‘Doing the Wait’: An exploration into the waiting experiences of prisoners’ families

Abstract

Waiting is a universal experience and a ‘taken for granted’ form of time. However, it is given a social specificity when embodied by particular agents in particular settings. This paper reflects on the universal experience of waiting in the very particular setting of the prison, specifically a prison visitors’ centre; this is the space where families wait prior to visiting their incarcerated relatives. I draw on the literature of waiting and prisoners’ families, as well as my own empirical work and ethnographic observations of waiting families. In this work, I explore issues of power and agency, and explore the social relations which are orchestrated within and beyond this organisation of space and time. This paper aims to bring together two distinct areas of literature: one which explores how prisoners ‘do time’, and the other which explores the impact of imprisonment on the families outside. In marrying the two, this paper explores the temporal impact of the imprisonment on the family members of those incarcerated.

Keywords

Waiting prisoners’ families social relations power agency doing time

Introduction

It seems that the ‘fast’ nature of modern life that features so heavily in contemporary society has meant we have become (overly) preoccupied with time, or the lack of it. Whether it is a consequence of the ‘fast’ nature of modern life or otherwise ‘slow time’ which includes ‘waiting, queuing and stillness’ (Griffiths, 2014: 4) is an often ‘taken for granted’ form of time.

This paper explores how families wait for prisoners as they ‘do time’. ‘Doing time’ is of course the colloquial term prisoners use themselves in their everyday discourses to describe how they serve their sentence, and is a term also widely used by academics, practitioners and policy makers. Importantly, given the relationships many prisoners have with those on the outside (with relatives and friends), and given that the ‘pains of imprisonment’ (Sykes, 1958: 63) extend beyond the prison walls and affect those on the outside, those on the outside also ‘do time’, albeit as legally free persons (Breen, 2008: 60; Fishman, 1981: 58; Fishman, 1988: 58); many families and their incarcerated loved ones are ‘doing time together’ (Comfort, 2008: title).

A substantial part of ‘doing time’ for the families of prisoners involves waiting. Waiting for the visit; waiting for the court date; waiting for release; waiting for the letter; waiting for the phone call; waiting for things to go back to normal; waiting for things to get better. There is a significant body of literature which explores how prisoners ‘do time’. There is also an ever growing body of literature which documents the detrimental impact of imprisonment on families. Yet what remains lacking is a marrying up of the two: an exploration into how prisoners’ families also ‘do time’; the temporal experience, meaning and impact of the prison sentence on those families outside. In this paper, I suggest that, for the families, much of ‘doing time’ is bound up with waiting. This paper specifically focuses on the spatial dimension of prison waiting for non prisoners, and its affective and material consequences. This focus allows us to see in waiting, and orchestrated by prison waiting, issues of power, agency and relationships. I begin by drawing on the literature from these areas and discussing these issues of power, agency and relationships. I then reflect on how these are realised in the lives of prisoners’ families, by drawing on my own empirical and ethnographic work.

Prison and waiting

Griffiths (2014, among others) observes that while there is a substantial body of literature which explores this ‘acceleration’ of time in contemporary society, much less is written on ‘slow time’, which includes ‘waiting, queuing and stillness’ (p. 14), and other commentators have reflected on this somewhat peripheral status of these forms of slow time; for example, Vannini (2011) recently on the lived experiences of line-ups, in the particular context of travelling to, on and from ferry boats (p. 273). Auyero (2011) has reflected on the dearth of sociological literature that explores waiting (p. 7). McCarthy comments that waiting is something that we ‘take for granted’, and Bissell (2007) has suggested it has become the ‘neglected Achilles heel of modernity’ (p. 277).

Equally overlooked for many years were the families of prisoners; often termed the ‘hidden’ or ‘forgotten’ (Light and Campbell, 2007: 298) victims of punishment. Now, there is increasing recognition in academia, policy and practice, that the impact of imprisonment on the families outside is typically pernicious, and is often far reaching and lasting. Imprisonment happens too outside the prison, and the waiting time associated with visiting creates an invisible, but no less real, spatial constraint.

Following the imprisonment of a person, partners of prisoners are often forced to take on multiple roles and responsibilities, particularly where the incarcerated family member has previously had an active role in the household (Christian et al., 2006: 445). Imprisonment tends to impose financial strain on the families of the prisoners in two ways: by decreasing the family income and by increasing family expenditure, due to costly visits and phone calls, and handing in money to ‘maintain’ the prisoner (Christian et al., 2006: 445; Wildeman and Western, 2010: 166). Partners and children of prisoners are ‘vulnerable to multiple types of social exclusion’ including stigma and loss of material and social capital, and linguistic and political exclusion (Reeves and Heptinstall, 2011: 22). Indeed, this ‘courtesy stigma’ or ‘stigma by affiliation’ (Phillips and Gates, 2011: 287; Scheyett and Pettus, 2012: 587) attaches not only to the offender but to his/her family.

There are often particular difficulties associated with prison visiting. As Schafer observed some time ago, visiting an incarcerated family member is ‘inherently difficult’ (Schafer, 1989: 25). The time, effort (both physical and emotional) and expense associated with visiting, are amongst the plethora of ‘inherent obstacles’ (Tewksbury and DeMichele, 2005: 308) prisoners’ families often encounter when visiting. These very difficulties also ‘produce [emphasis added] emotional difficulties’ (Light and Campbell, 2007: 300). It is no exaggeration to say that the visiting experience on the whole is often an emotionally charged one, and that these emotions may be conflicting: with feelings of ‘excitement, anticipation, joy…and sadness’ (Christian, 2005: 33) all in the mix.

Dixey and Woodall highlight visits are often ‘traumatic and unsettling’(Dixey and Woodall, 2012: 35), and part of this is due to the strain of seeing an incarcerated loved one in an ‘unfamiliar and daunting’ setting (Dixey and Woodall, 2012: 35). Moreover, given the relative infrequency of prison visits, despite them continuing to be the ‘major source of contact’ (Fishman, 1988: 55) between prisoners and their families, there is often a ‘build up’ of expectation (Ronay, 2011: 196): there is, in effect, considerable pressure for the visit to be good or to go well.

It is obvious that imprisonment also happens beyond the literal prison walls, and may be characterised as the imprisoning quality of time control on families. I will shortly explore how exactly imprisonment happens outside of prison, albeit in the geographically proximate visiting centre where families wait to see loved ones.

Power and agency in (prison) waiting

Power

As Bissell (2007) comments, there seems to be a consensus within sociological literature that the experience of waiting is universal (p. 283). The universality alluded to here is that ‘everyone waits’. Indeed, Bournes and Mitchell (2002) comment that ‘waiting is a universal experience that everyone can describe in some personal way in relation to their own lives’ (p. 58). Barbara Adam (1990) also observes the universal nature of waiting, and notes that this universality transcends a number of boundaries, including class distinctions: ‘ the poorest pauper and most powerful politician must each wait for their coffee to brew’ (p. 121). There is perhaps room to be critical here: The most powerful politician may have someone less powerful doing the literal wait for the coffee to brew. Yet, the idea of the universality of waiting is dominant in the literature. Nevertheless, while there may be a (perceived) universality of waiting in that everyone waits, the experience of waiting is not a universal one. People’s experiences of waiting differ: the frequency of waiting, the duration of waiting and the actual experience of waiting.

Power arguably plays a part in experiences of waiting. Indeed, McCarthy (2001) refers to the sociological idiom: ‘ the distribution of waiting time coincides with the distribution of the poor’ (p. 199). Gasparini (1995) comments that to some extent, waiting can be viewed as a ‘form of exchange and power between actors’ (p. 35). Schwartz (1974: 856) comments that

to be kept waiting…especially to be kept waiting an unusually long time, is to be the subject of an assertion that one’s own time (and therefore, one’s social worth) is less valuable than the time and worth of the one who imposes the wait.

Griffiths (2014) also observes that ‘being made to wait’ is ‘inextricably bound up in power relations’, and is often associated with ‘bureaucratic domination’ (p. 6). Or, as Bourdieu (1997) suggests, ‘waiting is one of the privileged ways of experiencing the effect of power’ (emphasis added) (p. 228).

Adam rightly suggests that waiting is in some respects a leveller: We all must wait for something, sometimes (highlighting this universality of waiting). This is something that we collectively (have to) accept in our frequent waiting in our everyday life: waiting for the kettle to boil; waiting for a train; waiting for medical test results. Yet, as stated above, waiting in many more ways, communicates that someone else, whether an individual actor or an organisation, holds power over oneself. Adam (1990) herself also observes that ‘waiting is not a neutral phenomenon’ (p. 123), which she notes is something that is uncovered upon closer examination of who waits and for how long. Some people wait for longer, more often and in more demeaning conditions than others. This is where power creeps in. The inequalities which exist regarding waiting times have not been fully explored to date, though these are gradually receiving their due attention. For example, Laudicella et al.’s (2012) recent study concluded that NHS waiting times and socioeconomic status are linked in England, albeit in complex ways. Their salient point was that those from a lower socioeconomic status waited longer for elective surgeries (such as hip replacements) than their counter parts who held higher socioeconomic status (p. 1331). Auyero’s (2011) study on ‘poor people’s waiting’, which explored the waiting experiences of current and prospective welfare recipients in a waiting room in Latin America, found that for the majority of the interviewees, ‘waiting is a modal experience: they have to wait for everything (for example, housing, health services, employment)’ (p. 9).

McCarthy (2001: 198) comments that for many people, particularly those in disadvantaged groups (here she includes women and the economically marginalised), ‘the long wait’ is an inexorable part of the process of receiving basic access to goods and services; it is a central part of their daily lives. These works all hint that some individuals or groups wait for longer and/or more frequently than others.

Prisoners and their families are often among those who experience this modality of waiting caused by the experience of a ‘catalogue of disadvantage and exclusion’ (Crewe, 2007: 123). In Scotland, a very high proportion of prisoners (and their families) come from a very small number of communities suffering multiple deprivation (Houchin, 2005: 77). The multiple disadvantage experienced by prisoners’ families is observed in other jurisdictions (Breen, 2008: 61; Murray, 2007: 57).

Neo-liberal policies have contributed to the rapid expansion of prison populations not only in the USA with its infamous mass incarceration but also in Europe including Scotland. Scotland has one of the highest rates of imprisonment of pre-accession European Union member states (Scottish Prisons Commission, 2008: 2). This carceral expansion, with the poor disproportionately affected, is in effect a “penalisation of poverty” (Wacquant, 2001: 401). Thus, prisoners’ families tend to hold very limited power.

Finally, power is a particularly resonant theme in any research undertaken in and around the prison, with the prison itself being a ‘potent symbol of state power’ (Crewe, 2007: 123). Clearly, its power is more than merely symbolic; it is unique in simultaneously exerting its own power and removing or severely curtailing the power from those who are forced to inhabit it and does so in a whole host of ways: in short, prisons ‘confine, constrain, conceal and compel’ (Sparks and McNeill, 2009: 2). Given the nature of familial relationships and given the rigidity of prison life, prisoners’ families are also subject to, and subjects of, this inflexible penal regime. Indeed, in Megan Comfort’s (2003) influential study of the lived experiences of women whose partners were incarcerated in California’s San Quentin prison, she found that the prison extends its ‘penal reach to women [partners of prisoners] through the regulation of their time and bodies’ (p. 82). The regulation of their bodies is most easily observed when families are actually in the confines of the prison: The prison closely watches where the ‘slightest movements are supervised’ and ‘all events [are] recorded’ (Foucault, 1995: 197). In the same way that prisoners’ bodies are transformed into docile subjects (Foucault, 1995: 136), the families’ bodies too, albeit temporarily, are transformed into docile subjects whilst in the institution as they abide by the rules of the institution, as they are become temporarily ‘quasi institutionalised beings’ (Moran, 2011: 344).

In summary, being ‘made to wait’ inherently signals the ‘waiter’s’ lack of power. However, this lack of power is compounded by the prison’s exercise of its own power and taking away of power of those who are accommodated by it either fleetingly (families) or for a longer period (prisoners). Moreover, prisoners’ families often experience existing socioeconomic disadvantage, connoting limited power; we know that the ills prison is supposed to lessen or resolve (such as poverty) tend to be instead, both aggravated and amplified (Wacquant, 2001: 410). What should be borne in mind then is if imprisonment is unevenly distributed across societies, then the waiting produced by the imprisonment is also unevenly distributed.

Agency

Although waiting may be imposed on oneself, how exactly one waits may be instead firmly in the hands of the person waiting. Bissell (2007) has highlighted this ‘agentive capacity’ of making decisions regarding where to wait and ‘what to do while waiting’ (p. 285). Being able to choose how one waits, means that waiting does not have to be rendered a ‘negative or empty experience’ (Griffiths, 2014: 6). Scholars have referred to ‘constructive waiting periods’ (Catania et al., 2011: 393) and ‘equipped waiting’ (Gasparini, 1995: 35), both of which tap into this concept of making waiting productive. Productive waiting encapsulates ‘reflective’ and ‘social’ forms of waiting (Griffiths, 2014: 6). Various elements of ‘productive’ waiting are emerging in my own study; the social elements are specifically explored in this paper.

The need to have this ‘agentive capacity’ is important where power is already limited, and it is even more important to have, depending on the particular time which is being encroached upon during this wait. Comfort comments on the ‘very fine line’ which appears to exist with regard to waiting: waiting in ‘free time’ (i.e. non visiting time) can be tolerated, while waiting which encroaches on visiting time cannot (Comfort, 2008: 44). The obligatory wait in or around the Visitors’ Centre at HMP Edinburgh may not be considered or felt to be free(er) if visitors can use this waiting time in whichever way they wish and thus exercise agency. Appreciating the (lack of) power and agency that are tied to waiting helps contextualise here the waiting experiences of prisoners’ families.

The waiting experiences of prisoners’ families

My fieldwork

The data presented in this paper come from the early stages of my doctoral fieldwork, in this Visitors’ Centre. I am combining ethnographic observations with semi-structured interviews with the family members who use the Centre to visit an incarcerated loved one, including children who participate through an arts-based method.

The Visitors’ Centre (henceforth ‘the Centre’) at HMP Edinburgh is managed by the Salvation Army, on behalf of the Onward Trust, and the Salvation Army works in partnership with the Scottish Prison Service. The Centre is the place where families wait prior to going for their visit in the visit room of the prison; the Centre and the prison are two geographically separate buildings. HMP Edinburgh predominantly accommodates adult males (convicted and remand); although, it also accommodates specific national populations including women and sex offenders (www.sps.gov.uk).

The environment in the Visitors’ Centre is large, bright and open. The Children’s Corner located at one end of the Centre is decorated with the children’s art work and educational posters, and has ‘child size’ tables and chairs and children’s’ books. At the opposite end of the Centre is a children’s’ soft play area and a large office, used by Centre staff, Families Outside staff¹ and for meetings. In the middle of the Centre, located next to the canteen, there are numerous tables and chairs. At one side of the Centre, next to each window, are comfortable, cushioned seats, which are joined together. These are high backed, and are surrounded by information boards. These are somewhat cocooned since the high back separates one area of window seats from the next set of window seats. This seems to provide visitors areas in which to have more private conversations. At the other side of the Centre is the children’s’ playroom. Next to the playroom is an outdoor children’s’ play area, which is in effect a small park; this is accessed via the playroom. Parents can see their children from most of the seats in the Centre.

The Centre primarily accommodates those friends and family members who are visiting someone incarcerated at HMP Edinburgh. However, this does not preclude others from being accommodated. Indeed, a whole host of actors pass through the Centre’s doors on a regular (if not daily) basis. These include but are not limited to: lawyers; health care professionals; arts and crafts sessional workers; social workers; voluntary sector workers; and prison staff. However, it is only those who are visiting a friend or family at HMP Edinburgh that must wait for around 30 minutes. This obligatory waiting time is to allow prison staff ‘sufficient time to manage the visit’ (Scottish Prison Service website), which involves transporting a prisoner from his/her respective hall to the visit room. Fifteen minutes prior to the official start time of the visit, a member of staff in the Centre makes a tannoy announcement calling the visitors to their visit. Visitors then leave the Centre, go outside and wait in the prison in the reception area to be searched, before making their way to the visit room. Therefore, in theory, the visitors wait in the Centre or within its immediate environs (within the prison complex) for around 15 minutes, and then wait in the queue in the prison for another 15 minutes. The reality is that most visitors wait in the Centre (often significantly) longer than this, largely due to arriving early. There are numerous reasons for this, which include the fact that most visitors to HMP Edinburgh rely on burdensome and unreliable forms of transport (Families Outside, 2009: 2). Immediately after the visit, visitors return to the Centre to collect their belongings stored in the lockers provided in the Centre. While the length of the waiting time varies across the prison estate in Scotland, there is a universal policy that some waiting time is required.

How do families wait in the Centre?

For many families, the Centre is a space where they can socialise and interact with other visitors and staff, and this may include the giving and receiving of emotional support. The Centre is unique in providing a space in which all those waiting in this space share one crucial common denominator: they are all affected by and visiting someone close to them who is incarcerated.

As Codd (2002) notes, formal self-help groups for prisoners’ families have surfaced, with the aim of sheltering families from the harsh effects of imprisonment referred to earlier (p. 334); such groups have been viewed as being empowering to women, through ‘providing information, practical and emotional support and promoting confidence and skills’ (Codd, 2003: 16). However, as Codd (2003) has rightly highlighted to term such groups as empowering for these women may obscure the fact that the state and penal institutions rely on these women to continue contact with their imprisoned partner, during the sentence and after release (p. 17), given the oft-cited relationship between strong and positive family bonds and desistance (Dixey and Woodall, 2012: 31). I would suggest that the natural ‘springing up’ of these informal support networks is preferable, less paternalistic and ultimately more empowering to these families than formal support networks created on their behalf. This is particularly important when one considers that visiting spaces in prison are orchestrating family life around the needs of the institution (such as the institution’s need for a narrative of rehabilitation) as much as the prisoner.

Indeed, waiting spaces are likely to be ideal and natural spaces for these networks to emerge. Literature exploring interactions in medical waiting rooms (Akerstrom, 1997; Kutash and Northup, 2007) offers helpful insights here. In Cohn’s (2000) study of parents’ experiences in the waiting room of an occupational therapy clinic, it became clear that ‘quasi spontaneous support groups’ sprung up and, importantly, were created without having to actively ‘make them happen’ (p. 168), and part of this was simply due to the fact that the support was ‘naturally occurring’ (p. 170).

As in any social environment, conversations of all sorts spring up in the Centre. Conversation topics range from the seemingly banal to those of a more serious nature. These seemingly banal conversations have an important social function: small talk ‘enacts social cohesiveness, reduces threat values of social contact, and helps to structure social interaction’ (Coupland, 2010: 1). When the families return to the Centre, the atmosphere is very much one of hustle and bustle, as families collect their belongings from the lockers and greet others who are on the same visit or those who are waiting for the following visit. In these cases, it is not feasible for in depth conversations to take place, though small talk can and does take place. For example, Jane (an interviewee)² says:

Here [the Centre], you actually get to know a lot of people here… So there was one particular female, and her family would come here every Saturday and we’d always acknowledge each other. There’s another female—her dad would come and we’d stand and chat… you’d ask, how each of their other family members are doing.

Jane is highlighting the small talk families often engage in. In some cases, these types of conversations can lay the foundations for more serious conversations (‘big talk’ or ‘real talk’), allowing relationships to form and support networks to be established (Coupland, 2010: 2).

Christian (2005) conducted a study of a similar prison Visitors’ Centre in the US. This Visitors’ Centre was similar to the Centre at HMP Edinburgh in that it was within the prison confines but was operated by an organisation independent of the prison service – in Christian’s case as in my own, a ‘non-profit organisation’. She observed that the time spent at the Centre prior to the visit brought out a ‘sense of community among the women’ (Christian, 2005: 39) where these women essentially share. Women wish one another luck, offer encouragement with news of successful hearings and share concerns about the news they may receive during the visit (Christian, 2005: 40). Kortoba studied the visiting process in a county jail in the US and observed that in the imposed waiting period, conversations naturally sprung up. Amongst acquaintances, the typical conversation focussed on the prisoners and regulars to the jail developed their own ‘jail friendships’ (Kortoba, 1979: 85). These experiences are certainly echoed in my own study. Visitors share with one another the hardships of imprisonment, including those connected to visiting. In one conversation, visitors all express frustration with checking, double checking and even triple checking that a visit has been properly booked by the prisoner, attributing this to problems with the booking system. In another, a visitor complains to me that ‘they [the prison] make mistakes all the time’; when this occurs, she either does not get a visit, or she has to reschedule it. When these ‘system errors’ come into fruition, visitors share, console and support each other.

In Kutash and Northup’s (2007) study of an intensive care unit waiting room, the families commented that ‘one family could console another’ and they identified the waiting room as a place ‘where you can be with people in similar situations’ (p. 386). Clearly, this idea of ‘ready-made’ support is not novel, nor is it limited to medical settings. This notion of ready-made support is emerging in my interviews. For example, Bob tells me ‘we’re in the same case, because the people we love closely are in jail. You know we’re in the same boat…’.

Cohn’s (2000) study found that this ‘weekly waiting room ritual’ shifted parents from being in a position of isolation to a position of ‘shared experiences in which others understood their concerns’ (p. 170). If one considers the isolation experienced by prisoners’ families referred to previously, then the importance (even necessity) of having this kind of opportunity is drawn sharply into focus. In the Centre too, weekly waiting room rituals develop, as shown by the following interview excerpt with two visitors:

Jamie: ‘The first time I came here, it was awkward you know. You don’t know where to sit, where you’re going, where you book in…. Though the staff are nice. The first time I came here, I was sitting here for like an hour, just at a loss you know. Then someone, I think it was Serenity came over. And that was it. The Wednesday Club

Serenity: Aye, the Wednesday Club

Jamie: It’s just a good laugh you know. Just chatting to folk. It’s like a wee family, here every week. Wee random chats, you know. It’s good to see them, catch up, only a quick chat about the imprisonment.

Jamie later tells me that the ‘Wednesday club’ ‘just sort of happened’, that it is ‘really good’ and that he ‘looks forward’ to catching up with the other people in this group. These visitors all meet at the Centre on Wednesday every week as they each wait for the same visit session, and have called themselves the ‘Wednesday Club’. It seems that a quasi support group has formed, quite unexpectedly and without any concerted effort to establish it. Bob also tells me: ‘… it’s [the Centre] a lovely place, a lovely place. Great people that I’ve met and now I can call friends…’.

These interview excerpts also draw attention to the importance of families all experiencing incarceration to have a space to talk, and to be. Networks and friendships do not solely develop due to this commonality. Conversations, friendships and networks can and do go beyond this. For example, Jamie and Serenity keep in touch between visits through texting and social media. Jamie elaborates: ‘it’s all about making friends’.

Bob tells me: ‘I just think…coming in here is a great wee thing, because I like the wee Centre. And I love waiting.’

When Bob visits, he tends to sit and chat with his wife and with the other visitors on the same visiting session as him, whom he has befriended. There is certainly a parallel here with Auyero’s (2011) exploration into the waiting experiences of current and prospective welfare recipients which found that their waiting experience is ‘active and relational’ (p. 15). Clearly, for many, the waiting is social. However, it must be noted too that for others, the waiting is not particularly social. A not insignificant number of visitors only interact or socialise with those they arrived with and some wait in their cars or in the more private areas of the Centre; I am beginning to uncover the reasons for this in my research.

It is clear that those who wait in the Centre or in its immediate environs, can wait in a way that they wish, albeit within reason and within the confines of the law. Yet, this ‘being made to wait’ is not only a clear example of the channelling of social relations through the imposition of institutional power (and of the restriction of the families’ own power), it is also an added inconvenience and strain from some families. Katie is a mother of four children, one of whom is only six months old, and she visits her partner. Though she is positive about the Centre for her children, referring to the activities and ‘good environment’ the Centre offers, she comments:

When you’re waiting it’s a bit…especially when you’ve got…like I’ve got 4 children. So it’s a bit…it can be a bit stressful at times with 3 children and a baby, so it can be quite stressful. Em especially when they’re jumping up and they’re all over you for going to see their daddy.

Katie is one such family member who is dealing with the additional roles and responsibilities that the imprisonment has effectively thrust upon her, as outlined above. There is an obvious irony here: A waiting space designed to allow greater family contact, is stressful precisely because of this greater contact. In a conversation I have with another visitor, the visitor complains that she is ‘bored’ and that she ‘hates waiting’; her repeated asking of the time also indicated this. Other visitors seem more indifferent to the waiting: Jake tells me quite succinctly that the waiting is ‘ok’.

In my drawing activity with the children, a couple have reflected quite positively on waiting in the Centre, Pryha says:

The kids’ area is good in here for the wee ones and older ones. And you can do stuff. Like you can help your wee sisters. There’s things to read and stuff. There’s comfy seats for the adults here too. The Children’s Corner is good, with pictures and things up.

Pandora (who is Pryha’s younger sister) says: ‘I like the park bit outside’. Douglas told me when he was drawing his picture of the Centre: ‘I’m going to draw a toastie…because I like them. And the hot chocolate’. In the drawing sessions, there seems to be some consensus among the children that the waiting in the Centre is enjoyable, with opportunities for play and for tasty, nutritious food (the toasties have been cited more than once!). However, in general, the children have been rather more critical of the waiting in the queue prior to entering the visit room. Keira tells me: ‘It’s a bit long to wait. There’s sometimes a big, big, [queue], lots of people.’ Amy and Britney, who are two of Katie’s daughters, tell me emphatically that they ‘hate the queues’. Pyrha also tells me: ‘I don’t like the queues’. The children’s’ insights are striking here in that they highlight the importance of more active or productive waiting, as opposed to waiting which is merely ‘dead time’.

Clearly, these emerging themes need to be much more thoroughly explored. There is room to explore further the different waits each visitor has when visiting: in the Centre or in its immediate environs, and in the prison, and the experiences of them. There is room to reflect on the particular environment of the Centre (for example, the abundance of sociopetal spaces), and if that, even impliedly, fosters certain kinds of waiting and consequently certain kinds of interaction. Moreover, this unique waiting situation may also complicate our understanding of agency: Prison waiting involves a bizarre combination of both giving and taking away control, though detailed consideration of this is beyond the scope of this paper. The waiting experiences of children specifically are also an issue to be explored in more detail: This may be particularly significant since it is often said that children experience time differently from adults, with time typically passing more slowly for children.

Nevertheless, what is clear is that the waiting experience prior to visiting is unique to every family member, and family, and may differ with each visit. In light of this, it is important that families can wait in a Visitors’ Centre in the way they wish: for example, in socialising with other visitors or spending time with their children. This offers families, whose own power tends to be restricted by the prison, greater agentive capacity and thus greater power. Finally, for a number of families, there is a tangible, social benefit to the waiting experience; this seems to mitigate the social isolation and exclusion inflicted or worsened by the imprisonment.

‘My life has been a wait!’

Clearly, certain kinds of waiting take place in a ‘specially designated space’ (Hogben, 2006: 333), such as at a bus stop or in a waiting room. The Centre is one such space. However, as Hogben and Gasparini both comment, waiting can, and does, go beyond a physical designated space. Prisoners’ family members while waiting at the visitors’ centre are waiting in the short term for the impending visit. However, they are also experiencing the long-term wait for their incarcerated loved one’s return to the ‘free world’ (assuming release is a prospect). While there is a close connection between waiting and expectation and anticipation (as Gasparini and others have observed), prisoners’ families are also just waiting or are in a state of waiting.

The waiting experiences of prisoners’ families arguably falls under Gaspirni’s short-term waiting and long-term waiting (Gasparini, 1995: 36). For Gasparini, short-term waiting is waiting which does not exceed a day, and is typically shorter than this; long-term waiting is waiting which goes beyond a day, and spans into weeks or months. In these waits which are ‘long term’, the ‘waiter’ no longer visibly waits in a designated space. Instead, the ‘waiter’ waits at home (Gasparini, 1995: 36).

In my interview with Jane, these two different types of waiting are raised. Jane says:

‘The waiting on a Saturday can be horrendous. Like, like I’m pacing. I used to pace’ and reflects: ‘So I think the wait for me…I’m very close to my mum so it is kind of unbearable…It’s like: “Why can we just not go?!” *Jane says firmly* “What is the hold up? Why is no-body explaining anything to me?”’

For Jane, the waiting is stressful too, albeit in a different way from Katie’s experience. Jane later tells me about the ongoing waiting that she experiences:

My life has been a wait! The court date was waiting….; waiting for a verdict; waiting to hear the judge say his final [decision]; waiting to see how much he’s gonna take off [the sentence]; waiting to see when she’s gonna be pulled into court; waiting for her phone call.

Carceral institutions such as prisons are ‘dissociated from the rhythms of time on the outside’ (Wahidin, 2006: 6.13). Moreover, they impose their own rhythms which can interfere with participating in these outside temporalities: ‘I keep myself free Monday, Wednesday, Friday…before eight she calls me. Any other time, we have to schedule’, and says, tellingly, ‘My life right now is on hold’. Reflecting on end of the visit, Jane poignantly says:

‘But I think when they [the prisoners] leave and they [the prisoners] all get up, it’s one of those, *sighs* deflating feelings you know. And I’m like: “That’s it; I’ve just got to wait ‘til next week. I can’t wait ‘til next week!”‘

Therefore, no sooner is one wait over, when another begins; or perhaps more accurately, the waiting is ongoing; life becomes a series of nested waits or life may even become a wait. Serenity tells me: ‘October [the month of her partner’s release] better hurry up. Can you get a time machine to speed things up?’ Serenity tells me that the countdown for release had begun. In another interview, Serenity simply says: ‘I can’t wait for him to come out’. Jane also tells me that what is difficult for her is the lack of her mum being involved in her life; ‘the waiting and the missing out’ are the things she especially struggles with. Dee also refers life being ‘on hold’, with the perpetual waiting impeding on everyday life. For example, Dee comments:

‘Dee, your life is on hold! Well you can’t…like holidays, you can’t just go on holiday. Well you could, but they can’t go with you…

…And you’re waiting for each sort of step of their time, which is your time,

…Yeah, you just have to wait for everything, it feels endless. And at the very beginning it feels like a lifetime. You know and it’s just every day…’

Evidently, a number of family members feel that they are constantly waiting and suffer the effects of this penal reach on their own lives at home. There are echoes here of Comfort’s work; Comfort (2007) insightfully observed that the kith and kin who wish to remain connected with their incarcerated loved one, are “repeatedly exposed over sustained periods of time” to penal regulation which includes regulation over their “daily schedule” (p. 279). Either as a consequence of it or a response to it, these women partners of prisoners “(dis)organise their demanding personal agendas to accommodate the prison timetable…” (Comfort, 2008: 89). There are of course broader issues with (prevailing) conceptions of time that apply in this context too: Feminists have long called for a greater recognition of the incompatibility of prevailing clock based, linear time, with ‘women’s time’ (and associated care giving and household tasks) (Odih, 2007: 109). All of these connected issues highlight the importance of the families being offered (the very offering conveying that power is held by an ‘other’) greater ‘agentive capacity’ at other times of waiting, including the waiting prior to a visit.

We all look ahead to the future, and particularly to those events we expect to share with loved ones. Sacks’ suggests that couples share a ‘private calendar which is marked by mutually meaningful and significant moments’ (Tang, 2012: 224). Both prisoner and family member experience the marked absence of the ‘other’ at all times, but particularly at these milestones. However, both also look ahead to events in these private calendars where both will be present in those times in the future, whether foreseeable or distant, when the sentence is served and the waiting is over. For example, Serenity tells me on more than one occasion that she is looking forward to her daughter’s next birthday as her partner will be released by then, having missed her son’s birthday.

Finally, there is a small minority of prisoners in Scotland who do not know when they will be released, if ever; those who have an Order for Lifelong Restriction attached their sentence.³ For prisoners serving indeterminate sentences such as these, “planning a future is impossible” (Crewe, 2011: 514). For these families of these prisoners, the wait may literally be without end. Judy, whose partner is subject to the Order for Lifelong Restriction, told me of the distinct and immense difficulty of not having this much longed for “end in sight”; and end of the sentence and end of the wait.

Conclusion

This paper has explored the waiting experiences of prisoners’ families. Families, who visit a loved one in prison, wait for their visit in the Visitors’ Centre. However, the families are also waiting before, after and beyond the particular spatial and temporal chapter of ‘the visit’. For many families, the wait can be ongoing, constant and in some cases, ceaseless.

This paper has involved reflecting on the emerging themes in my doctoral research. Much more needs to be uncovered and explored. However, this paper has aimed to draw attention to a much overlooked feature of time in a very distinctive and controlling space, the prison and its environs. Waiting is complex and is inextricably connected to issues of power and agency. There are certain kinds of waiting imprisonment inflicts which family members are powerless to control (such as the waiting that occurs at home), but there are other ways that families are exercising control within controlling spaces. The waiting around visiting time for many is social; this may have a positive effect in limiting the penal burdens experienced by families and may even have an empowering effect. Research, including my own, has shown that in these constructed waiting spaces positive relationships can form and develop. This paper has also drawn attention to how prison waiting spaces are in fact producing new social relations, through the creation of a ‘community of waiters’.

As previously discussed, we are increasingly aware of the typically detrimental impact of prison on those families outside. However, what remains lacking is a thorough exploration on the temporal impact of this prison sentence: How do families wait in a Visitors’ Centre? What makes a positive, negative or ‘an ok’ wait for a visit? What is the waiting like at home? What does it feel like to be always waiting, and fitting one’s own time and routine around that of the unbending prison routine? This paper has raised and begun to answer some of these questions. These questions are critical to our understanding of the whole impact of imprisonment on family members; these must be answered if we are to fully address the effects of a prison sentence on the families outside. Finally, those temporal penal burdens inflicted on legal innocents that are the focus of this paper (not to mention all other penal burdens) only strengthens the case for a tempering of our current habitus of imposing custody as the routine disposal for individuals from the same disadvantaged communities of Scotland.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all of the family members who so openly shared their experiences with me, all members of staff at the Visitors' Centre and the Salvation Army for allowing me access. I would also like to thank Sarah Armstrong, Lucy Pickering and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) 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: This research is part of a PhD project being funded by The Dawes Trust.

Notes

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