (that is meant to serve as punishment of illegal activities) creates a comic incongruity (see Attardo, 2001). The interviewer's deadpan response, ‘That would be illegal’ highlights the irony, to which IP responds with a nonchalant ‘I guess so’, which further reinforces the humour effect through understatement and detachment. Importantly, humour in this context works as a strategy for psychological survival and self-preservation (Bonanno, 2004), especially in environments marked by constraint and stigma. Therefore, the resulting moment of levity, then, becomes not only a reflection of ironic wit but a subtle assertion of self within the constraints of the prison system.

Humour and identity

Humour in prison radio is not only a tool for coping with institutional life but also a means of navigating complex, and often painful, questions of identity. In this section, we focus on how incarcerated people use situational irony to articulate tensions between personal identity and the reductive labels imposed by society, the state, and even their own families. These moments of humour are deeply layered, simultaneously self-deprecating, critical, and emotionally charged. They often reveal the paradoxes inherent in racial and carceral categorisation.

As Goffman (1963) notes, individuals managing a ‘spoiled identity’ often employ rhetorical strategies such as irony, understatement, and humour to resist being defined solely by stigma. In the context of prison, these identity negotiations are further complicated by the racialised and gendered dimensions of incarceration, especially for Indigenous Australians and incarcerated women. Through ironic reframing, speakers in these extracts reclaim some control over how their identities are presented and perceived, even within the highly surveilled and constrained space of prison radio. The excerpts below illustrate these dynamics. In both instances, humour operates as a discursive resource that allows speakers to push back against marginalising narratives and find moments of expressive freedom.

In Extract 8, taken from Beyond the Bars in 2019, an incarcerated participant describes the experience of ‘growing up white’ as an Indigenous Australian. The exchange uses situational irony to highlight the tension between cultural identity and societal expectations.

Extract 8:

IP1: I was grown up white. Yes. And I've done a lot of work with, to find my mob in New South Wales.

I: Yeah. Now that's funny. Just for people listening. What do you mean by growing up white?

IP1: Well, back in the old days, my great grandmother, my grandmother had to leave the [name- unclear] mission because of the half caste law.

I: Yes. Now let's talk about this half caste law. What is that?

IP1: It's where black women and white men basically had children. And the government kicked the half caste children off the missions and declared them non-Aboriginal.

I: Yeah, now that's really funny. Because we're the only people in the world who are called half caste. Like people don't say half caste Irish or half caste Scottish, or half caste. Brazilian. They just sort of call us half caste. And it isn't right. Is it?

[…]

IP1: I’m even too black for my family [@].

Here, the interviewer's comment, ‘Now that's funny’, does not imply amusement but rather a recognition of irony. This funny here does not mean funny as in ‘amusing’ (see Goddard, 2017), rather it is a substitute for ‘ironic’ in such situations to show the knowledge of the speaker about the exposed event, incongruous in the sense that Arab (2024) calls a discourse marker of situational irony. It reflects an understanding of the incongruity between cultural labels imposed on Indigenous people and the realities of their lived experience. The final remark by IP1, ‘I’m even too Black for my family’, is delivered with an ironic tone, emphasising the identity conflict caused by these imposed labels. This conversation underscores how irony serves as a speech device to subtly express resistance and critique in response to societal contradictions.

In Extract 9, from Radio Seeds in 2019, an incarcerated woman humorously recounts the challenge of sustaining conversation during family visits, given the uneventful nature of daily life inside prison.

Extract 9:

And I find that, at first, I really struggled to find something some common ground to have conversation that would last the 30 minutes. Now we just talk and we've got good flow, and there's no uncomfortable silences. But in the beginning, it was sort of like hi, hey, going, what have you been up to? And if they asked me that question, I'm sort of like, well, I stood for count three times today [@].

Here, the speaker highlights the monotony of prison life, where ‘standing for count three times a day’ is framed as a daily event worth sharing. This moment of situational irony – presented as an absurdly ordinary accomplishment – breaks the expectation of meaningful family exchanges, showing how incarcerated people use humour to lighten the difficulty of maintaining connections with loved ones despite the constraints of prison life.

Discussion

Humour is a genre of speech that is reported to be common in discourse around stigma in general (since Goffman's 1963 work) and in prisons in particular (Combessie, 2002; Cunha, 2014). Prisons exemplify territories marked by assigned stigma, as they ‘are milieus with stable borders separating stigmatised individuals (such as “convicts”) from the “healthy” society’ (Arab, forthcoming). This dynamic makes these environments more prone to ridicule and mockery, as discussed earlier. Indeed, humour has been shown to exist among incarcerated people, both in research and through personal accounts (Henman, 2001; Nielsen, 2011; Schmidt, 2017). For instance, the first author of this article (RA) reflects that recounting his brief incarceration in the Islamic Republic regime's prisons in Iran often involves humour and jocularity to soften the impact of difficult memories.

Three key observations emerge from this study. Firstly, situational irony is used to highlight contradictions in carceral life without direct confrontation. Speakers frame absurd policies or situations in ironic terms to resist power without openly challenging it. Furthermore, humour on prison radio targets situations, not ostensibly individuals or the institution. The humour observed in these programmes is not directed at incarcerated people in the form of mockery, nor directly at the prison institution as a stigmatised territory (Arab, 2022). Instead, the jokes focus on particular situations or conditions within the prison.

Humour also functions as a coping mechanism and a form of identity repair. This aligns with desistance narratives and resilience frameworks. Our findings suggest people who have experienced, or are experiencing, incarceration use situational irony as a form of soft resistance and a coping strategy. This type of humour allows them to critique their circumstances while demonstrating resilience. The pride they express – evident in their tone and choice of words – stems from a sense of personal growth, as they view themselves as individuals who have changed and are ready to re-enter society.

Finally, our findings show that humour is not a dominant feature in prison radio storytelling and is used less frequently on prison radio compared to other forms of language around prisons. For example, Arab (forthcoming) notes that humour is a common feature in Google Maps reviews of prisons. Furthermore, media portrayals of prisons – such as in TV series and films – tend to reflect societal views of incarceration. These representations often incorporate humour, including crude jokes about prison life, to humanise characters or dramatise their experiences (Wilson and O'Sullivan, 2004).

The relatively low frequency of humour in our data can be attributed to the editorial and institutional context of prison radio. Most prison radio shows are produced by people of lived prison experience and activists focusing on weighty and often controversial topics such as social justice and Indigenous incarceration. The gravitas of these issues, along with the goal of advocating for change, encourages a more sombre tone. In addition, because these programmes are recorded and intended for public broadcasting, the need for seriousness may reduce opportunities for humour during conversations. Editors may exclude humorous sections if they are deemed inappropriate or irrelevant to the programme's goals. On a more practical level, audio may be tightly edited to meet time constraints, meaning instances of laughter may be deleted to shorten segment lengths. Despite these constraints, our analysis shows that humour is not absent from the data. It emerges in the descriptions of incarcerated people's experiences, reflecting the incongruities they encounter within the prison system.

Limitations

It is important to highlight the limitations of this study in relation to its claims. Firstly, accessing prison radio shows poses challenges, which impacts both the sample size and the quality of data available. Secondly, variations in programme format, discourse style, and speech genre across different shows affect the consistency and comparability of the data. Thirdly, we analysed 30 instances of humour, of which 28 clearly demonstrated intentional humour. Fourthly, the majority of instances come from Beyond the Bars and very few from Radio Seeds and Jailbreak (see the Appendix). We mentioned above that due to the differences in their genre, topics, and target audiences, the frequency of humour use varies across these programmes. Fifthly, audio recordings always pose challenges for researchers to take into considerations the multi-modal and non-verbal cues that are key to the discovery of humorous intent. These factors must be considered as limitations to the generalisability of our conclusions.

Further areas of study include an examination of podcast-specific prison radio programming. While traditional radio is an ephemeral experience, podcasting is considered a more permanent form of media. Furthermore, there is a temporal shift between the listening experiences of radio, which tend to be more communal and live to the more personal, time-shifted consumption patterns of podcasting (Linares et al., 2018; Sullivan, 2019). These differences may also produce shifts in the way that humour is presented. Also beyond the scope of this paper are discussions specific to Indigenous Australians’ use of anti-colonial humour as a means of resistance (see e.g. Jones and Mcgloin, 2016).

Conclusion

This study demonstrates that situational irony serves as a humour strategy for incarcerated people on Australian prison radio. By exploring the use of humour in recounting daily routines, interactions with authority, and the contradictions of prison life, we find that humour, in the form of situational irony, functions as a subtle form of resistance and a coping mechanism. This is particularly important considering the medium of prison radio that gives a platform to narratives of desistance from crime and improving the quality of life condition inside prisons. Situational irony provides a humorous framing of the incongruities and restrictions inherent to prison life. It also allows people in prison to reclaim a sense of agency, create moments of levity, and foster a collective resilience.

This research suggests that, while humour on prison radio is less frequent than other forms of discourse, its presence, in this form, is both deliberate and impactful. This use of irony not only expresses discontent but also highlights institutional and social absurdities. Through humour, people of lived prison experience assert their humanity and critique the conditions of their confinement without overt rebellion. Using such a strategy which ends in a liberating laughter, they gain more power to confront and reframe the realities of their environment. Extending this research to examine prison radio programming in other countries would be beneficial given the cultural specificities of both incarceration and the uses of humour.

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Reza Arab

Heather Anderson

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research's data collection was supported by a GCSCR fellowship from the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research (GCSCR) at Griffith University, Australia.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Appendix

Radio programme	File name	Instance time	Followed by laughter?	Intention for humour identified?	Audience recognise the humorous intent	Situational Irony?
Beyond Bars 2015	08 My Children, My Ma – Kelvin	0:50	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
		1:32	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
		1:43	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
		2:25	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
	21 Rise Above - Pos	2:29	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
	23 Smoking - Kim, Tracey and Ang	0:25	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
		0:31	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
		1:50	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
	26 Cheerios from Middleton	1:45	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
	28 Cheerios from DPFC	2:15	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
	28 Cheerios from DPFC	4:55	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Beyond Bars 2019	2_8 Inside Outside - Aaron	0:44	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
	2_5 Mutton birding - Johnno	0:30	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
	2_21 Work and Education	0:30	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
	2_15 Embracing culture – Quina	2:15	No	Yes	No	No
	2_10 Rough experience – Connolly	1:38	Yes, speaker	Yes	No	Yes
	1_6 Half cast policy – Aunt heather	1:40	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Radio Seeds 2017	February file	3:30	No	Yes	No	No
Radio Seeds 2019	November file	21:20	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
		25:07	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
		26:11	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
	October file	3:00	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
		10:00	Yes	No	No	No
		11:00	Yes	No	No	No
		20:48	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
		34:04	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
		36:35	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Jailbreak 2021	January show	5:10	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Jailbreak 2022	14 9 2022	19:24	No	Yes	No	Yes
Jailbreak 2022	Matty black Duck	Entire	Yes	Yes	No	No

References

Anderson

(2012) Raising the Civil Dead: Prisoners and Community Radio. Bern: Peter Lang AG.

Anderson

Bedford

(2017) Theorising the many faces of prisoner radio: Developing a holistic framework through process and product. Media International Australia 164(1): 92–103.

Anderson

Bedford

Doliwa

(2022) The evolving genre of prisoner radio: An international examination. In: Lindgren M and Loviglio J (eds) The Routledge Companion to Radio Studies. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 368–378.

Arab

(2022) ‘Just a great place for the whole family’: Humour in Google reviews for correctional centres. In: Australasian Humour Studies Network (AHSN) Conference, 2–4 February, University of Tasmania .

Arab

(2024) Epistemic sentence-initial constructions as incongruity markers: English ‘it is ironic [that]’ vs Persian ‘bāmaze ast [ke]’. International Review of Pragmatics 16(2): 232–253.

Arab

(forthcoming) ‘Just a great place for the whole family’: Humour in Google reviews for prisons. Hunor: International Journal of Humor Research 39.

Attardo

(2001) Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (2023) Prisoners in Australia. Available at: https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/crime-and-justice/prisoners-australia/latest-release (accessed 19 December 2024).

Battams

Delany-Crowe

Fisher

, et al. (2021) Reducing incarceration rates in Australia through primary, secondary, and tertiary crime prevention. Criminal Justice Policy Review 32(6): 618–645.

10.

Bedford

(2014) Can alternative media redefine public service broadcasting? Prison radio and the BBC. In: Conference Proceedings of the Annual International Conference on Journalism and Mass Communication , Singapore, pp. 22–23.

11.

Benson

(2018) Love is in the airwaves: Contesting mass incarceration with prisoners’ radio. Tapestries: Interwoven Voices of Local and Global Identities 7(1): 1–17.

12.

Bonanno

(2004) Loss, trauma, and human resilience: Have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events? American Psychologist 59(1): 20–28.

13.

Bracknell

Kickett

(2017) Inside Out: An Indigenous community radio response to incarceration in Western Australia, Journal of Indigenous Studies and First Nations’ and First Peoples’ Cultures 1(1): 81–98.

14.

Cecil

(2023) Ear hustle: Connecting to prison life through a narrative podcast. In: Swick D and Keeble RL (eds) Literary Journalism Goes Inside Prison: Just Sentences. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 160–177.

15.

Chan

JPS

Yeung

JHY

Wong

NCQ

, et al. (2019) Utilising digital media as enabling technologies for effective correctional rehabilitation. Safer Communities 18(1): 30–40.

16.

Charman

(2013) Sharing a laugh: The role of humour in relationships between police officers and ambulance staff. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 33: 152–166.

17.

Combessie

(2002) Marking the carceral boundary: Penal stigma in the long shadow of the prison. Ethnography 3(4): 535–555.

18.

Crawley

(2004) Emotion and performance: Prison officers and the presentation of self in prisons. Punishment and Society 6: 411–427.

19.

Cunha

(2014) The ethnography of prisons and penal confinement. Annual Review of Anthropology 43(1): 217–233.

20.

Doliwa

(2013) Radio behind bars: The Polish case. The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 11(2): 119–136.

21.

Dynel

Brock

de Jongste

(2016) A burgeoning field of research: Humorous intent in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 95: 51–57.

22.

Franzén

Jonsson

(2024) Banal humour and social order: Overlooked affects in staff interaction with incarcerated boys. Incarceration 5: 1–20. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/26326663241280168.

23.

Garrihy

(2022) ‘That doesn’t leave you’: Psychological dirt and taint in prison officers’ occupational cultures and identities. The British Journal of Criminology 62(4): 982–999.

24.

Glenn

(2003) Laughter in Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

25.

Goddard

(2017) Ethnopragmatic perspectives on conversational humour, with special reference to Australian English. Language & Communication 55: 55–68.

26.

Goffman

(1955) On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. Psychiatry 18(3): 213–231.

27.

Goffman

(1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York: Simon and Schuster.

28.

Gosztonyi

(2018) Prison radios: Communication on the periphery of a society. Media Studies 12(1): 133–139.

29.

Grimes

Stevenson

(2012) Radio as a tool for rehabilitation and social inclusion. In: Mollgaard M (ed.) Radio and Society: New Thinking for an Old Medium. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 179–196.

30.

Henman

(2001) Humor as a coping mechanism: Lessons from POWs. HUMOR 14(1): 83–94.

31.

Inderbitzin

(2006) Guardians of the state’s problem children: An ethnographic study of staff members in a juvenile correctional facility. The Prison Journal 86(4): 431–451.

32.

Jones

Mcgloin

(2016) Pedagogy, pleasure and the art of poking fun: Anti-colonial humour in Australian Indigenous studies. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 12(5): 527–540.

33.

Kennison

(2022) Humor and resilience: Relationships with happiness in young adults. HUMOR 35(4): 665–681.

34.

Laursen

(2017) (No) laughing allowed – Humour and the limits of soft power in prison. The British Journal of Criminology 57(6): 1340–1358.

35.

Leigh

(2019) The second convict age: Explaining the return of mass imprisonment in Australia. Parliament of Australia. Available at: http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/SecondConvictAge.pdf.

36.

Linares

Fox

Berry

(eds) (2018) Podcasting: New Aural Cultures and Digital Media. Cham: Springer.

37.

Lucariello

(1994) Situational irony: A concept of events gone awry. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 123(2): 129–145.

38.

Lucariello

(2007) Situational irony: A concept of events gone awry. In: Gibbs RW and Colston HL (eds) Irony in Language and Thought. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 467–498.

39.

Martin

Ford

(2018) The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach. London: Academic Press.

40.

Minc

Butler

Gahan

(2007) The Jailbreak Health Project: Incorporating a unique radio programme for prisoners. International Journal of Drug Policy 18(5): 444–446.

41.

Nielsen

(2011) On humour in prison. European Journal of Criminology 8(6): 500–514.

42.

Rarrick

Arab

(2025) Contextual clips: Prioritising neglected recordings in corpora. Language Documentation & Conservation 19: 67–81.

43.

Schenkein

(1972) Towards an analysis of natural conversation and the sense of ‘Heheh’. Semiotica 6: 344–377.

44.

Schmidt

(2011) Prisons, performance arena, and occupational humor. Oral Tradition 26(2): 613–616.

45.

Schmidt

(2017) If You Don’t Laugh You’ll Cry: The Occupational Humor of White Wisconsin Prison Workers. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

46.

Shelley

(2001) The bicoherence theory of situational irony. Cognitive Science 25(5): 775–818.

47.

Spivakovsky

(2016) Australasian prisons. In: Jewkes Y, Crewe B and Bennett J (eds) Handbook of Prisons, 2nd edn. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 403–422.

48.

Sullivan

(2019) The platforms of podcasting: Past and present. Social Media and Society 5: 4.

49.

Terry

(1997) The function of humor for prison inmates. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 13(1): 23–40.

50.

Valentish

(2018) Linda Fisk: ‘If you can survive foster care and prison, you’re pretty special’, The Guardian, 20 February. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/20/linda-fisk-if-you-can-survive-foster-care-and-prison-youre-pretty-special (accessed 19 December 2024).

51.

Van Damme

(2023) Radio Begijnenstraat: A radiophonic delirium. International Journal of Forensic Psychotherapy 5(2): 208–215.

52.

Villman

(2024) Desistance upon release from prison: Narratives of tragedy, irony, romance and comedy. The British Journal of Criminology 64(3): 693–709.

53.

Wilson

O’Sullivan

(2004) Images of Incarceration: Representations of Prison in Film and Television Drama. Hook: Waterside Press.

Situational irony in Australian prison radio: humour as a tool for coping and resistance

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Humour, irony, and incarceration

Prison radio

Methods

Beyond the Bars

Jailbreak

Radio Seeds

Our data

Findings

Irony and institutional contradictions

Coping and self-preservation

Humour and identity

Discussion

Limitations

Conclusion

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Funding

Declaration of conflicting interests

Notes

Appendix

References