Depth in simultaneous familial imprisonment

Abstract

This paper draws on qualitative interviews with men and women who were incarcerated simultaneously with family members, some in close proximity, sharing a cell, and others in separate institutions with limited contact opportunities. Through the symbolic framework of ‘depth’ – used to denote the distance and isolation from the outside world – this paper explores how the presence or absence of family within and across prison walls shapes individual experiences of imprisonment. Moreover, it explores how familial relationships are impacted by, maintained, or transformed within the prison estate. This paper suggests that to understand the depth of imprisonment, one must ask not merely what or whom people are separated from when taken out of the community but also whom or what they reunite with when incarcerated.

Introduction

In the concluding remarks of their chapter, Lanskey, Markson, Souza and Lösel praise the growing field of prisoners’ family research and call for future studies ‘to capture the multiple experiences of different groups of families with different relationships in different penal contexts and to understand how their lives are shaped by their interactions with criminal justice agents and institutions’ (2019: 31). Situated at the intersection of prisoners’ family literature and the field of prison sociology, Simultaneous Familial Imprisonment (SFI) has received insufficient academic attention. While it has often been alluded that imprisonment is concentrated in certain families (Besemer et al., 2017; Farrington et al., 1996), few have explored how ‘families suffering multiple generations of incarceration fare within the correctional environment’ (Halsey and De Vel-Palumbo, 2020: 11). Little is known about the ways familial relationships are impacted by, maintained, or transformed within the prison estate, and even less is understood about how being in prison at the same time as a family member may influence one's own experience of incarceration.

Based on a mixed-methods study in English prisons, in this paper I explore the diverse experiences of SFI through the symbolic framework of ‘depth’ (Crewe, 2021; Downes, 1988; King and McDermott, 1995). I argue that the presence or absence of a family member in carceral spaces shapes the extent to which imprisonment is experienced as ‘deep’, and in turn, the extent to which ‘depth’ is experienced as painful.

Literature review

Families and imprisonment

The family has always featured in criminological literature, yet the start of the 21st century saw a ‘rediscovery of the importance of family ties’ (Codd, 2007: 257). In recent years, two main trends can be discerned within this scholarship. The first focuses on the role of the family in resettlement, rehabilitation and desistance. Academic research demonstrating the varied ways in which families can improve the emotional and practical well-being of people in custody and those released has grown exponentially. For instance, maintaining contact with family members throughout imprisonment was considered to improve mental health, well-being and behaviour while in prison (Codd, 2008; Dixey and Woodall, 2012). Interestingly, in parallel to this trend in research, official policies also started framing families as a central resource for rehabilitation (Home Office, 2004, 2006; Social Exclusion Unit, 2002). In 2017, a report dedicated to assessing the ‘importance of strengthening prisoners’ family ties to prevent reoffending and reduce intergenerational crime’ was commissioned (Farmer, 2017). In the eponymous report, Lord Farmer concluded that positive family relationships are the golden thread in prisoner rehabilitation and should be ‘running through the prison system and the agencies that surround it’ (2017: 8).

The second trend explores the ways families suffer as a result of a loved one's imprisonment (and offending). The past decade has seen a significant increase in scholarship on the societal consequences of penal practices, including financial, emotional, social, but also political consequences of incarceration on families of prisoners. Parental incarceration or contact with the criminal justice system can bring unique layers of financial hardship for the family unit (Braman, 2004; Codd, 2008; Comfort, 2007), emotional strains that not only affect children of prisoners but importantly the caregivers who are left juggling a multitude of responsibilities (Arditti, 2012; Condry and Scharff Smith, 2018). Moreover, the physical separation from a loved one due to imprisonment in addition to the constant obstacles in maintaining communication through calls or visits can generate intense feelings of shame, alienation, isolation and loss for all adults and children involved (Arditti, 2012; Condry and Scharff Smith, 2018), producing a devastating impact, seeing that ‘most families affected by imprisonment are already experiencing high levels of poverty or social marginalisation’ (Jardine, 2018, 2019: 1).

While these two trends occupy different, and at times contradicting, positions what they do have in common is that the family is construed as an entity that exists almost exclusively outside of prison walls. A few notable exceptions include Da Cunha's ethnography based in Portugal that explored how ‘networks of kinship and neighbourhood’ or in other words ‘clusters of pre-prison ties’ might ‘transport and reenact relational circles behind bars’ (Da Cunha, 2008: 326). Kirsty Deacon's publications on the experiences of SFI of Scottish teenagers (2019, 2022). Finally, Halsey and De Vel-Palumbo's study on intergenerational imprisonment in Australia, which included a discussion on the transformation of prison as ‘a site of familial reunion’ (2020: 92). Their work highlights the importance of expanding how we conceive of the family to include those within carceral spaces. This broader perspective enriches our understanding not only of family dynamics but also of life inside prison.

This limited qualitative attention to co-imprisonment is matched by a paucity of quantitative data, leaving questions about the prevalence of SFI as of yet unanswered. The first and only National Prison Survey in England and Wales reported that 43% of prisoners knew of a family member who had been convicted of a criminal offence out of which 35% had been imprisoned (Dodd and Hunter, 1992). The now outdated survey results hint at the possibility that amongst those 35% of respondents, some, may have also experienced SFI. Yet SFI was neither measured in the survey nor alluded to in the findings. Halsey and de Vel-Palumbo (2020: 18) reported that 47% of their participants were experiencing SFI at the time of their survey. These findings offer some insight into the potential prevalence of SFI in the Australian context. However, it is important to note, that the focus of their study was on intergenerational incarceration, as such to be eligible for participation, survey respondents, ‘must have had knowledge of at least one family member from a different generation who was/is sentenced to a juvenile and/or adult custodial facility’ (2020: 14), potentially skewing the results for SFI.

The depth of imprisonment

Over the years, prison scholars have used different symbolic frameworks to capture the pains of imprisonment (Sykes, 1958). ‘Depth’ has been employed to illustrate how distant the world outside prison is experienced (1988, 1992), summarised as ‘the degree of control, isolation and difference from the outside’ (Crewe, 2021: 336). In literal terms, this depth and isolation are built into the architecture of ‘total institutions’ including prisons with ‘locked doors, high walls, barbed wire’ (Goffman, 1961: 4). Long sentences, intrusive security measures and the geographical distance of the prison institution from the place people call home, all symbolise the divide between life inside and outside prison (King and McDermott, 1995). Goffman argued (1961) that such tangible barriers marking the divide between the outside world and prison, coupled with features of prison regimes, such as the stripping of personal belongings and the dispossession of social roles essential to one's identity before incarceration, all contribute to the ‘mortification of self’. Marked by this divide, the depth of imprisonment can generate ontological turmoil triggered by the erosion of one's pre-prison identity, social isolation resulting from the separation from loved ones, and physical isolation as a result of being removed from society and confined within a carceral space.

Recent analyses have provided further nuance to the concept of depth, elucidating its subjective dimension and complexities. Crewe (2021) for instance, noted that interaction with the outside world through contact with family and friends or television programmes could reduce the sense of isolation while for others, receiving snippets of the outside world without the ability to experience it, further entrenched them in the ‘depth’ of imprisonment. Crewe thus argued that the extent to which the isolation and seclusion of imprisonment ‘feels painful, oppressive and destructive’, depends on the circumstances of imprisonment (length of sentence, prison type, location of the prison), but also the life ‘existence prior to their confinement and their expectations of the world to which they will return’, including their emotional, social, and financial positioning in the outside world (2021: 338). As such, the subjective experience of ‘depth’ means that confinement and isolation can be experienced as painful and destructive as well as unconventionally liberating and a respite from the uncontrollable nature of life outside prison walls.

Lanskey et al. (2018) developed the concept of ‘referred pains of imprisonment’ to explore the connection between the social and personal hardships families of prisoners experience and the symbolic frameworks ‘depth’, ‘weight’, ‘breadth’ and ‘tightness’, which had previously only been used to capture the experience of imprisonment. In their exploration of the referred pains of imprisonment, Lanskey et al. (2018) found that similarly to those incarcerated, most families outside experience the depth of penal power as isolating. For their research participants, the isolation and anxiety stemmed from the ‘secrecy’ of the prison system, sensing they were being withheld information from and about their lovedone. The frequency and quality of contact with incarcerated family members directly impacted the sense of distance and isolation, amplifying the referred pain associated with depth. The authors argue that the extent to which depth is experienced as painful depends greatly on the quality of the relationship prior to imprisonment. Physical and emotional separation can in many cases be sorrowful, but where relationships have been turbulent or violent, separation can also be reassuring.

SFI bridges the pains and referred pains of imprisonment. When family members are held within the prison estate simultaneously, they experience first-hand (Sykes, 1958) as well as referred (Lanskey et al., 2018) pains of imprisonment. The degree to which those are experienced is influenced by SFI in that the proximity to family in prison can in certain cases alleviate and in others exacerbate the pain. There is a need to develop a novel analytical concept to capture how the direct and referred pains are shaped by the presence or absence of familial relationships in prison and how they intertwine with pains unique to SFI. I propose the term ‘interactive texture of imprisonment’.

The term ‘texture’ is progressively being used to describe ‘a set of objective characteristics [of imprisonment] and a sense of how these characteristics feel, just as a strip of satin or sandpaper might be described as having certain textural properties (based on their physical composition) but also a more sensory quality’ (Crewe, 2021: 340). In this context, ‘texture’ is preferred to ‘pains’ as it encapsulates the variance of circumstances, emotions and sensations experienced during SFI. For instance, the absence or presence of family in prison can improve, aggravate and/or confound the experience of incarceration. The term ‘interactive’ serves to illustrate this dynamism.

Methodology

This article is based on a research project exploring SFI in English prisons conducted between 2022 and 2023. Ethical approval for the research was obtained from my department and from the HMPPS National Research Committee. The wider study adopted a mixed-methods approach with 200 people held in a men's Training Prison ¹ participating in a survey and semi-structured interviews with individuals who reported knowing of a family member also incarcerated at the time of the interview (N = 29) or having recently experienced SFI (N = 2). Out of the 31 interviewees, 18 were men held in two institutions, one Training Prison and one Local Prison ² and 13 were women held in a Closed Prison. ³

This paper reports on findings from the interviews. Most participants were aged between 25 and 39 years old, with the youngest being in his early 20s, and the oldest in her mid-60s. More than half of the participants identified as White (N = 17), followed by those identifying as Mixed or of multiple ethnic backgrounds (N = 5), Asian (N = 3), Gypsy or Travellers (N = 3), Black (N = 2), and Arab (N = 1). The 31 interviewees reported having experienced SFI with a total sum of 58 relatives. Out of those, the vast majority were brothers (N = 31), but also uncles (N = 7), partners (N = 6), fathers (N = 4), sons (N = 4) and cousins (N = 3). Only two people reported having experienced SFI with a female family member, both of them their mothers. Most women I interviewed had never been held in the same prison as a family member, and due to the gendered segregation of the prison population, they had neither the hope nor expectation of ever being held with their male family members. This gender imbalance is apparent in the findings, as women's experiences are largely missing in the section describing life when held in the same carceral space as a loved one, yet central to discussions about the experience of being held separately. Finally, the majority (72%) were formally considered ‘co-defendants’ with their co-incarcerated family members. However, this was contested by numerous participants who argued that their family member(s) had been unfairly implicated in one another's cases to various degrees.

Participants were initially asked open-ended questions about their life histories, including questions surrounding their family life growing up, the evolution of their familial and other relationships, and any contact they might have had with criminal legal agencies over their lifetime. The remaining discussion centred around people's experiences of SFI; their recollections of reunions and/or separations with a family member in prison as well as the emotional and practical impact of being incarcerated concurrently on a family member. These one-to-one conversations typically lasted between one and a half and two and a half hours. Participants received an Information Sheet (PIS) outlining the project's aims and potential avenues for dissemination. This information was also explained orally before the interview began. Written consent was obtained for their participation in the research, the publication of findings, and the audio recording of our conversation using a Dictaphone. All participants were given pseudonyms, which appear throughout this paper.

Interview data was thematically coded using NVivo software. The coding and analysis of the data were based on Layder's (1998) ‘adaptive theory’, whereby frameworks and concepts from the limited body of work on SFI and intergenerational imprisonment, and sociological literature on prison life and familial imprisonment, were combined with themes emerging from the empirical data. This hybrid approach, blending induction and deduction, enabled continuous reflection on how the participants’ narratives aligned with or challenged the boundaries of existing academic discourse. At the outset of this study, I anticipated engaging with the framework of the ‘pains of imprisonment’, curious to explore how SFI might enhance, alleviate or reshape our understanding of them. The symbolic framework of ‘depth’ was not initially anticipated to feature prominently in the research, nor was it incorporated into the interview material. Instead, it emerged through a methodical and ongoing revisiting of thematic ‘nodes’ related to the pains of proximity and distance to a family member, as well as ‘nodes’ related to individual and collective identities.

What is SFI?

The term SFI, first coined by Deacon (2021, 2022), is an umbrella term that covers diverse circumstances and familial relationships within the prison estate. Borrowing Halsey and De Vel-Palumbo's (2020) lexicon, such relationships can be lateral (same generation, i.e. siblings or cousins) and vertical (different generation, i.e. parent-child). Familial relationships may include biological relatives, partners, extended, foster family members and other relatives.

The influence of space on the texture of SFI is crucial; consequently, in this paper, I distinguish between two dimensions of SFI. The first dimension encompasses family members held in the same prison wing, including those sharing a cell. The second dimension encompasses individuals held in separate prison wings within a single establishment or separate establishments from their relatives. These dimensions delineate the circumstances in which familial imprisonment takes place, evoking physical proximity, such as the geographical location and the possibility to interact in person, as well as experiential proximity amongst family members such as the frequency and quality of communication (see Figure 1).

As depicted in Figure 2, the two dimensions of SFI group together the circumstances located lowest (different prison and different wing) and highest (same wing and same cell) on the proximity quadrants. For the vast majority of my participants, being incarcerated in different wings of the same institution as a relative provided some physical proximity; however, the processes, frequency and quality of maintaining communication across prison wings predominantly aligned closer to the experiences of those held in separate institutions. Contact between relatives held in separate prisons was highly dependent on others. Participants described relying on prison staff's willingness and persistence in organising inter-prison phone calls or posting inter-prison mail.

One main officer really tries, and then it goes on to the next person, and then the communication gets lost. And then that officer's still trying to chase it up, and it goes with security, and it's just a dead end. It's been three years. (Tasha)

Family members held in different prisons often depended on a loved one outside prison to act as a go-between, effectively relaying information from one to the other. In fewer cases, loved ones outside meticulously planned and facilitated three-way calls ⁴ allowing the incarcerated relatives to speak directly. Similarly, those held in different wings of the same prison described relying on peers, and less frequently officers, to ask after their relatives and pass on information. Contact between relatives held on different wings did not appear to be formalised across the prisons I conducted fieldwork in, and no overarching prison policy could be found. Hence, contact between relatives was managed through prison and officer discretion. To communicate directly with a relative on a different wing, some participants requested to organise an inter-wing visit. With few exceptions, these requests were either denied or took so long to be processed, the relatives in question had been transferred or released before a visit could take place. Most often, seeing one another required luck and organisation. Some described strategies such as walking more slowly on the way to workshops hoping to bump into one another, but contact was never guaranteed.

He's in a complete different wing. So that's like he could be like, 2000 miles away from me, because we’re still worlds apart. (Tom)

On the rare occasion Tom managed to see his brother, communication was very limited:

We can only see each other and say ‘hi’ and ‘bye’, we can never have like a ten, fifteen, twenty-minute conversation. It's only a two-minute conversation that we’re having. (Tom)

The processes, frequency and quality of communication across prison wings and institutions bore significant similarities. These similarities also had comparable effects on the relationships in prison and the individual experiences of SFI. Therefore, they have been grouped together to form the Second Dimension of SFI.

Meanwhile, the interactions of family members held on the same prison wing were bounded by the prison regime in terms of time (i.e. the length of association) and space (i.e. common spaces). Yet, such interactions bore similarities with the experience of family members who shared a cell as they could typically interact in person daily, apart from extended periods of isolation due to changes in the regime. Hence, grouped together, they form the First Dimension of SFI.

This article is structured around the symbolic framework of ‘depth’, that has been used to bring nuance to the experiences of imprisonment. As the texture of SFI in the first and second dimensions differed significantly, depth is explored through the two dimensions separately and sequentially. This article serves as a first exploration of the numerous and complex ways in which SFI might transform the established direct and referred pains to influence the texture of life in carceral spaces.

Depth in the first dimension of SFI

In a literal sense, the presence of family in prison can alleviate social isolation. When held on the same wing, most participants chose to spend time with their family members as much as possible, often engaging in everyday activities like eating, cooking, playing video games, watching telly, talking and working out together. While these mundane activities could also be done with friends or acquaintances to alleviate loneliness and boredom, doing them with a family member was described, by all but one participant, as fundamentally different.

‘You see there's no love in prison. Because it's a dark place’ explained Darren, ‘you might have small talk, but no one really cares about you or what you’re going through, or how your family's doing’. His brother's presence transformed the prison environment from being devoid of love and care to a space in which such emotions and practices could emerge. ‘At least if you have one of your relatives you’ve got someone you can open up to if you’re not feeling good. If something's making you feel depressed, you can open up’. While Darren benefited from a wide network of friends and acquaintances with whom he could spend time, in the presence of his brother, he felt comfortable revealing his genuine emotions.

‘It's nice to have your brother around. Because there's somebody that if you feel like, “I miss home”, then you just look and you see your brother is there, it's calming’ exclaimed Anton. In addition to relieving social isolation by providing opportunities to ‘laugh and crack up about shit’, his brother also embodied ‘home’. Like Anton, a few participants described feeling closer to their family outside through the familial relationship they nurtured inside prison – effectively reducing the depth of imprisonment. These findings echo Kirsty Deacon's in the Scottish context, in which she argues that the ‘impact between the institutions of prison and family is not simply one-way. Prison can impact on families but families can also impact on the prison’ (2021: 6). While the geographical distance between the prison and the place participants called home remained the same, the emotional and physical proximity with a family member in prison reduced the gap between themselves and the sense of home, alleviating the depth of imprisonment.

‘Home’, however, is not a place everyone wants proximity to. For Liam and Lewis who were taken out of their family home and placed into care at a young age, ‘home’ was a complex concept. Their relationships with the rest of the family had suffered throughout the years. While Lewis had rebuilt some relationships with few of his biological relatives, Liam had not. When asked whether his brother was also in touch with other relatives outside prison, Lewis exclaimed ‘he don’t speak to nobody […] Obviously there's reasons, you know what I’m saying?’. Co-imprisoned family members could have a close and cherished relationship among themselves and still have vastly different relationships with family outside prison. They could also have different coping strategies.

No, no, he [brother] was having visits, I wasn’t having visits, because I’ve been in prison so many years, I’m over visits! (Darren)

Having already spent over 8 years in prison throughout his lifetime, Darren considered it preferable for his mental health and efforts to desist upon release not to have family visits. Hence, even amongst dyads of co-imprisoned family members, there was not always consensus on whether the depth of imprisonment was a pain or not; ‘shallowness’, was not always desired.

Relationship dynamics and family histories varied among participants, yet three patterns emerged in the narratives of those who experienced co-imprisonment as less ‘deep’, and considered proximity to the surface or ‘shallowness’ as desirable.

Being known and understood

‘Blood’ was consistently the answer I was given when asking people why they cared for, protected, felt a responsibility towards or were frustrated by a family member in prison. While the statement ‘blood is thicker than water’ was typically conveyed in a self-explanatory tone, participants frequently elaborated on what makes blood thicker. For example:

Blood is thicker than water. You can’t pretend to be anything different; they know what you are, they’ve been around you all your life. (Alan)

Here, Alan explains his relatives have a genuine and intimate understanding of who he is as a person. A point echoed by Liam who stated ‘I feel like, because we’re brothers we know our sense of morals’. Despite often being surrounded by others, incarcerated people can experience loneliness from the lack of meaningful connections, from ‘being away from people who they feel know them well and being around people who know them ‘badly’’(Schliehe et al., 2022: 1603). For most of my participants, the presence of family in prison seemed to counter that isolation. Having a shared past and common upbringing was often cited as a ‘thickening agent’.

Some participants had spent years apart from one another leading up to their co-imprisonment, in some cases due to separate care placements, in others because one or both had left their family homes, having started their own families, or having been incarcerated separately. After a reunion in prison, people described the process of getting re-acquainted and adapting their memories of each other to the people they had become during their time apart. For instance, by the time Oliver and his brother were reunited in prison, Oliver had converted to Islam – a decision he did not take lightly. Having carefully researched two religions he was curious about, he ultimately chose Islam, bringing him closer to his wife's Muslim family. He recalled the first time his brother became aware of this religious conversion:

It was Ramadan so I was actually fasting, the first Ramadan I’ve ever done in my life. And it felt a bit weird praying in front of him because I know what he's thinking in his head when he's first seeing me like this. He's looking at me with my prayer rug out, I can feel his eyes burning in the back of my head. He's thinking ‘what the fuck is he doing’? (Oliver)

While initially, some people struggled to come to terms with identity or appearance transformations of their relatives, most, intuitively, found ways to reconnect.

You might change as a person a little bit. But just because you’ve changed as a person doesn’t mean I don’t care about you because you’re my brother, we’re blood related, we’re siblings, we’ve grown up together. So, it doesn’t matter, whatever goes on there's still going to be a bond. (Darren)

Shared memories, past, acquaintances

Familial co-imprisonment did not just relieve social isolation, stemming from being misunderstood, of having scarce meaningful connections. Having a shared past, common acquaintances and memories seemed to bridge the gap between people's incarcerated selves and their pre-prison lives, while also strengthening their sense of belonging. Alan, who was once incarcerated on the same wing as his father and four brothers, described how they could discuss ‘family issues and personal issues […] or if anything bad happened or if anything good happened, or if anyone's getting married in the family or if we’ve had a funeral, whatever it may be’ (Alan). This allowed them to maintain their identity as members of a family unit and process developments happening outside the prison together.

Crewe, Hulley and Wright found that being forcibly removed from ‘family, friends and other loved ones’ due to long-term imprisonment left ‘prisoners feeling lost, existentially stateless (Mathiassen, 2016), and unable to anchor their sense of self’ (Crewe et al., 2020: 261). In addition to strengthening familial identity and belonging, co-imprisonment of family members, conversely, helped individuals maintain a sense of self. The presence of a family member in prison served as a reminder of their pre-carceral lives and identities, effectively alleviating ontological turmoil.

Yeah, we have more in common than people in jail innit? Because we’ve been on the road with each other. And can be like ‘remember that night? Remember that girl? Or something … remember?’ It's just like we have more things in common. With [others] all you could do is tell these people stories of what's happened…. (Aiden)

Here Aiden explains how a shared past, shared memories, shared acquaintances and loved ones brought ease and comfort to his relationship with his brother. He could discuss the past with someone who was aware of the context, someone who had featured in it. That foundation made for easy and enjoyable conversation, but also served to resist the ‘mortification of self’ (Goffman, 1961). While the institution applies pressure to eliminate individuality and isolate the person from their pre-carceral lives (Goffman, 1961), carrying ‘a set of threats or attacks which are directed against the very foundations of the prisoner's being’ (Sykes, 1958: 65, 79), the presence of a family member within the same prison wing can counter it by serving as a reminder of one's history and identity.

However, for some, reminders of their history were painful. Lewis was faced with his brother's desire to discuss the past ‘he likes to bring up the past, like, “Do you remember this? Do you remember that?”’ complained Lewis. Being older, he remembered the separations vividly: first, he and his brother were separated from their biological parents, and later, the two brothers were separated during Lewis's teenage years. Revisiting such memories was unpleasant, ‘I don’t like to talk about the past innit?’, but they were also foreign to Lewis ‘most of what he says, I actually don’t remember. Because I don’t think I was there when that was happening. Do you understand?’ The constant reminders of their traumatic separation were painful for Lewis, who felt guilty for not being able to take his brother with him when he left their care placement as a teenager.

He should have been with us, you know what I’m sayin’? I should have been with him do you get it … I decided ‘nah, I’m leaving’ and got to my nan's, do you understand? But he wasn’t old enough to make that decision, do you understand?

In some cases, even if the interpersonal relationship between family members in prison was desired, the memories and history attached to the people were not. For most individuals with turbulent histories, co-imprisonment could overall reduce the pains associated with the ‘depth’ of imprisonment, even when some forms of depth, like not being reminded of traumatic memories, were considered preferable.

Doing family and familial roles

Not everyone had established familial dynamics and roles prior to their co-imprisonment. As previously mentioned, for some, SFI presented the first opportunity to spend time regularly in each other's presence. Those participants described ‘doing family things’ (Finch, 2007: 73) in newfound or renegotiated ways, establishing family dynamics and roles in prison. Lewis’ grandfather and uncle would offer him biscuits, tea, advice and their telephone credit. ‘Food can be understood as central to displaying family, as eating together and sharing a meal are closely connected to dominant social narratives of what families “do”’ writes Cara Jardine (2017: 120). Fittingly, most participants described sharing meals together as central to their experience of co-imprisonment. Mehdi and Quang's brothers would cook for them regularly. Warren, the cook of the family, baked a cake and held small celebrations on his brother's and his own birthday, recalled Anton fondly. Connor, Brendan, and Sohel made special effort to be patient with their brothers, cleaning up and tidying up after them while acknowledging they would never do the same for any other cellmate.

Of course, not all ‘familial displays’ were positive. From bickering to physical fights, interviewees described various forms of friction:

Let's say I’ve misplaced my mug or something? I may come across to him as passive-aggressive, I might say ‘yo where's my mug? What did you do with my mug?’ Then he's there ‘Why you shouting?’ But I’ve kind of got a deep voice, he may take it as I’m shouting but I’m not shouting and it's vice versa for him. I may assume he's shouting. It's kind of like a pride thing, that's what leads to the argument one of us thinking they’re being disrespected but it's always short, we keep it short. (Warren)

Warren's anecdote illustrates the journey co-imprisoned relatives were on, often feeling comfortable releasing their frustrations towards one another and then having to navigate their way towards moving past the tension with or without an apology. Goffman writes that inmates are dispossessed of certain roles that had been integral to the sense of self prior to incarceration (1961). Having the opportunity to perform familial roles and resume or establish familial dynamics, from displays of care to unpleasant tension, seemed to help people maintain a sense of normality – resisting the mortification of self.

‘You don’t want to be arguing with your brother in front of other prisoners’, explained Anton, ‘it's embarrassing, you should argue behind closed doors with each other’. While it might very well be embarrassing, arguments in front of others, just like tangible acts of care, laughter and banter contribute to being perceived as family. Familial roles encompass relational dynamics such as emotional proximity, potential antagonism, and other nuanced dynamics that characterise close relational bonds. Regardless of whether these are primarily positive or negative relationships, particularly sibling and parent-child roles, typically follow recognisable schemas, a recognisable ‘vibe’:

People are more friendly towards you when your family is there because they see the relationship and they want that same relationship as well. No one wants to be alone in prison, you understand? And when they see the vibe, they want to be a part of that vibe […] When people see the connection, they want to be a part of that connection. (Quang)

Seeing family members interact can give insight into their private or pre-carceral selves and expose a private dimension of their identities. Tom articulates why family members and particularly siblings capture people's interest, making peers feel more comfortable in their presence:

It's easier to get recognised innit? Like if you need to get a feel of the place, and like you see, two people and they’re brothers, you know, automatically your brain recognises something there. I can’t really explain that […] Like have you got a sister? Did you go to the same school? So when you went to school you know people were like ‘look it's the sisters’. That's what I’m trying to explain … there's something about that! (Tom)

By virtue of being held alongside a family member, the metaphorical distance between the outside world and participants seemed to diminish, reversing processes of self-mortification. Firstly, the presence of someone familiar and caring seemed to reduce social isolation. Secondly, the presence of a family member in prison served as a reminder of their pre-carceral lives and identities, thereby bridging the gap between their current selves and their lives before imprisonment. To continue the tradition of metaphors in earlier analyses of depth (Crewe, 2021), if the incarcerated person is deep underwater, the relative they are incarcerated with can become a buoy on the surface. The buoy acts both as a reference point for what exists above the sea but also as a potential lifeline, offering the possibility of pulling the person up to the surface.

Whether a family member can be considered a buoy in another's imprisonment seems contingent on the quality of the existing relationship and the potential for improvement. The only participant to feel indifferent about their family member's co-imprisonment did not fit either of the three patterns identified as contributing to a shallower experience. Scott had not known his half-brother well prior to imprisonment, they shared little to no memories together, their common relation, their father, had passed away years earlier, and the brothers had never established or sought to establish an emotional relationship. The degree to which the presence of a relative can alleviate isolation may hence depend on their existing connection and its potential for improvement.

Depth in the second dimension of SFI

For family members held in separate wings and, to a larger extent, for those being held in separate institutions, the isolation was felt more acutely. They were not only physically separated from family members but also experientially removed from them, with little or no autonomy in maintaining communication. Communication between relatives held in separate institutions was constrained and only accessible after completing a maze of paperwork. For those held in different wings of the same prison, communication was dependent on staff discretion or chance encounters during movements around the prison. As such, depth was experienced not only as highly isolating but also completely disempowering. As highlighted by Tom's earlier quote, the geographical proximity did not diminish the profound sense of separation they experienced.

In the dark

Resonating with Lanskey's findings (2018), the people I spoke to experienced the ‘secrecy’ of the prison system as painful, complaining about being kept in the dark regarding their loved ones. They struggled to understand why they were being denied information on a family member's location, which inhibited them from re-establishing contact.

I asked a Gov to check the system, I gave his prison number and his name, and the Gov said, ‘No it's security breach. I can’t do that.’ I said, ‘What are you on about? Look, we’ve got the same name!’ Don’t make no sense … ‘If you get his picture up, I won’t even look. Get his picture up and you’re going to see. He looks like me, do you understand? You’re gonna know he's my little brother’. (Lewis)

Others described in emotional detail the visceral pain of isolation they experienced knowing that their loved one was unwell in prison. Unable to receive updates directly from their incarcerated relative or the prison system, instead they had to wait for a loved one outside to relay information.

Helplessness is the worst thing. That's the worst thing. There's nothing I can do about it. Hearing, [son's name] has been stabbed, the first time, I just fell to my knees. I couldn’t breathe […] it's hard to hear those phone calls and not having to hear his voice myself. That's what's hurting me at the moment. (Rose)

The night before our interview, Hannah was informed by her mother-in-law that her incarcerated partner was on the verge of self-harming. Having twice attempted to take his own life by that time, Hannah was visibly distraught, terrified no one would be able to stop him as she had in the past.

Hopefully, they’re going to get him put on suicide watch again so he's okay… That's all I’m worried about. All I want to know is that he's okay, just to be told that. (Hannah)

She had no means to contact her partner or his prison directly. Compounding her harrowing worry, Hannah had to endure an agonising 24-hour wait for an update from her in-laws. She had to wait for her partner to call his family, which he could only do in the evening, or the worst-case scenario, wait for the prison to notify his family of his hospitalisation or death. She would only receive news when her in-laws arrived for their scheduled visit the following day. Unable to autonomously establish contact with their incarcerated family member, people had little control over their physical and social isolation in the second dimension of SFI.

Sensorial deprivation

While prisons can be sensorially overwhelming spaces (Herrity et al., 2021), in my experience typically loud, with an unpleasant scent, they are also spaces in which consensual and pleasant senses are scarce. Visitation, phone and video calls with loved ones outside prison can provide some opportunity to see the person, hear their voice or hug. However, when family members are held in different prisons, the opportunities to do any of those things become even more elusive, deepening their physical and social isolation. This sensorial deprivation forged a profound gap between incarcerated loved ones.

Ariadne: What's the trickiest part about both of you being in prison?

Hannah: Not being able to see him, not being able to hug him, just to touch him generally. Just not being able to be there for him.

With inter-prison phone calls being infrequent and even unobtainable for some, family members in separate prisons often resorted to writing letters. Yet, many felt that letter-writing was devoid of sensorial qualities.

I can’t smell him through the letters. That's the first thing I do when I see him. Is just breathe him in – just to see his face. Because I think ‘has he lost weight? Has he gained weight? Does he look ill?’ It’d be nice to have a visual with him. It's the not being able to have the… Yes, the Touch. See. Smell. Hear. (Rose)

Like Rose and Hannah, others described their isolation from loved ones as a deprivation of physical and sensorial contact. A few women alluded to or overtly addressed the deprivation of sexual relationships. Towards the end of our interview, Jenny challenged the omission of sex and desire from my questions:

You didn’t ask me one thing! Do I miss not having sex? God, I do, I really do. In Spain, they have conjugal visits with the husbands. It's really funny because the women here talk about sex a lot. I’m not good about talking about sex, but yes, I do miss it.

However, deprivation of sensorial contact was primarily described in terms of a loss of comfort and reassurance. In addition to that, multiple participants explained that without hearing or seeing their loved one, they would not be able to ascertain their genuine emotions. Maddie for instance, believed that only if she heard her partner's voice would she be able to judge whether the information she had received via letters or through friends and family on the outside was accurate.

Hearing his voice and being able to ascertain emotions […] So, then I can ask him ‘are you okay, has anything happened?’ I will be able to tell if he's lying. (Maddie)

Moreover, seeing he ‘struggles to process emotions anyway’ Maddie wondered whether nuance and the tone of her writing were detected by her partner who has autism.

While both men and women experienced being kept in the dark about a family member's well-being, and being unable to initiate contact as infuriating and painful, women in this study were considerably more open about the pains of sensorial deprivation compared to men. This could partly be attributed to the sociocultural perception of women's vulnerability as acceptable, contrary to the expectation on men to keep their emotions covert. However, I believe the primary reason for this disparity lies in the types of relationships. Women were separated through imprisonment from sons, partners, or aging parents, whereas men were primarily separated from brothers. This made the visceral longing for the ‘Touch. See. Smell. Hear’ considerably more intense for the women I interviewed.

Conclusion

In one of the earliest reconceptualisations of depth, Downes clarified ‘by depth of imprisonment is meant the openness of the prison life to the outside world’, attributing such openness partly to ‘the actual opportunities for contact with family and friends by visits, home leave, letters and the telephone’ (1992: 15). Since contact with the family outside prison can effectively act as a portal to the outside world, reducing the depth of imprisonment, it is unsurprising to see that the presence of family within prison can have parallel effects.

Yet, the ‘depth’ in the context of SFI is dynamic and interactive, shaped by a multiplicity of factors. The extent to which imprisonment is experienced as deep, and depth as painful, depends on the quality of the relationship in question. Being known intimately and understood, being perceived as belonging to a family unit in prison can reduce the distance felt between oneself and the outside world. As a consequence, SFI may also reduce the distance between one's sense of self in prison and one's self-identity prior to imprisonment, effectively appeasing ontological insecurity.

The pain of ‘depth’, is partly characterised by the forced social and physical isolation and the loss of control (Crewe, 2021), factors that in the context of SFI, very much depend on the experiential proximity between incarcerated family members. Participants held in the same carceral space, and those held in separate ones from family members reported starkly different experiences. In the first, relatives typically had the ability to interact in person daily, to maintain, resume or develop family practices from banter and quarrels to emotional support and heated altercations. Importantly, they had some degree of control over their relationships in prison, allowing them to initiate interactions when desired. In cases where co-incarceration caused more harm than good, they found ways to move to different cells or wings, thereby reducing their daily interactions. In the second dimension, communication was irregular, dependent on external support and often sensorially muted. While the absence of clear policies for intra-prison contact, coupled with the unavoidable bureaucratic hurdles of inter-prison contact, deepened the gulf between incarcerated family members, intensifying the overall sense of isolation, separation, and loss of control.

Data from this research suggests that contact and experiential proximity between incarcerated family members, when desired, overwhelmingly improve people's well-being. I am reluctant to propose a definitive set of policy recommendations as I remain cautious of adverse consequences, that excessive monitoring of familial relationships could render imprisonment even more harmful. Nevertheless, by better publicising existing provisions for inter-prison communication, increasing the regularity in which inter-prison calls take place and supporting people accessing them, could reduce feelings of isolation. Within individual establishments, keyworker officers – whose role includes offering individualised support to prisoners – could facilitate regular inter-wing visits or relocations to the same wing or cell, where appropriate and desired.

In a recent elaboration of the concept, Crewe wrote ‘This texture [depth] exists only within the relationship between the subjective experience of imprisonment and freedom’. He continued, ‘the experience of depth is shaped by the extent to which prisoners feel safe, normal and constrained in the free community, as well as by prison conditions themselves’ (2021: 352). The interactive nature of depth being particularly striking in the context of SFI, this article suggests that to assess the texture of imprisonment, including depth, one must ask not merely what or whom people are separated from when taken out of the community but also whom or what they reunite with when incarcerated. In this regard, SFI highlights an aspect that is rarely seen in narratives about prison: the presence of emotions, love, and care (some notable exceptions: Laws, 2022; Straub, 2021). Without seeking to minimise the reality that disagreements, friction and trauma are also integral parts of familial relationships, both inside and outside of prison, SFI can provide a more humanistic and comprehensive view of those held in carceral spaces; as people endowed with profound emotions, life-histories and relationships.

Beyond its implications on individual experiences of imprisonment, SFI offers insights with wider societal and theoretical implications. It disrupts the rigid boundary between life inside/outside prison. In other words, the presence of families inside prison walls challenges the conception of prisons as ‘total institutions’ (Goffman, 1961), distinct from the outside world. On the contrary, through SFI, the prison is reframed as a space permeated by family practices, emotional bonds, memories and culture. The prison system effectively becoming a complex mechanism of family intervention that can strain and even sever familial ties, but also a channel through which relationships can be maintained and renegotiated.

While SFI captures a distinct moment in time when two or more family members find themselves incarcerated, the legacies of that experience may linger beyond it. As such, there is a need to explore the implications of SFI over time on three levels: the micro-level personal, meso-level institutional and the macro-level sociopolitical. The latter being especially pertinent considering that the individuals who come into the grip of the criminal legal system, drawn from the same families and possibly communities, are already likely to face multiple disadvantages (Ellis, 2024; Smith et al., 2007; Social Exclusion Unit, 2002); disadvantages that imprisonment is known to further entrench (Besemer and Dennison, 2018; Jardine, 2018; Lee et al., 2014).

Figure 1.

Quadrants of proximity in SFI.

Figure 2.

The dimensions of SFI.