Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to consider if the much-publicised ‘causal relationship’ between prison officer numbers and prisoner violence is a form of ‘penal agnosis’: the cultural production of penal ignorance (Proctor, Agnotology: a missing term to describe the cultural production of ignorance. In R. Proctor & L. Schiebinger (Eds.), Agnotology: the making and unmaking of ignorance. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008). My use of penal agnosis draws directly from the writings of Cohen (States of denial. Cambridge: Polity, 2001) and Mathiesen (Silently silenced. Winchester: Waterside Press, 2004). Silencing techniques deployed in everyday life help to keep people quiet and neutralise criticism. Whilst these are varied, of particular concern here is when an event becomes “isolated in the present” (Mathiesen, Silently silenced. Winchester: Waterside Press, 2004: 42), specifically contemporary media and political discussions of prison officers and prison violence. This chapter provides a theoretical context to the invisibility of historical evidence regarding the deeply embedded harms and violence of penal confinement. It focuses on how the narrative of prison staffing levels is not only time-locked but also how the current understandings of the relationship with violence are derived primarily from the perspective of prison officers. Through critique of this approach an alternative space is opened for thinking differently about how to best respond to the current harms and violence of incarceration.
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Notes
- 1.
Liz Truss was replaced as Justice Secretary by David Lidington in June 2017.
- 2.
Thanks to Joe Sim, who initially highlighted this role of the POA in current debates.
- 3.
The articles, however, were primarily derived from a search of every story in The Guardian 2016 “Prisons and Probation” website archive, unsurprisingly resulting in this newspaper having most articles in the study (33 articles).
- 4.
There were 17 citations of the POA in November and December 2016, which is approximately half of the number across the whole year in the sample.
- 5.
Although there is currently a clear coincidence of interests in highlighting the failed discipline in prisons, there still remains considerable tensions between the POA and the UK government. More than 10,000 prison officers have taken part at midnight on 15 November 2016. Prisons went into ‘lockdown’—operating at skeletal staffing levels. The relationship between the government and POA has traditionally been one of hostility and mistrust—so much so that in 1992, a previous Conservative administration tried to abolish the POA.
- 6.
This is a phrase is attributed to Joe Sim.
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Scott, D. (2018). Penal Agnosis and Historical Denial: Problematising ‘Common Sense’ Understandings of Prison Officers and Violence in Prison. In: Barton, A., Davis, H. (eds) Ignorance, Power and Harm. Critical Criminological Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97343-2_10
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