Abstract
This article examines methodological dilemmas surrounding entrée, emotion, and epistemology that can arise when conducting qualitative research in carceral settings. We address how our research team navigated consent and presentations of self for maintaining access; how they managed empathy and the emotional toll of conducting research in adversarial settings; and how conflicting narratives raised questions about data validity and knowledge construction. Analysis reveals how institutional power dynamics shape behind-the-scenes methodological decisions we make during fieldwork. Without open discussion, researchers risk perpetuating the opacity we seek to diffuse and replicating the power dynamics we aim to objectively document within total institutions.
Introduction
Qualitative work examining carceral institutions has increased in the past decade (Abbott et al., 2018; Baldwin et al., 2021; Beyens et al., 2015; Drake et al., 2015; Liebling, 2014), along with methodological analyses exploring techniques for approaching and examining the various challenges associated with this work (e.g., Drake et al., 2015; Easterling & Johnson, 2015; Gibson-Light & Seim 2020; Gomes & Duarte 2020; Liebling, 2014; Sloan & Wright, 2015; Watson & Van Der Muelen, 2019). Some of this research has focused on the emotional toll of qualitative research in prisons (Liebling, 2014); ethical issues that arise when enlisting populations with limited control over their daily movements (Easterling & Johnson, 2015); and problems with gaining access to carceral institutions overall, particularly when it comes to institutional review board (IRB) processes and building relationships with institutional gatekeepers (Gibson-Light & Seim, 2020). More recently, scholars have also considered the role of power dynamics in the prison research process. Gibson-Light and Seim, for example, argue that prison ethnography is “punishing fieldwork” that thrusts the researcher into a series of power struggles with and between prisoners and staff (2020). Tensions can arise when research takes staff away from their duties; when researchers are asked (or told) to supervise prisoners while conducting observations; and when staff interrupt private interviews in the name of security or time management. Jefferson and Schmidt (2019) similarly argue that prisons provide a unique space for exploring power dynamics because they reveal “perhaps the deepest, darkest, most vulnerable aspects of the state…Power flows in multiple directions; authority is diffused in unpredictable fashion…legitimacy is continuously contested and coercion is a deliberate part of the foundation” (p. 160). Thus, it is important that reflexive analyses of prison research regularly consider how power dynamics between the researcher and their interlocutors, and between the researcher and the various spaces their work occupies (i.e., the field site, the academic discipline), shape the research and their practice.
This article attends to this very issue by centering the role of power in discussions around prison access (entrée), emotion work throughout the research process, and knowledge production (epistemology) about prisons and incarcerated populations. Drawing upon our shared experience conducting research in prison systems across the western United States over the course of 5 years, we argue that prisons not only amplify the already complex relationships between the researcher and the researched, but also the relationships between the researcher and their respective academic field. This amplification, in turn, intensifies and magnifies the challenges associated with gaining and maintaining access to, managing emotions in, and producing “truth” about power-suffused places. The heightened stakes require researchers to ask new questions or seek new answers to familiar questions: How do we present ourselves to incarcerated participants versus staff? How much do we ask to see? How do we manage consent during prison observations? How do we set boundaries with our participants? How do we reconcile conflicting narratives between staff and incarcerated participants? And how do our answers to each of these questions affect the research narratives that we ultimately present? Paying close attention to how we navigate these questions in the prison context not only facilitates transparency, it minimizes the sense of risk researchers might feel when being reflexive about the moral, political, and emotional challenges of doing prison research. In turn, reflexivity with an eye toward power dynamics can change how we understand data collection, our interpretation of the data, and even what “counts” as data (Liebling, 1999, 2014).
We focus on the issues of entrée, emotion, and epistemology within qualitative prison research for several reasons. First, access is often framed as a discrete event that either happens for the researcher or does not (e.g., Field et al., 2019; Monahan & Fisher, 2014). More recent scholarship on prisons, however, has centered on the process of gaining access and how such access negotiations—particularly within hard-to-reach places like prisons—shape our empirical lens and research findings (Gomes & Duarte, 2020; Goodman, 2011; Hoang & Parreñas, 2016; Jefferson, 2015). We extend this conversation by examining not only the singular act of gaining access, but also the constant renegotiation involved with maintaining access (Davies and Peters, 2014) to both our field sites and our participants.
Second, while the emotional experience (and often toll) of conducting prison research has received increased attention (Jewkes, 2012; Liebling, 1999, 2014), positivist expectations around objectivity often limit how researchers interrogate, manage, and write about the emotional qualities of prison research. Following Jewkes (2012) and Liebling's (2014) arguments that emotion can be an asset for data collection and analysis (and even serve as a data source itself), we examine how emotional encounters in the field shape the initial questions we ask research subjects, where we decide to probe further, the answers we receive, and the results we present.
Lastly, we call attention to the challenges of knowledge production in political and adversarial spaces like prisons. Specifically, we discuss the difficulties of interpreting, reconciling, and reporting the often-conflicting narratives provided by staff and prisoners. With every research challenge we discuss, we attend to the power dynamics involving both the researcher and the context in which the researcher operates, including the institutions of the prison and the academy, which share similarly disciplining characteristics (Foucault, 1977). We conclude with a discussion of the practical and epistemological implications of these challenges of prison qualitative research, calling for future researchers to continue open dialogue about the everyday dilemmas experienced during carceral fieldwork and what these dilemmas reveal about prisons and punishment.
Data & Methods
The present analysis leverages our individual and shared experiences conducting research on various projects examining living and working conditions, as well as reform efforts, within carceral facilities across the United States. Collectively, over the course of 5 years, we have visited nearly a dozen prisons and conducted over 200 interviews with prisoners and staff inside these facilities. Depending on the study, prison visits have ranged from 1 to 3 days, with daily site visits lasting as long as 14 h each. In total, we have spent at least 300 h in the field conducting observations and interviews inside both solitary confinement and general population housing units.
While the studies from which we draw our experiences were not designed explicitly as ethnographies, qualitative research within prisons can create an environment that closely resembles “doing ethnography” (Goodman, 2011). For example, the process of conducting interviews demands extended access to otherwise closed institutions, giving researchers the opportunity to both observe and experience the logistics of prison life—from x-ray and metal detection searches of our bodies and belongings, to navigating layers of automated doors, to constant monitoring via surveillance cameras, to losing track of the time of day in windowless offices and visiting rooms while conducting interviews. Though we, unlike incarcerated people, may leave the facility at the end of the day, the nature and extent of our immersion continues to shape our understandings of our field sites, subjects, and the process of doing prison research more broadly. Each car ride and flight to and from our field sites, and the many ensuing team meetings thereafter, contained conversations about how we engage with our participants, how we manage the ethical and emotional demands of prison research, how we reconcile the conflicting narratives or truths of our study respondents, and how we manage the presentation of our findings in light of commitments to the field (as social scientists), our participants, and our research partners. This analysis is an effort to organize these observations in a way that can be instructive not only for us moving forward, but also for others research within any carceral space.
Entrée: Access as Process
Within any study involving human subjects, anonymity and/or confidentiality assurances are embedded in the consent process to protect a participant from harm and facilitate more candid responses during data collection. These protections are particularly critical for marginalized populations and/or projects that examine sensitive topics, as the stakes for engagement in a study may be higher (e.g., retaliation from a supervisor or peer). To minimize potential threats of harm and maximize confidentiality within a prison, researchers can conduct interviews in attorney booths, closed offices, or classrooms outside the observation of staff or other prisoners; discard audio files upon transcription; and anonymize data, among other strategies. Although these tactics are helpful at minimizing harm, there are also ethical issues around consent and confidentiality outside the confines of the actual interview that prison researchers must consider. For purposes of this article, we discuss two such issues, both of which occurred separately from the formal consent process: strip searches and self-presentation.
Navigating Agreements Around Participation and Consent
While polices might vary across and within institutions, incarcerated persons are often strip searched when returning from a visiting room, classroom, or common area outside their housing unit. Given that interviews are often conducted in these types of spaces to facilitate confidentiality, prospective participants, especially those in restricted housing units, may be subjected to strip search before they fully learn about the study they are being recruited for. As outsiders, researchers are not given much space to resist these types of policies, which are often implemented for the safety and security of a facility. Indeed, repudiation of such policies could result in immediate termination of a project, if interpreted as a lack of deference to and respect for institutional protocols. To avoid the entire moral dilemma and harm presented by a strip search, a researcher might decide to forego these interviews entirely. Yet if the project is abandoned, researchers might also eclipse the agency of the incarcerated individual by making the decision to not participate for them. What if, despite the strip search policy, the incarcerated individual wants to take part in the study? How do you simultaneously minimize harm, recognize the autonomy of incarcerated individuals, and observe the safety and security protocols of facilities?
One strategy that the authors employed to manage these dilemmas was a two-stage recruitment process. The project PI for one study negotiated with prison administrators to allow for preliminary recruitment visits wherein prospective participants were introduced to the study at cell-front prior to the formal interview, which took place on a later date. During these interactions, researchers provided potential interviewees with a study information sheet, verbally introduced themselves and the goals of the study, and answered their questions. An anonymous baseline survey was also administered—all of which were collected by the project team—not correctional officers—at the end each of preliminary site visit. This particular study was focused on understanding the impacts of solitary confinement on those detained in these units. In addition to providing the research team with valuable insights on the demographics, living conditions, and wellbeing indicators for a wider range of participants, the survey provided prospective participants with a glimpse into the types of questions we would later ask within the formal interview. Importantly, it provided a low-stakes opportunity to engage in the study without having to leave one's cell and/or unit— thus avoid the degradation ritual of the the strip search.
Prospective participants were approached again at cell-front during subsequent site visits to reintroduce the research project and solicit them for the interview prior to their leaving their cell. This allowed them time to consider whether they wanted to indeed take part and be subjected to a strip search. Though this approach was resource intensive, it provided incarcerated individuals more time to fully assess the implications of their involvement, the study's intentions, and the researcher's agenda and integrity (e.g., do they seem honest? are they “cops” working with the prison? does it seem like they really care?). Unlike a visit from family or friends, where incarcerated people may be more willing to undergo a strip search to see, hear, and receive comfort from their loved ones, all we could provide as researchers was an opportunity for them to share their story. For some, this is enough motivation, especially for those who may not have had a visit from an outsider in years, or who are otherwise locked in a solitary confinement cell for upwards of 23 h a day. However, for others, the benefits of engaging in research may not outweigh the burdens and invasiveness of a mandatory strip search.
The cell-front recruitment strategy was also pursued out of respect for staff time. Minimizing the human resources burden to correctional staff during a research study is critical to maintaining positive rapport with uniformed staff and administrators, particularly within units such as solitary confinement units that already require more staffing for movement purposes. Rather than have every incarceree be escorted to a visiting room to learn about the study, possibly refuse, and then be escorted back to their cell (which would cut into staff's daily responsibilities), researchers requested to speak only with those that had verbally agreed to participate ahead of time. The benefits of reducing unnecessary escorts to and from a cell cannot be understated, as facilities are often short-staffed and already overloaded with responsibilities that supersede a research study.
Navigating Presentation of Self
Across studies, we engaged in strategic forms of self-presentation that we found necessary to initiate and maintain rapport with both incarcerated people and staff. We explore two examples: context-dependent terminology choices and responding to personal opinion questions directed toward us as researchers. With respect to language, in one project, the authors and larger research team discussed if and how our use of the terms “offender” or “inmate” versus “resident” or “prisoner” might be read by staff versus incarcerated participants. One initial concern was that using the term “prisoner” with staff might raise alarms that we are partial to or have undue empathy toward incarcerated respondents. Similarly, understanding that the term “offender” is fraught with implications about continued criminality, we discussed whether opting for “prisoner” with incarcerated participants may be more appropriate. The interview instrument, for example, consistently employed the term “prisoner.” Team members drew upon prior projects with incarcerated respondents to determine this word choice, as it was the most commonly used identifier. What was less precise, however, was language used during informal conversations that took place with staff as we were being escorted between shifts. Slippage in terminology (e.g., using “offender” or “inmate”) was at times unintentional, but at other times intentional. If a staff member predominantly used “offender” and “inmate” at the start of their interview, for instance, members of our team worried that they would be read as biased or overly sympathetic to the incarcerated if they deviated from staff's own language choice. Ultimately, context played a key role in such on-the-spot decisions about terminology, and each author made their own decisions about which term to use. Attending to terminology and these in-the-moment decisions raises an important and under-appreciated discussion around code-switching instrumentally, for the purposes of gaining and maintaining access to participants in adversarial settings with deeply engrained power differentials between groups. Negotiating what we say and do in an effort to “fit in” with respondents was as much about building rapport as it was about maintaining researcher impartiality and a sense of legitimacy among our respondents. And while these goals are arguably inherent to any research project, the stakes feel heightened when conducting fieldwork inside prisons, given our presence in a space few may ever access. Should we offend or disobey formal and informal strictures around language, we risk losing access to participants and the prison alike.
Certainly, we are not alone in our considerations of how the prison environment can push the researcher to re-think their every move for sake of keeping face. Prisons are heavily controlled and surveilled spaces where hypervigilance about self-presentation is routine behavior, in part because of the adversarial dynamics of the carceral setting (Foucault, 1977; Jefferson & Schmidt, 2019). Nonetheless, being mindful of our presence and use of language brought into focus larger questions about researcher authenticity (see Patenaude, 2004) and identity, and how to negotiate who we are and what we believe in, particularly when confronted with such questions directly. For example, following an interview with a correctional officer working in a solitary confinement unit, the officer asked one author: “What do you really think? Do you want to get rid of segregation?” The researcher felt paralyzed about how to answer.
Looking back, the most honest response in that moment would have been: “Yes. I think most conditions of segregation are detrimental to prisoner and staff wellbeing, and I would like to see the practice (at least as we know it) done away with.” Yet did the respondent, who had just honestly shared beliefs and grievances about the use and practice of segregation, need an honest answer in return? Would honesty build rapport, or even induce an analytically interesting response? Or would honesty create a perception that the researcher was a “prison activist,” “too liberal,” or a “person who wants to eliminate the officer's job”? These perceptions might dissuade future staff engagement in the research, create skepticism about whether the researcher had a political agenda, or tarnish the reputation of the researcher or the study. Given these concerns, the researcher ultimately decided to only imply her critical position: “I don’t know. I see why it's used but I also think there's a lot of room for improvement.”
During the analysis and writing process, the researcher re-visited the transcript of this exchange. Had she missed an opportunity to have a more candid conversation about segregation with staff? More importantly, had she missed an opportunity to reconcile her academic self with her personal self while in the field rather than away from it (see Conover, 2016)? Each author on this article has either been directly impacted by the U.S. penal system or has witnessed first-hand how oppressive the penal system can be for incarcerated people, their families, and their communities. While we have developed an appreciation and understanding of correctional staff and the difficult choices they make (even when we do not agree), we remain critical of the structures and practices that perpetuate harm, particularly by those that hold greater power in the carceral setting, like staff. However, we often find these personal perspectives in direct conflict not only with the disciplinary pressure to present as neutral, objective researchers (Jewkes, 2012; Liebling 1999; Willingham, 2014), but also with the institutional pressure to maintain trust in order to maintain access. In the highly surveilled prison context where distrust is pervasive and where access to a normally hidden space is precarious (Charmaz & Mitchell, 1996; Jefferson & Schmidt, 2019; Rowe, 2011), negotiating our positionality in the day-to-day of data collection is politically fraught.
Emotional Management: Connection and Disconnection
As some scholars have discussed, prisons are “emotionally provocative” places (Newbold et al., 2014) and yet, many researchers remain, at least in their analysis and writing, emotionally disconnected from their work in carceral spaces (Jewkes, 2012). Nonetheless, explicit encounters with the emotional are inherent in studies that seek to assess and understand the impacts of incarceration on prisoners’ physical, mental, and emotional state (e.g., Liebling, 1999, Sparks, 2002). In many cases, incarcerated people participating in social science research have not had the opportunity to talk with a sympathetic listener in weeks, months, or even years. They bring a hunger for interaction to the interview and, in some cases, a desire to drive the interaction or to gain, as Warr (n.d.) has argued, “freedom, autonomy, and human contact,” a relational quid pro quo for the rich data they share with interviewers. Researchers, however, must navigate the fine line between satisfying the incarceree's desire for human interaction without creating an expectation of an ongoing personal relationship. Researchers must also navigate their own goals and expectations, maximizing the limited time available to gather data while avoiding burnout from immersion in a hyper-surveilled institution (Reiter & Koenig, n.d.; Kahn, 2011).
Below, we discuss both the emotional management challenges arising from the need to be empathetic (but not too empathetic) and those arising from the labor of becoming immersed in a highly controlled place with a high volume of people experiencing or recovering from trauma (Blee, 1998). We explore these challenges not only for the sake of reflexivity and transparency, but because the specific ways we navigate them can affect both the kind of data we gather, and, ultimately, the structure of power dynamics in prison.
Bounding Empathy
Rapport, in the sense of mutual respect with our subjects, is essential to qualitative research in any setting (Jewkes, 2012, p. 66) and is the subject of much methodological attention, especially when the research context involves inaccessible places and marginalized populations (Conover, 2016; Hoang & Parreñas, 2016; Jefferson, 2015). Establishing rapport was relatively easy given that all authors had both direct and indirect experiences with the criminal justice system. However, both reciprocating candidly once rapport was established and bounding rapport presented ongoing challenges for each of us. These challenges were especially acute when we shared a specific experience in common with an interview subject (e.g., familial incarceration, self-harm) or when research subjects asked pointed questions about our personal perspectives on their situations, such as asking us about the appropriateness of their behaviors.
During a study on solitary confinement, one author interviewed Michael, 1 an incarcerated people who had been in solitary for 10 months at the time of interview. In response to questions about his mental wellbeing, Michael discussed his ongoing struggles with depression and anxiety, heightened by the recent death of both a sibling and a parent. Given limited opportunities to grieve in a healthy way in segregation, Michael self-harmed as a coping mechanism. The researcher, who had personal experience with a loved one in a similar situation, was able to closely relate to him. Drawing on her own personal experiences, she was able to ask more specific questions about grieving and the emotions behind his self-harm, eliciting increasingly detailed but emotionally fraught responses. The researcher not only empathized with Michael, but also experienced some emotional catharsis in having someone who understood a delicate personal issue she rarely discussed, as well as feeling capable of understanding and comforting Michael due to their shared experience. As the conversation progressed, Michael appeared to become upset while reflecting on his losses and struggles; the researcher felt conflicted between pressing onward (in the name of both rich qualitative data and personal catharsis) and redirecting the conversation in hopes of protecting Michael's emotional wellbeing. When there was a break in the natural flow of the conversation, she resisted the urge to continue, shifting away from this intense line of questioning to a more neutral interview topic.
Reflecting on the interview, the author realized she was balancing a unique opportunity to better understand experiences of self-harm in segregation (a topic of interest to the research team) against both her own and the respondent's wellbeing. Specifically, she did not want to further trigger upsetting thoughts or emotions for Michael, knowing he would have few opportunities to discuss his feelings beyond the end of the interview—lest he seek out a mental health specialist, which is not necessarily a feasible or desirable choice in solitary confinement—and, thus, might be left to deal with such unsettled feelings alone in his cell, potentially resulting in further self-harm. She also did not want to dwell too long on a subject that represented only a fraction of the interview instrument, thereby derailing the interview at the expense of other essential topics. This encounter was ultimately a poignant reminder of how challenging it is to both bear witness to a person's trauma while also being required to compartmentalize your own feelings to maintain the integrity of the interview. In these cases, where shared experience can at once help build rapport but also amplify pressures to maintain composure and objectivity, the emotional costs of prison research and concerns about participant wellbeing are magnified. In the end, this researcher realized that the full research agenda and, above all else, the participant's wellbeing were of upmost priority, especially when compared to intellectual curiosity or the potential for personal emotional catharsis. Instead, she later discussed the issue with a team member, allowing her to process her emotions in a healthy way without adversely impacting Michael or the research. This discussion also helped create a deeper bond between the researcher and the team member—one that became an ongoing safe space for processing the emotional tolls of doing prison research.
In retrospect, our research teams often grappled with how much of our personal experiences and opinions to share and how many questions to ask vulnerable people about emotionally charged topics, as we were all balancing our research agendas with our ethical obligations to facilitate incarcerees sharing their stories while leaving them no worse off than before they spoke with us. Current and formerly incarcerated people (as well as prison staff) frequently describe the opportunity to share their stories as a benefit of participating in research (see e.g., Warr, n.d.). But, we as researchers felt acutely aware of the extent to which, especially for vulnerable prisoner populations, the questions we do and do not ask or answer shape both the narratives participants tell (and, therefore, the data we collect) and the extent to which the interview is comforting or cathartic (and, therefore, not exploitative). Being transparent about how to seek to harmonize our research and ethical agendas is critical both to understanding the data we collect and to developing maximally ethical research protocols.
Emotional Drain
Aside from the challenge of bounding empathy, we have also navigated the emotional drain of conducting interviews in prisons generally and solitary confinement units specifically. A key contributor to this fatigue has been the compressed nature of the fieldwork process, intended to maximize data collection while minimizing the burden on institutional staff that are tasked with managing researcher outsiders. In addition to research involving long days inside facilities (e.g., on one project we spent 10 h or more inside the facility to observe daily routines and interact with staff across multiple shifts), access to water, food, and restrooms was highly controlled, and lodging was often an hour or more drive from prison sites due to their rural locations (Gilmore, 2007; Lotke & Wagner, 2003). In this context, our research teams developed strategies, often on the spot, to cope with physical and emotional fatigue which, like our efforts to bound our empathy, often required us to reconcile research agendas with ethical obligations to ourselves and our subjects.
For instance, after a few intensive days of interviews with one project, team members realized they were inadvertently relying on unsolicited “mini-biographies” provided by prison staff to decide which researcher would interview which incarceree. Staff often relayed these biographies as the researcher waited for the interviewee to be escorted to an interview room. If a staff member labeled an incarcerated subject “vanilla,” meaning they were generally cooperative and did not have notable behavioral issues, an emotionally exhausted team member might volunteer to conduct that interview; however, if a staff member labeled an interview subject “rocky road,” (i.e., had serious mental illness and/or a checkered past with serious or frequent disciplinary infractions, like staff assaults), an intellectually curious or less exhausted team member might volunteer to conduct that interview. Likewise, if a staff member described a particular prisoner's crime (a detail we would not solicit directly 2 and might prefer not to know), and one research team member was uncomfortable with the information or the severity of the crime, that team member might ask another researcher to conduct the interview instead.
When team members discussed the practice of using these “mini-biographies” to select which researcher interviewed which subject, we worried that we were, perhaps, introducing bias into our data collection process, given this was a staff-curated version of who the prisoner was and what the researcher should expect. Nonetheless, we were exposed to this information during interview transitions, even when we did not want to be, further reflecting the challenges of maintaining both rapport and access with respondents, and also with personnel who serve as gatekeepers (See also Davies & Peters 2014). Ultimately, we used this shared information to facilitate an informal matching process that helped to ensure that respondents received a similar level of attention and care that did not vary by the individual researchers’ physical or mental exhaustion, or concerns about engaging with someone who had committed particular crimes. Even so, in retrospect, researchers who opted for a “vanilla” subject often worried that they had lacked empathy in that moment, or perhaps had unwillingly adopted the subjective perspective of the staff. In discussing this practice, however, team members realized that the unsolicited mini-biographies reflect social biases, norms, and power dynamics within the prison – e.g., how staff make sense of the histories and behaviors of the incarcerated people they monitor on a regular basis – and that analyzing their presence, as we have sought to do here, is preferable to ignoring them or pretending they do not exist.
These experiences with confronting hard questions, drawing boundaries, and managing emotional discomfort and exhaustion are analytically important. First, they provide another analytic frame for understanding how difficult it is to work and to live in prisons. We, like incarcerated persons and staff, developed an array of self-preservation strategies to effectively get through long research days and cope with secondary trauma. Human rights organizations are just beginning to acknowledge the need to address the “mental health and wellbeing” of advocates engaged in “investigat[ing] abuse and advocat[ing] for justice” (Human Rights Resilience Project, n.d.; Satterthwaite et al., 2019), but social scientists studying populations exposed to similar traumas could do more to acknowledge these challenges and develop or make use of these kinds of resources. Second, just as with the norms and rules governing incarceree and staff behavior, the norms and rules developed among researchers in carceral settings, like when to ask and answer questions or whether to interview one subject or another, shape the data that is collected. Lastly, emotion management is not only an act of self-preservation for the researcher (thereby allowing them to conduct research in a more thoughtful manner over a longer period), it is essential for the wellbeing of study participants. By upholding emotional boundaries and heeding signs of emotional fatigue or distress, the researcher simultaneously protects themselves, the participants, and the data.
Epistemological Dilemmas
As Lumsden and Winter (2014) note, reflexivity provides a means for “acknowledging and further emphasizing the co-construction of knowledge and understanding that occurs between researchers and participants” (p. 10). This knowledge construction process happens both in the field and away from it, particularly when deciding which narratives or accounts we choose to “give voice to” in our findings. In this section, we highlight how the adversarial dynamics of the prison context made it difficult to interpret the legitimacy, or “truth”, of a respondent's account, and how our research teams tried to reconcile these tensions during both data collection and analysis.
As noted in the prior section, during data collection for one study, prison staff frequently offered unsolicited mini-biographies of incarcerated participants. Inside predominantly male institutions, where incarcerated people often have very limited contact with women from the outside, we as female researchers were particularly primed about the dangers of prisoner manipulation (for a further discussion of manipulation in this context, see Reiter et al., 2021). While staff were likely looking out for our best interest (and arguably theirs), comments about an incarcerated people background were unsettling because of how they could (and did) lead us to question the authenticity of a prisoner's narrative. On one occasion, a staff member provided the following unsolicited description of Santiago, to a team member: “He's one of the worst guys we have in here…he's called hits on tons of people; he's the one orchestrating [the gang].” Although the researcher knew it was good research practice to interpret this comment with a grain of salt (so as to not begin the interview with a biased perception), these scenarios did inevitably introduce a sense of uncertainty around Santiago's personal history and placement in solitary confinement. Interestingly, Santiago argued at the outset of the interview that he had been falsely accused by a confidential informant (CI) of being a gang “shot caller.” Staff had taken the CI's reports as fact, despite what Santiago claimed was a lack of physical “proof” of wrongdoing beyond what was provided in the CI's testimony. Santiago's demeanor during the interview also conflicted with the staff's depiction of him as “the worst of the worst.” Rather than present himself as authoritative or intimidating, he was reserved. Both his soft-spoken demeanor and his confessions about struggling to cope with segregation were inconsistent with the tough, confident, assertive gang leader that one might otherwise expect from someone labeled as the mastermind of a prison gang. Who then was telling the truth? The interviewee, the CI, staff—or perhaps some mix of half-truths in between?
While it may be a moot point and beyond the purview of the researcher to assess whether a participant is in fact telling the “truth,” this encounter did make her question the authenticity of both incarceree and staff accounts and how such conflicts could be presented in later analyses regarding placement and conditions within solitary confinement units. It particularly raised questions surrounding due process, the labeling of gang members, and placement in segregation due to alleged gang status. Santiago was not the only incarcerated respondent who disputed his placement in solitary confinement; many others also argued that their current stint was either unwarranted or overly severe. Presenting only Santiago's or other incarcerated participants’ perspectives of injustice, however, may be read as a biased because it gives voice to, and by extension, legitimizes their claims. By the same token, only presenting the staff's observations of a participant's placement into solitary confinement privileges the narratives of staff. Presenting both observations alongside one another may arguably allow for a more balanced account, if such data are available. Yet, this tactic also raises questions as to why one party's perspective is needed to validate the others. These decision points matter not just for how a researcher presents their data, but also for continued or future access to prisons as field sites (e.g., if publications are read as threatening to the institution), and where and whether such research gets published (e.g., if seen as providing a biased account).
The challenges of navigating competing truths are not limited to divergent respondent narratives (McEvoy, 2006). When utilizing a mixed-methods design, their narratives may also conflict with “official” data sources created by administrators or clinicians (Hesse-Biber, 2010), such as files and records that, without a juxtaposing narrative, we would be inclined to take as authoritative truth (Cheek, 2007). As part of one study, the authors were granted access to prison administrative data, as well as incarcerated persons’ medical and disciplinary histories. While often enlightening and clarifying, these records at times contradicted the intervieewee's narratives. For example, one interviewee, Jacob, expressed concern about being wrongfully placed in solitary for assaulting a staff member, which he described as mere “horseplay.” Jacob did not explicitly describe what he meant by “horseplay,” but was emphatic that the event was consensual for both himself and the staff member. Upon inspection, Jacob's medical file included comments from a psychiatrist that contradicted his account. In the file, the psychiatrist wrote that Jacob characteristically “fails to take responsibility for his actions,” calling into question the larger validity of the incarcerated person's perspective. If, as in the psychiatrist's expert opinion, Jacob consistently fails to take responsibility for his actions, we may be more inclined to believe the psychiatrist's evaluation of the incident as prisoner-on-staff violence. However, could it be that this incident was mischaracterized as an assault at the incarcerated person's expense for the benefit of the staff? That is, engaging in “horseplay” with a prisoner would likely violate staff protocols and, thus, could carry repercussions for the staff. Framing the behavior as an assault instead leaves the blame solely with the incarcerated person.
In this instance we have multiple conflicting narratives wherein a respondent's recollection of an incident is juxtaposed with that of a medical professional (whose opinion we are generally trained to value more than that of either a correctional officer or an incarcerated person because of their “expert” status). As in Foucault's conception of biopolitics, this engrained valuation of those in positions of power reinforces the existing social order and reproduces existing power structures (Foucault, 1998), and within segregated housing settings, arguably the most extreme form of Foucault's disciplinary institutions, prisoners’ powerlessness is amplified by these contradicting narratives from expert “professionals.” If we were to rely only on administrative or expert accounts explaining individual placements into solitary confinement, we might passively accept the trends reflected in such as “fact,” which leaves little room for considering whether the rationale for such placement aligns with what the incarcerated person experiences.
Beyond leaving an interview or administrative file review with unsettling feelings about which account to believe, the tensions presented above provide insights into the everyday challenges of living and/or working in an adversarial space. Conflicting narratives force us, as prison researchers, to examine whose narratives we privilege as we engage in both analysis and writing—prisoner, staff, or licensed professional—and what this calculus means for the knowledge produced. The differing accounts cited above also raise questions about the prison context that merit further inquiry, like what role staff wariness of incarcerees plays in dispute resolution and caretaking, and the role prisoner wariness of staff plays in incarcerated persons’ ability to advocate for themselves. Critical reflection that appreciates these tensions not only makes the research process more transparent, it can invite deeper inquiry into our field sites.
Discussion and Conclusion
Institutional and interpersonal challenges for researchers studying incarcerated populations and prisons abound. This piece specifically highlights the everyday dilemmas surrounding entrée, emotion, and epistemology both in our field sites and during subsequent analysis, as well as how we navigated the power dynamics within each dilemma. Moving beyond the boundaries of traditional reflexivity work that focuses inward on the researcher and the data collection process, this article attempts to push reflexivity outward by discussing the implications of this practice for how we come to understand and construct knowledge about our specific field sites and subjects. We also focused explicitly on how institutional power dynamics influence the many stages of the research process. Prison officials can both grant and revoke access, controlling, to a certain extent, researchers’ relationship with the institution itself and its staff (see also Gibson-Light & Seim, 2020). Unwillingly, the researcher also exercises power over the incarceree in that she determines the terms of incarcerees participation (e.g., how much to probe) and ultimately how the prisoners’ narratives are represented.
The academic discipline exerts another level of power over the research:regulating what is considered valid data and knowledge. To maintain credibility both as academics and within the carceral institutions we enter, qualitative researchers must navigate these complex power dynamics to avoid either reinforcing the extant adversarial and hierarchical power relations of the prison, or creating false binaries of truth (i.e., prisoner is right, staff are wrong, or vice versa). Moreover, the narratives we choose to highlight shape how our work is ultimately received, and whether it is read as credible and objective. That is, if a researcher chooses to focus on incarcerated persons’ narratives—particularly their accounts of staff abuse—they risk being called out by fellow academics and/or carceral staff as “too empathetic” about the harms of incarceration. Indeed, many of us have personally experienced such pushback from carceral staff while in the field (e.g., “Do you really believe them (prisoners)?”; “These prisoners think they have rights!”) and from fellow academics during the peer review process. Integrating staff accounts, if possible, may temper the above critiques, yet it might also perpetuate the notion that prisoner accounts of institutional harm cannot be trusted in their own right.
These are some of the many questions we grapple with as we decide which accounts to include in our analysis, and importantly, how to craft a narrative that is mindful of both the subjectivity of “truth” and of the power dynamics inherent to knowledge production. Pointing out the conflict between the powerful (carceral institutions and staff) and powerless (prisoners) is the most honest (and arguably, most accurate) truth we can present, as it reflects the realities of the prison setting. Moving forward, we must push prison research to engage in the exercise of reflexivity in a way that examines power dynamics and how they impact both the research process and the knowledge that is ultimately produced.
Given this task of reflexivity with regard to power, what would it mean if we as scholars constructed research projects with consideration for these power dynamics reflected in our field sites? We would first need to address the practical and logistical implications, particularly as it relates to managing emotions, identity conflicts, and power struggles while in the field. For instance, researchers can proactively contend with the emotional dilemmas they might encounter in the field by establishing protocols for anticipated scenarios resulting from power differentials. With respect to potential strip searches, researchers can work with prison staff to develop ground rules, such as providing space to informally speak with prisoners before interviews to ensure no one is strip searched unnecessarily. By anticipating these situations, researchers can preemptively develop a strategy, but with the recognition that these strategies may not always work because of the inherent power dynamics of the prison and the unpredictability of human behavior when doing qualitative research.
More challenging, however, is the intellectual project resulting from this reflexivity. As we have attempted to do in the projects that inspired this reflection, researchers must continue to interrogate how the questions they pursue might privilege or silence certain groups. That is, what does it mean to only listen to incarcerees accounts? Only law enforcement? Persons in positions of authority, like medical experts? The researcher must also ask themselves how their questions (and protocols) might draw upon pre-existing (and damaging) stereotypes about the places and people involved in (and impacted by) the research. And later, when it comes time for analysis, the researcher must revisit these questions and the various dilemmas that they encountered in the field to recalibrate their lens. That is, are we incorporating the dilemmas we encountered in the field as data, or as further evidence of what we heard/saw from our subjects, or are we ignoring such challenges? Ultimately, even with these reflexive interrogations, we must acknowledge that we are analyzing a presentation of a subjective truth, but hopefully one that takes seriously and acknowledges the power dynamics that shape that truth. These dynamics themselves are data.
Lastly, our findings have implications for how researchers protect themselves from the mental and emotional toll of conducting research in carceral settings. As we discussed previously, empathy facilitates the rapport-building process with subjects, as well as greater access to the subject's world and perspective. However, extending unbounded empathy to our subjects has risks, including emotional drain, compromised impartiality, or potentially leaving the subject in a worse emotional state than before the interview. We had the privilege of conducting these research projects with teams, which allowed us the space to manage some of these issues while in the field. Given that this is not always an option for researchers, explicit training on how to be empathetic and how to manage such empathy within the day-to-day of data collection is critical. For example, intentionally training research staff in trauma-informed care and restorative justice techniques prior to entering their field sites or analyzing data can provide a framework as well as toolkit for managing the emotionally laden narratives one hears and reads about. Although strategies vary by individual, Gonzalez-Lopez (2006) suggests that, “by going inward and engaging with the conflict” and uncertainty of such questions, we will “evolve professionally” (p. 22).
This article offers some examples, as well as cautionary notes, that may help other researchers confronting similar dilemmas of entrée, emotion, and epistemology, particularly within prisons. We hope the findings here encourage further dialogue regarding the boundaries we might create, and the risks we might take, in order to maintain the integrity of the research, respect the agency and perspectives of our subjects, and protect ourselves from over-exhaustion. Rather than steer clear of the personal and professional “messiness” (O’Brien, 2009) that these dilemmas invite—whether for fear of curtailed access or chastising by fellow academics as “naval gazing” or “biased”—we urge our fellow prison researchers to interrogate these dilemmas head-on to see what they may further reveal to us about the topics, subjects, and fields we study.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: KR received a Langeloth Grant from the Jacob and Valeria Langeloth Foundation: 
. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.