Exploring the value of queer archives in queer criminology: Interrogating narratives of incarceration and offending

Abstract

This article explores the potential of queer archival material to disrupt and nuance dominant criminological narratives on a range of criminal justice-related issues in the lives of queer people. It does so in two contexts: regarding narratives focused on queer experiences of incarceration; and narratives focused on queer offending. Research on queer experiences of incarceration suggests that queer people are particularly at risk of homophobic and transphobic abuse and assault in prison, and that they must repress their sexuality and gender in prison. And research on queer pathways to offending highlights the interconnections between criminal justice contact, offending, and forms of inequality that characterise queer lives, positioning queer offending as largely driven by those inequalities and their resulting harms. By engaging with a unique collection of queer archival materials, specifically the correspondence of incarcerated queer people, this article queers those dominant narratives. It does so by paying particular attention to the experiences of the only transgender correspondent in this collection. That person’s experiences very clearly illustrate the complex intersections between queer lives and criminal justice and the subsequent need to queer the dominant narratives in this space. Additionally, their experiences illuminate how archival materials in queer criminology foster the emergence of complexity and nuance in our analyses and offer new directions for queer political reform and activism in crime and justice contexts.

Introduction

Queer archives can not only serve as a rich source of material to deepen criminologists’ understandings of a range of criminal justice-related issues in the lives of queer people, but they can also help to dislodge and queer dominant criminological narratives on these same issues. This article explores the potential of queer archival material to do this in two contexts: regarding narratives focused on queer experiences of incarceration; and narratives focused on queer offending. While queer criminology’s emergence has seen an increased focus on the complex array of issues that queer people encounter in their interactions with the agents and institutions of criminal justice, the picture that much of that research paints is grim, largely illustrating the significant injustices and harms queer people face in these contexts. Research on queer experiences of incarceration, for example, suggests that queer people are particularly at risk of homophobic and transphobic abuse and assault in prison, that they must repress their sexuality and gender, and, for trans people especially, that their vulnerability is increased because prisons are designed according to a strict gender binary and therefore cannot adequately respond to their unique needs (Buist and Lenning, 2023; Stanley and Smith, 2015). Research on queer pathways to offending, to take another example, highlights the interconnections between criminal justice contact, offending, and forms of inequality that characterise queer lives, positioning queer offending as largely driven by those inequalities (Asquith et al., 2017).

This article simultaneously extends and queers the narratives in these contexts. Throughout this article, the term ‘queer’ will be used to refer to collective groups, objects, or experiences (i.e. queer people, queer archives, queer lives), and it will also be used, in line with much Queer Theory, as a verb. To ‘queer’ something in this sense is to render it strange, to step outside of the taken-for-granted, and to disrupt our common ways of thinking or doing (Ball, 2016). To queer dominant narratives is to bring to light alternative ways of thinking that might be overlooked, and which highlight the inadequacies or oversights of those dominant narratives, challenging their claim to accuracy or completion. Doing so not only shows that the world is messier than these dominant narratives might acknowledge, but it opens new avenues for thinking about the world and for pursuing political change within it (Ball, 2016).

This article undertakes this ‘queering’ by engaging with a unique collection of queer archival materials – the correspondence of incarcerated queer people. While the analysis below considers the experiences of correspondents broadly, it pays particular attention to the correspondence of the only trans person in this collection. It does so for several reasons. First, providing space to explore the experiences and narratives of trans people in this context goes some way to correcting the general exclusion of such narratives from criminology. Second, this person’s experiences very clearly illustrate the complexities in the intersections between queer lives and criminal justice, in turn highlighting the need to nuance or queer the dominant narratives in this space. Finally, a specific focus like this will also illuminate the real benefit of engaging with such archival materials in queer criminology. Specifically, it will show how these materials allow complexity and nuance to emerge in ways that queer existing narratives, and which might not otherwise emerge. As this article will highlight, the insights provided by these materials suggest that queer incarceration and offending are messier than dominant narratives might allow, and that these narratives must always remain open to queering. Queer lives disrupt the taken-for-granted, and queer criminology should continue to explore methodological approaches and materials that best foster this disruption.

The archive and the correspondence

To queer existing narratives around incarceration and offending, this article turns to a collection of materials – specifically, the correspondence of incarcerated queer people – housed in a publicly accessible archive in the United States. The article suggests that an ‘archival turn’ (Arondekar et al., 2015) within queer criminology, such as that which occurred in queer studies over a decade ago, has significant potential to enhance the field and offer unique insights into a variety of topics of interest to queer criminologists.

The ‘archival turn’ refers to a shift in queer studies where scholars began to recognise the potential of queer archives to elaborate on queer history and to understand queer communities and lives with greater depth and richness. Queer archives emerged out of a need to find ways of recording and memorialising queer people’s lives. Historically, queer lives have been difficult to trace. Queerness often left no historical record, having been hidden, alluded to, or only discussed in personal papers or other documents using coded references. When queer lives did appear in conventional archives, they were often not catalogued or they emerged in the form of newspaper stories, police reports, or academic studies, all of which reflect the social context in which they were produced – one where, by and large, queerness was criminalised and seen as deviant (Cvetkovich, 2003; Kumbier, 2014; Stone and Cantrell, 2015). The point of queer archives, then, is to challenge the representations, descriptions and stories that emerge from official archives and the mainstream histories that they produce (Cvetkovich, 2003; Halberstam, 2005; Kumbier, 2014; Kunzel, 2008; Loftin, 2012; Love, 2007; Marshall et al., 2015; Stone and Cantrell, 2015). As Stone and Cantrell (2015) suggest, the queer archive, ‘. . .then becomes a place of recovery, a recuperative project of moving from silence to productive, transformative discourse’ (p. 3).

Historically, queer communities have preserved their histories and communal memory through grassroots efforts. Several queer archives began as the personal collections of community members stored in that person’s home or in community centres. These personal collections did not only (or even primarily) consist of official documents but largely took the form of ‘ephemeral objects’ such as posters, political material, clothing, or everyday objects (Kumbier, 2014). These ‘ephemeral objects’ and other personal materials like diaries, letters, or photographs, are the ‘stock-in-trade’ of queer archives, as these trace the existence and experiences of queer communities when no public institution has systematically or historically collected such material (Cvetkovich, 2003). As Cvetkovich (2003) elaborates, ‘in the absence of institutionalised documentation or in opposition to official histories, memory becomes a valuable historical resource, and ephemeral and personal collections of objects stand alongside the documents of the dominant culture in order to offer alternative modes of knowledge’ (p. 8).

Given their inclusion of these ephemeral materials, queer archives are not simply repositories of information but are also ‘archives of feeling’ (Cvetkovich, 2003). They serve as memorials to pain and trauma alongside resilience and strength. This also means that the queer researcher’s engagement with queer archives differs from conventional archives. Engaging with these archives involves an affective investment in the materials and an attachment to the objects studied (Cvetkovich, 2015). In this way, not only do queer archives allow for new insights and knowledges to emerge, but queer archives queer the very practice of research.

To date, queer criminological research has largely proceeded using conventional research tools often utilised in criminology, such as surveys and interviews. This is understandable, given the focus on establishing queer criminology as a field and enhancing the representation of queer people in criminal justice-focused research to ensure meaningful inclusion within criminology (see Ball, 2020; Ghaziani and Brim, 2019; Meezan and Martin, 2009; Woods, 2014). However, it is surprising that queer criminologists have not, to date, made greater use of queer archives in their research, particularly considering the historical context out of which these archives emerged. There is considerable scope for expanding the materials that queer criminologists engage with to understand queer lives. Queer archives, this article suggests, can be a rich source of material to deepen criminologists’ understandings of the impacts of criminal justice systems and agents in the lives of queer people, while also dislodging and queering dominant criminological narratives. These archives are powerful because they can provide insights that would otherwise be difficult to gain, or might not simply emerge, through conventional research approaches. A collection of correspondence, for instance, offers unexpurgated narratives of a person’s experience over an extended period, and on a range of issues, in their own words which might not be possible to capture using conventional research techniques. Moreover, in the context of research with incarcerated people (including queer people), analysing correspondence can circumvent some of the constraints that might be imposed by prison authorities on access, or that might prevent incarcerated queer people from speaking honestly about their lives to a researcher. The fact that archival materials are generally not produced for research purposes but rather are created organically in a person’s life offers considerable advantages over materials specifically produced for, or as, research. Some of the specific benefits of the correspondence utilised here will be expanded upon below.

The correspondence and Dee

The specific archival materials discussed here consist of a collection of correspondence between 16 incarcerated queer people in the United States, and a gay man outside of prison. The correspondence began initially through a prison ‘pen pals’ scheme. These schemes were commonly facilitated through gay community publications, particularly in the United States, and reflect a strong history of solidarity between the gay community and those incarcerated (see further, Kunzel, 2008). The correspondence also developed through established networks among queer incarcerated people. Existing research on the correspondence of incarcerated people points out the way such correspondence offers incarcerated people a form of ‘escape’ from daily life and the harsh conditions of prison. There is also a substantial literature on prison autobiography. While such autobiographies do not necessarily take the form of correspondence, they sit alongside research on the correspondence of incarcerated people as a field of prison writing directly by incarcerated or formerly incarcerated people (for an extensive discussion, see Kelly and Westall, 2021).

The correspondents in this specific collection include 15 cisgender men who identified as gay, bisexual, or pansexual, and one trans person. They were serving sentences of anything from several months to 30 years, for a variety of offences including murder, assault, computer fraud, and sexual assault. Although the dates of correspondence for each individual differed, the full body of correspondence covers the early 1990s to the late 2000s. ¹ There are several distinct features of this collection that allow for unique insights into the incarceration of queer people. First, this collection allows for the experiences of multiple people in different contexts to be explored. The length and depth of some of the correspondence also offers rich and detailed narratives about the lives of correspondents, and their experiences over time. These discussions are not limited to the interests of the researcher, constructed through their survey or interview questions, but are rather driven by the correspondents themselves. And, given that this correspondence emerged organically, without reference to principles of research design for the selection of participants, it means that the correspondents are not incarcerated for one single offence or to be found in one single prison. Also notable is the fact that correspondents were not incarcerated for queer-related offences, but rather for an array of other crimes. This itself is unique in queer criminology, where often the focus is on those unjustly treated or criminalised by the institutions of criminal justice due to their queerness. Here, the focus is on the experiences of queer people who may have committed serious and/or violent offences. The article contends that these factors – the depth of correspondence, the breadth of correspondents, offences, and experiences, not to mention the originality of such accounts – mean that this collection has much of value to offer queer criminology.

While this article draws broadly from the experiences of all correspondents (for a more detailed discussion, see Ball, 2024), particular focus will be paid to the experience of the only transgender correspondent, who I will refer to throughout as Dee. Dee was 44 years old at the time of the correspondence in 2004 and was 7 years into a 22-year sentence for assault with a deadly weapon. At no point throughout their letters do they explicitly articulate how they identify. The closest they come to this is to say that they were ‘dealing with’ issues of ‘crossdressing, transvestism and transsexuality’, ² and had been since the age of 12 or 13. Moreover, they never state what their pronouns are or provide a name that reflects their gender. In fact, they continue to sign their letters with the name that they were given at birth. For these reasons, I will use neutral pronouns for Dee below. However, in line with Stryker’s (2008: 1) view that ‘transgender’ refers to people ‘who move away from the gender they were assigned at birth, people who cross over (trans-) the boundaries constructed by their culture to define and contain their gender’, I have continued to use the term ‘trans’ to refer to Dee. The term contains the complexity and flexibility necessary to appropriately capture many of Dee’s experiences in the absence of them explicitly stating an alternative term that they prefer.

As will become apparent, Dee’s experiences of incarceration, offending, and performing gender in prison simultaneously reinforce, nuance, and challenge the orthodox narratives about queer incarceration and offending mentioned above. At times, the stories that Dee recounts reflect what is already known about trans experiences of incarceration, pathways to offending, and the connections between queerness and offending, while at other times their stories lay bare the inadequacies of such narratives and highlight the need for further nuance to better reflect the complexity and messiness of such experiences. It is because they queer dominant narratives in these ways that Dee’s experience is worth the focused attention they are given here. As the only trans person among the correspondents, their experience offers a unique perspective that is worth further consideration, particularly also because trans experiences are still often overlooked in research. Indeed, such a specific focus arguably does justice to the reason that such materials appear in the archive in the first place. It is not a stretch to imagine that the donor of these letters (a gay man, who was the original correspondent outside of prison) felt that the stories they tell – whether quotidian or extraordinary – held some sort of historical value to the queer community, worth at the very least preserving and making available to a broader audience. The focused attention provided by this article goes some way to respecting such intentions.

Queer repression and life in prison

As noted earlier, voluminous research has explored the experiences of incarcerated queer people, particularly from the standpoint of sexual relations and sexual subjectivity in prison, and homophobic and transphobic abuse in such contexts (see Buist and Lenning, 2023; Butler et al., 2012; Kunzel, 2008; Mogul et al., 2011; Rollins, 2004; Sabo et al., 2001; Simpson et al., 2016; Stanley and Smith, 2015). Much of that research considers the ‘pains’ of imprisonment which, for queer people, include homophobic and transphobic violence, harassment and sexual assault in prison, and the need to remain closeted for their safety. Transgender people experience additional pains due largely to prisons being designed based on a gender binary. This results in trans people often being incarcerated in institutions that reflect the sex they were assigned at birth and having limited access to personal items appropriate to their gender, ultimately producing extreme conditions of vulnerability for them (Carr et al., 2016; Greene, 2023; Mann, 2006; Maycock et al., 2025; Mitchell et al., 2022; Mogul et al., 2011; Spade, 2011; Stanley and Smith, 20015; Sylvia Rivera Law Project, 2007). This kind of focus guides much queer criminological research and the policy prescriptions that emerge from it – placing the primary focus of such research and policy on identifying the specific sexuality- and gender-related pains of imprisonment and directing policy and activism to address these.

While such experiences of repression and violence are widely reported, there is also some scope for highlighting greater complexity and messiness surrounding the performance of sexual and gender subjectivity in prison. Claims that queer subjectivities are inevitably repressed, which dominate much of the literature, can be nuanced by paying attention to the ambivalence on these matters in the narratives of many correspondents in this study. Many of the gay, bisexual, and pansexual correspondents in this research did not recount examples of homophobic violence in their letters. Rather, they spoke more about the mundane realities of prison life – their boredom, their occasional fulfilment through work, their friendships and (overt) queer social networks in prison (C14). They rarely mentioned a need to be closeted. Many even observed what might have been a kind of tolerance of their sexuality. One correspondent memorably wrote ‘I would kiss a man whenever I want, let some fucker hit me’ (C5), expressing little concern that he would face a negative response to such an expression of same-sex intimacy (or at least suggesting that he could handle any such reaction). By far, most discussions of violence and trauma were focused on the prison itself as a traumatic environment for everyone – one that meant they witnessed suicide attempts or routine violence from correctional staff – as opposed to a traumatic environment specifically for queer people.

On the face of it, Dee’s experience as an incarcerated trans person aligns with the narratives of repression. At no point during their correspondence do they recount overt examples of violence or discrimination, however their experience of incarceration is largely one in which they felt compelled to repress their gender, so this is perhaps not surprising. The prison environment was clearly not one where Dee felt able to openly express their gender. Notably, however, they never actually state why this might be the case – perhaps Dee simply took it for granted that they could not be out in prison, and therefore it seemed so unremarkable that they did not feel a need to remark upon it. In any case, Dee defers many of the outward indicators of transition until after they have left prison. As mentioned above, they never indicate their pronouns and nor do they indicate that they would prefer to use a different name other than that which they were assigned at birth. In one letter they also state that ‘[a]fter my release I will continue counselling, live as a woman for at least 1 year and then hopefully be scheduled for G.R.S (gender reassignment surgery) to become a biological woman’. Given the correspondence occurred in the early 2000s, the lack of what we might consider to be some expected indicators of transition may reflect the broader social environment for trans people in the United States at the time, as well as Dee’s still somewhat emergent understanding of their own gender.

While not being able to express their gender openly in prison, it is notable that there was at least one site in which Dee and the other correspondents were able to explore and express their sexual and gender subjectivities, and that was in the space provided by the correspondence itself. Emerging research is beginning to chart similar unexpected sites in which incarcerated people can have experiences that somewhat escape the grasp of prison regimes, including experiences of pleasure and fulfilment (Carr et al., 2016; Comfort, 2007; Vasiliou, 2020). Queer archival materials such as this collection of correspondence encourages us to consider the correspondence itself as a new avenue through which to perform sexual and gender subjectivities, and to take this seriously in research. All correspondents used the space provided by such correspondence as an opportunity to claim, explore, and perform their sexual or gender subjectivities, discuss sexual fantasies, engage in queer sociality, and find pleasure in new ways against the backdrop of their incarceration and often in the absence of other opportunities to do so.

While their trans subjectivity was something that Dee did not seem to openly discuss in the prison environment, it was something that they discussed at length through their correspondence. Throughout their correspondence, the outside correspondent sent Dee many resources including books on trans issues and even queer theory. At times the correspondence reads as a discussion of the resources that they are engaging with, and how this is shaping Dee’s own understanding of their gender, mixed with the outside correspondent’s own views on the resources that are worthwhile engaging with. Notably, in one letter, the outside correspondent, having searched for a suitable book to send Dee for their birthday, sent them Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, writing that ‘[i]n skimming the preface I would guess that a female would have a problem with what she is talking about or her point of view. But I’m sending it along, maybe you can find a few words or thoughts of interest as you consider moving through the gender world’. Additionally, the correspondence was a space for Dee to express their trans subjectivity for others, and to help make their future performance of this subjectivity more possible. Specifically, Dee noted several times throughout the correspondence that they were sending some of the resources that they received on to their family, who wanted to learn more about trans issues to better support Dee upon their release. As such, being able to access these resources offered significant possibilities for Dee to understand and explore their own gender, the wider trans community, and to perform their gender more openly. Within the prison context, the correspondence operated as a relatively safe space for queerness and its expression and exploration.

As the above analysis suggests, for Dee and many of the other correspondent in this research, their experience of incarceration can both align with, and significantly differ from, expected narratives about queer experiences in prison. It has brought to light that incarcerated queer people do not always feel a need to hide their sexuality or gender, and often express greater concern about the more general trauma produced by incarceration itself than any specific sexuality- or gender-related harms. This nuances queer criminology’s empirical and political focus on those specific harms and addressing them, suggesting a broader focus that might be useful to explore. Engaging with this correspondence has also brought to light the important role of correspondence as a space for exploring sexuality and gender – a context that can often be overlooked if the focus is solely on the ways that sexuality and gender are repressed in the physical environment of the prison. Identifying further productive spaces for sexuality and gender performance is necessary in a more fully rendered and nuanced understanding of queer experiences of incarceration.

Queer subjectivity and offending

The queer archival materials explored here can also help to nuance the way we understand pathways to queer offending and how we construct the links between queer subjectivity and offending. Correspondents wrote a lot about their offences in their correspondence, providing ample scope to examine these issues.

Historically, the social sciences have conceptually associated being queer and criminal offending, largely as a by-product of the criminalisation of same-sex sexual relations and gender nonconformity (Woods, 2014). Queer legal and social activism has worked very hard over time to untangle these associations by arguing that queer people were not inherently criminal or deviant but were positioned as such because of the ways that hetero- and cis-normativity were built into legal, social, and cultural structures. This desire to separate queerness and offending has found recent expression in queer criminology through research that charts the variety of factors that contribute to queer people offending or otherwise encountering the criminal justice system. For example, Asquith et al. (2017) have referred to this as the ‘queer criminal career’ and note the ways that heteronormativity and cisnormativity continue to produce the conditions that see queer people exposed to the risk of criminalisation or brought to the attention of criminal justice agents. Such factors include family exile, societal homophobia, and transphobia, which can lead young LGBTQ people into committing survival crimes that then lead to contact with criminal justice authorities. Queer offending, this position suggests, is the result of this confluence of harmful factors.

Drawing attention to these circumstances is important as it shifts the focus from queer subjectivity itself as the cause of offending to the structural factors around queer subjectivity at play here. However, such accounts can overlook the clear connections that may exist between queer subjectivity and offending. By suggesting that offending is the result of trauma of some sort, little space is provided for recognising queer agency in offending. In Panfil’s view, recognising that queer people are ‘citizens with the same capabilities for control and (or, and thus) crime’ as non-queer people (Panfil, 2014: 104) offers a fuller picture of queer offending. It prevents us from thinking of queer people as solely victims of crime or of circumstance. It also opens original ways of thinking about the connections between queer subjectivity and offending.

Several of the correspondents in this study elaborate on their offending in ways that force us to recognise their agency, and the role of their queer subjectivity in this context. Evading any attempt to hold queer subjectivity and offending apart is the fact that at least eight of the correspondents had committed sexual offences against children and minors, several of whom openly articulated the connections between their subjectivity and their offending (see McDonald, 2022; Walker and Panfil, 2017 for further discussion of the complexities of exploring child sexual abuse and queer contexts). None of those who had committed the more violent or serious offences – that is, where consent was absent, and where the offender lacked remorse and was significantly older than the victim – identified as gay. However, those who committed ‘statutory rape’ offenses – that is, where there was no violence, no significant age gaps between the parties, and consent was arguably present (despite the other party being under the legal age of consent) – did identify with the gay community. And it was those correspondents themselves who specifically tied their offending to that identification. They did this not by saying that being gay caused their offending, but because it was their confusion around and exploration of their sexuality that was salient to their offending. For example, they noted that they were not attracted to minors specifically but nevertheless developed a relationship with someone below the legal age of consent for a range of reasons including being involved in a sporting group, having few other friends, and having little or no experience in relationships. For these people, corresponding with a member of the gay community while incarcerated allowed them to explore their own sexuality and connected them to a community they felt they were a part of. For some, the way that this exploration and community connection modelled healthy and non-criminal relations also offered a path out of offending (C3; C8). In this context, constructing a ‘normative’ gay subjectivity was almost a protective pathway to avoid offending.

So, here, we can see multiple conceptualisations of the connection between queer subjectivity and offending, including within the same accounts. Some correspondents were effectively saying that their offending is connected to their confused sexuality or possibly emergent gay subjectivity (but that the offending was not inherent to that subjectivity), while also indicating that the creation of a ‘healthy’ and normative gay subjectivity would safeguard against further offending. While it is hard to imagine a more urgent site for uncoupling the associations between queer subjectivity and offending than in the case of sex offences against children, it is nevertheless important to consider these narratives in understanding queer offending. Completely dismissing those who have committed such offenses from the purview of queer work or from our understandings of the connections between sexuality and offending means that we potentially fail to appreciate the real tangle of subjectivities, experiences, and narratives that all coalesce in these examples (not to mention others), and which may be illuminating, if uncomfortable, to unpack.

Dee’s story also highlights the real complexity in the connections between queerness and offending, noting a very direct link between their gender and their offending. In their correspondence, Dee describes their offence in significant detail. It initially stemmed from their desire to tell their girlfriend at the time of the offence that they were trans:

What happened was this, I knew it was time to tell my girlfriend [. . .] and show her as well who I really was. Knowing she would be coming home from work within the hour I got dressed up. I was in full makeup, lipstick, blush and mascara. What was then my favourite outfit at the time I had on a pink knee length dress, pink camisole, pink halfslip, a matching pink bra and panty set, white garter belt and white stockings. Then I waited for her to arrive, when she did she was none to pleased at my appearance. I tryed telling her I wanted to be feminine like she was but she wasn’t hearing it. She demanded that I move out immediately and that’s when I snapped and got violent. I attacked her with a kitchen knife and to make a long story short although her wounds were not life threatening I got charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

Clearly, Dee’s pathway to incarceration is complex and requires unpacking, as it touches on several threads from the above discussion. First, this is a uniquely queer pathway into crime, connected, as it is, to Dee’s coming out as trans. Dee’s agency is also apparent here – as they indicate, they ‘snapped and got violent’. Yet there is an important context to this violence, as it occurred in response to Dee’s partner’s reaction to their gender nonconformity – a reaction that was itself, in turn, shaped by structural cisnormativity and transphobia. While Dee’s girlfriend is clearly the victim of Dee’s physical violence – a point that we must not lose sight of – it is also possible to, at the same time, understand Dee as the victim of the structural violence of cisnormativity, represented by their girlfriend’s reaction. This is not to blame Dee’s girlfriend for the assault they experienced, but it does provide necessary context for fully understanding the offence and constructing the links between queerness and offending in this example. Dee’s offending sits at the intersection of both approaches to understanding queer offending discussed above. Queer agency and structural cisnormativity both produced, but were not fully responsible for, this offence, and thus neither can provide an adequate account of it.

This example not only highlights the inadequacy of existing narratives within queer criminology and the need to push beyond them. It also points to the inadequacy of some conventional criminological frameworks and interpretations of such violence. For example, criminologists could very easily position this as an example of intimate partner violence. Momentarily putting aside criminology’s historical difficulties with understanding and responding to intimate partner violence in queer contexts (see Messinger, 2017, for a further discussion), it is important to ask whether such an interpretation would be productive at all. It might support Dee’s girlfriend’s experience of this offence, but it also seems incomplete, eliding the queerness at the core of these circumstances.

Additionally, given the rise of ‘gender critical’ perspectives in criminology (for a critical discussion, see Valcore et al., 2021), there is an urgent need to find more effective ways to account for such offending than criminology currently offers. It is not a stretch to imagine proponents of such ‘gender critical’ views arguing that it is sufficient to understand this case as an example of men’s violence against women, or an example of ‘coercive control’ (given that, potentially in their view, a ‘male’ has attempted to impose their ‘gender ideology’ on to a ‘female’, and has then reacted violently to enforce this when such identification was rejected). The many inadequacies in the empirical and political claims of those propounding ‘gender critical’ perspectives notwithstanding, Dee’s act could be read as an act of masculine violence, just like it could be seen as an example of intimate partner violence. In these cases, Dee’s queerness – and the deviance that it represents – would be positioned as the central cause of their offending, regardless of the existence of cisnormative structures that have a bearing in this context. Yet, again, it is queerness that offers perhaps the central contextual lens in this example. Queerness helps us to understand that Dee’s offending represented more – a response to being denied an avenue through which, as Butler would put it, they could live a ‘liveable life’ (Butler, 2009).

Ultimately, this example raises more questions than it answers: How do we recognise the very real violence committed in this case while also holding space to see a queer person seeking to be recognised and ensure that they have the space in which to exist? How do we reconcile that desire for queer justice with the injustice they have committed? How do we respond to a coming out experience that involved violence, enacted by the queer person themselves and not, as we might usually expect, by the person to whom they are coming out? And, moreover, how do we recognise overlapping violences here – the physical violence of the assault, the structural and anti-queer violence that threatened to make Dee’s life unliveable (and, perhaps, continues to do so), and the carceral violence that, in Dee’s experience, is now being used to reinforce cisnormativity?

The examples discussed here highlight the significant value of engaging with the correspondence of incarcerated queer people to understand how the connections between queer subjectivity and offending are constructed. The cases discussed here expose dramatically the inadequacies of many conventional and even queer criminological explanations for offending and point to the necessity for understandings that centre queerness and are open to complexity. These examples also highlight the urgency of shifting our understanding in these contexts, lest other, less queer-friendly or simply inaccurate frameworks take over in this space. Some of the correspondents who committed sexual offences tied their offending to their own agency and explicitly to their sexual subjectivity, but also noted that the ‘healthy’ or normative gay subjectivity that they were constructing was, for them, the path away from offending. Dee’s story was a little more complicated, drawing together experiences of victimisation as well as agency and violence. Their offending was firmly connected to their queer subjectivity, and though it was not directly caused by their queer subjectivity (in a way that would see queer subjectivity and criminal deviance as one and the same), this offending was nevertheless bound with, and inescapable from, Dee’s queer subjectivity. As such, neither existing queer nor many general criminological narratives are entirely up to the task of explaining this offending.

Conclusion

This article has argued that queer archival materials – in this case, correspondence from incarcerated queer people – can not only serve as a rich source of material to deepen criminologists’ understandings of a range of criminal justice-related issues in the lives of queer people but can also help to dislodge and queer dominant criminological narratives on these same issues. As it has shown, the depth and breadth of correspondence, for example, allows for a fuller investigation into the questions about subjectivity, life in prison, and offending than would generally be possible through many other research methods used to explore these topics. In taking a more singular and narrow focus on an experience such as Dee’s, this article has also demonstrated the value of these kinds of in-depth exploration, to which archival materials lend themselves. Such focused attention not only draws out the richness of unique or specific experiences, but also serves an important purpose in queer criminology by providing space for voices that have long been overlooked in the discipline generally, and by focusing sustained attention on what they say (in the case of correspondence, very directly through their own words). The unique insights and perspectives offered by a close consideration of other archival materials will no doubt be of significant future benefit to queer criminology.

The insights that this set of materials has offered queer criminology – and criminology more broadly – are unique. Overall, this analysis has allowed for complexity to emerge in our understandings of queer experiences in prison, and in our understandings of queer pathways to offending, and the ways that the connections between queer subjectivity and offending are constructed. The analysis suggests that it is important not just to look at the ways that queer subjectivity may be repressed in prison contexts, but also to look at the avenues that queerness finds for its expression and even growth. It has suggested that queer criminology’s focus on the victimisation and repression of queer people in prison, while important, might also need to be balanced with more sustained attention to the broader traumatic conditions of incarceration. And it has also shown that, at least in some cases, queer offending can only be understood by holding victimisation, agency, and offending together at the same time. Focusing solely on queer experiences of discrimination or trauma as leading to offending has the potential to narrow our understanding of offending and to overlook queer agency.

These insights demonstrate the importance of queering criminological narratives. Engaging with the queer archival materials examined here introduces nuances to existing narratives, highlights their limitations in some instances, and points to the ongoing need to ensure they remain open to challenge and change. This is particularly important if these narratives are to reflect the complexity of queer lives, which exist outside the dominant structures and expectations that characterise hetero- and cis-normativity. This queering is also necessary if these narratives are ultimately to inform changes to criminal justice policies and practices. Accounting for the messiness of queerness in crime and justice contexts requires us to move beyond the conceptual and methodological boundaries of criminology and to investigate new, in-between spaces, and engage with new sources and materials such as the ephemeral and personal, which provide original and otherwise overlooked insights into queer lives. As this article has shown, engaging with queer archives in this way will allow criminology not only to become better at rendering queerness more fully, but by doing so, will expand the spaces in the discipline for difference.