Interview 14: Fieldnotes on what it takes to (not) collect data in prison

The following is an amalgamation of field notes from my time teaching and conducting dissertation research at Danville Correctional Center (DCC), a men's medium-security prison in eastern Illinois, United States. As a researcher, I entered a realm that is not inherently research-friendly, where every interaction, every interview, and every piece of paper had the potential to be a minefield of ethical, logistical, and personal considerations. This project was rooted in Participatory Action Research (PAR) practices, a collaborative approach to research that centered the incarcerated men as co-creators of knowledge. This cooperative framework stands in opposition to the structure of the prison, which is designed to denigrate and dehumanize incarcerated individuals. My positionality as a multiracial female amidst a predominately white volunteer group further complicated the research process. Not only did the fear of being accused of fraternization permeate every interaction, but I also felt the weight of this gaze more acutely due to my intersecting identities.

My path to this project was a convergence of my academic pursuits and my lived experiences. I grew up in poverty in a low-income, high-crime neighborhood, where violence and injustice were daily realities. Before my 18th birthday, I had a gun pointed at me twice, survived intimate violence and assault, and witnessed friends being ensnared by the criminal justice system. The circumstances of my upbringing instilled in me a drive to contribute to social justice, and I began volunteering in prisons/jails my junior year of college. My first year in a Sociology PhD program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) brought me to the Education Justice Project (EJP), the only higher-education-in-prison program in the state at the time.

Over the next 7 years, I served as an instructor in multiple programs, engaging in activities ranging from guest lecturing on sociological theory to coordinating summer workshops and reading groups. I provided resources for Language Partners (peer ESL instruction), participated in homeroom-style library and computer lab sessions, and occasionally stepped in to substitute for other volunteers. In the years preceding my formal research, I engaged in countless conversations with EJP students. We discussed the conditions of prison life, their motivations for participating in educational programs, and their personal experiences of building a sense of community behind bars.

These conversations were the foundation of the dissertation research. Consistent with PAR principles, we formed a Research Team comprised of 39 men as inside-researchers and me, the outside-researcher. Together, we immersed ourselves in academic literature and theoretical frameworks related to our study. We convened in focus groups to craft research questions and refine our interview protocol. At the time of these field notes, I was conducting one-on-one semistructured interviews, each spanning 3 hours—the standard length of an educational session within the prison schedule. EJP volunteers were not allowed to bring in any outside technology. In lieu of an audio recorder, I used one of the donated EJP laptops (which was at least a decade old) to take copious field notes during the interviews. At the end of the session, I would have only minutes to print the notes on the shared EJP printer before leaving the prison. Since all EJP students and instructors used the same printer, it was consistently low on toner, and fresh printer paper was a rare commodity. Often, I had to print multiple pages per sheet in a tiny font size on the back of used notebook paper. These tense moments underscored the fragility of our data because if I wasn’t able to print the notes, I would lose all the data from that interview, and would have to try to reconstruct it when I got home.

Throughout the research interview phase, I was at the prison at least 3 days a week, occasionally taking on multiple shifts a day. I was constantly worried my frequent visits would be interpreted as fraternization. EJP had only recently resumed its operations after a 7-month hiatus, partially attributable to fraternization concerns. The previous year, I, along with three other volunteers, experienced a 3-month lockout from DCC for contact with a former student who was still on parole. This incident occurred during a national conference on higher education in prison. Despite our prompt disclosure of the incident to DCC staff, our lockout was immediate and required many meetings with DCC, EJP, and UIUC administrators to lift. Any semblance of preferential treatment could jeopardize the security status of volunteers, students, and the program itself. Notably, female volunteers faced even greater scrutiny compared to our male counterparts.

All these factors combine to create an environment that demands flexibility, perseverance, sensitivity, and a deep understanding of both the institutional context and the lived experiences of those within it. This multifaceted perspective highlights the complexities of prison research and offers insights that are valuable not only to those interested in participatory methods like PAR but to anyone embarking on research within the U.S. carceral system. What follows below is a snapshot of a night that was both routine in many ways but also unusual in others, encapsulating the complex dynamics and challenges that pervaded my research journey within the prison system.

Danville Correctional Center ¹

Like most US prisons, DCC is in a rural area far from the home community of the people incarcerated, with most of the men at DCC hailing from the same blocks of Southside Chicago, over 3 hours away. After entering the prison through the front entrance, I walk through the Armory building to The Walk, a concrete path connecting housing buildings on the east side with Dietary Building (chow hall) on the west side (see Figure 1). Approximately 1800 men are housed in 1 of 4 numbered units (3 X-shaped, 1 T-shaped), each with lettered wings, each wing with 2 stories. On the south end of the walk 115 meters from the Armory is the Education Building which houses classrooms, Counseling Services, the gym, the main chapel, and other administrative offices. The second-floor classrooms are the only areas I can access without a security escort. These include a dozen classrooms used by various other educational programs. EJP operates out of 3 primary classrooms: 2 Resource Rooms equipped with modest libraries, and a Computer Lab featuring 12 workstations. A desk in the hallway between these classrooms is where the Education Building Officer is stationed.

Preparing to go in

3:45pm, I was cutting it close.

I was heading to the prison for the third time that week, and excited because tonight was Interview 14. Of course, I enjoyed my other volunteer work—as much as one can enjoy being in a prison—but I get especially excited on interview nights. I felt like I was getting the hang of this research thing and had hit a rhythm when asking the interview questions.

4:15 p.m., I better lay on the gas pedal.

I lit my second cigarette using the cherry from my first. Class sessions at the prison are 3 hours with no break; a rough stretch for someone who is chain-smoking their way through the stress of grad school. I wasn’t even 30 but had been smoking for more than half my life. I was used to smelling like an ashtray. I rolled down the window more, convincing myself I would “air out” by the time I made it to the prison. Of course, this never worked. Though it broke the cardinal rule of having a personal conversation, a few students mentioned the smell over the years. Most students were locked up as teenagers, long before smoking in Illinois prisons was banned 8 years ago. Once the laws went into effect, everyone incarcerated across the state was forced to quit cold turkey. I can barely make it 3 hours without starting to get grumpy and having a “nic fit,” I can’t imagine what it would be like in such cramped surroundings with everyone around you going through withdrawal at the same time.

4:40 p.m., Whew, just made it.

I pull into the staff parking lot and hop out of my truck. I do the pocket-pat-down: ID in my back pocket, no cell phone, no wallet, no money, no anything. One pen. One folder with a few papers. I slip a ring on my left ring finger to signal that I’m married (I’m not), one of many gendered performative acts I engage with to try and signal to both students and prison staff I’m not there “for the wrong reasons.”

I’ve had pepper spray on my keychain since middle school, which I’ve forgotten more than once going through TSA security. I’m terrified I’ll forget here at the prison, but there's another dangerous element on my keys: a charm one of my nephews made. Back on the traditional UIUC campus, my students have asked “Oh, that's so cute! Who made it for you?” In the prison classroom that question could be seen as too personal, inappropriate, and labeled fraternization. I leave my regular keys in the console and grab my single spare which is safer to bring in. I make my way from the parking lot to the main entrance (see Figure 1).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Danville Correctional Center (DCC). Source: Google Earth, Labels: author.

Gaining access

4:45, about 5 minutes late but not unreasonable.

There are five unlocked doors, six locked doors, three antechambers, and a metal detector between my car and the room I will be conducting my interview in tonight. I go through the first, unlocked door of the main entrance and wait in the antechamber for the officer inside to look up, notice me, and buzz me in. In my head I repeat my tweak of the famous USPS ² creed, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night … will cause me to knock on this door.” The officer inside is behind security glass and it's possible he didn’t hear the first door open and close. Or he did but he's busy. Or he did and doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter, I don’t want to do anything to annoy him.

Thankfully it's Officer X who buzzes me in as soon as he notices me. We chat through the thick plexiglass as I sign in and he retrieves my volunteer badge. I ask about his son who is home visiting from college. Most of the officers on the nightshift don’t even check my ID; we’ve known each other for years. Processing is so much easier in the evening. The dayshift takes longer because it's busy—the front room is filled with loved ones waiting to get in, tired from the 3-hour commute from Chicago. They’ve often been waiting an hour or more. On the dayshift, I feel like I’m intruding on their personal, private, intimate space as I sail through processing in minutes.

“All clear” Officer X says as he buzzes me through the next door.

“No weapons, no firearms, no bombs, no knives, no smart watches?” he asks. I verbally confirm I do not have any dangerous items; I empty my pockets to show my spare truck key and my pen, and open my folder to flip though the papers I’m bringing in. Only once was I pulled aside by a female officer for a strip search. It wasn’t the “bend over and spread ‘em” you see in the movies, but I did have to remove my clothing and flip out my bra to show I wasn’t hiding anything. People who are visiting loved ones endure that process every time, even removing children's diapers to show there's nothing being smuggled in. When their visit is over, the incarcerated men are subjected to the search that serves as a punchline in popular media before they are allowed to return to their cells.

“OK see you in a bit” Officer X says as I walk through a metal detector, and he buzzes me through another door. I enter the Armory building, more locked doors, more waiting to be noticed (see Figure 1). Once inside, I pass the only restroom labeled “Women” I have access to. One of my biggest fears is unexpectedly starting my menstrual cycle while at the prison, but this one-room stall doesn’t even have those coin-operated machines that spit out pads the size of phonebooks. Not that I could bring coins in anyway. I cringe at the thought of how I would handle such a private moment in such a public space… ‘Private.’ One of the student's voices rings in my head, “I haven’t taken a dump in private in twenty years” he said in an interview last week.

“Keyring 26 please, Education” I try my best to politely yell to the officers behind the security riot glass, but they know me so well he keys are ready in the sliding one-way drawer. More buzzing, more slow doors. I make my way past the visitation area. One of the guys got married in that room, we were just talking about it in his interview. “I don’t even remember my vows. The only thing that sets out to me was it was a dirty little bullpen… no pictures, no cake, no white doves.” He joked. I peek in the room and wonder what the prison chaplain said to close the ceremony—surely it wasn’t “you may kiss the bride,” that type of personal contact isn’t allowed. Another locked door, more waiting, more buzzing. I step outside the building.

I’ve finally made it inside the prison. Half-way to my interview.

How long did all that take? 5 minutes? 10?

I’m worried about time because the students aren’t allowed in the classrooms without a volunteer. As someone who is constantly running late, I’m used to annoyed looks of friends as I rush in the door, apologizing. This isn’t Sunday brunch though; this is the rigid schedule of the prison. If I’m late, there are material consequences. The guys will fill the narrow, echoey hallway and we are in the middle of the hot, humid, Midwest summer. Thirty bodies packed together is miserable. With nowhere to go, the guys inevitably crowd the area around the Education Building Officer's desk. So, when I can’t find it in me to arrive on time, I’ve understandably annoyed not just the students but the officer as well. Of course, more importantly, I’ve sent the signal that my time is more important than their time.

Wait, I can’t be late tonight, because the keys were still there.

I step out on The Walk, the concrete path through the heart of the prison leading straight to the Education Building (see Figure 1). No matter the time of day, there's a steady stream of men crossing my path on their way to chow hall. A few might be EJP students, but the majority are men who are not in our program. They usually pause to make a hole for me, but sometimes I stand and wait. We aren’t supposed to stop on The Walk, but I feel rude if I just stroll through.

I’m walking past the doorway of the chow hall, and about 15 men are around me, coming and going, and a few are students. We briefly say hi and I know they’ll be up for Resource Room time in a bit. Good, the guys are still coming out of chow, I wasn’t late.

CRACK!

Gunshot. Not a firecracker. Not a car backfiring. Gunshot. If you ever had time to pause and wonder whether a loud noise was a gun or not, you’ve never lived in an environment where you had to run when you heard it.

In a fraction of a second, my brain processed several thoughts in slow motion. Run, dumbass! I could feel my muscles tensing in preparation. Wait, look at the guys. Almost in unison, the men were dropping to the ground. Some were crouching, some squatting, others were splaying out on their stomachs, their faces in the ground, and arms stretched out in a macabre superman pose. Clearly, they were well practiced in how to respond. Though my lived experience told me to run, I quickly squatted on the ground with the men.

Several officers ran past us into the building. In the midst of yelling and shouts I could make out:

“Hit the floor!”

“Get down! Get down!”

Almost immediately, the students turned to look at me and made eye contact. One asked, “Ms. Kurisu, you ok?”

It was such a strange question. If anything, they were the ones in danger. I wasn’t worried about me; I was worried about them. I’m not the one who would get shot if things popped off.

“Yeah, I’m ok are YOU guys ok??”

They nodded.

I heard officers in the distance confirm “shots fired”

A few minutes later I saw an officer escort a man in handcuffs out of the building. The blood streaming from his head blended with the bright orange pepper spray dye soaking his shirt.

Ok, he's walking on his own, that's good.

An officer came over and motioned to me, “Ma’am you can go ahead now.”

I looked at the guys apologetically; I felt guilty leaving them behind. As I turn the corner towards the Education Building, I saw a second man escorted out in handcuffs covered in the same mixture of blood and orange dye.

Who is it? Can I see his face? …Don’t stop walking, just keep going.

Even in this moment, I’m worried about pausing on the walk. I climbed the stairs of the Education Building two at a time, and beelined it to the classroom with the best view. I was able to make out the students and other men sitting down in a line. Hands clasped, arms resting on their bent knees, sitting on the ground—I was reminded of the many times my friends and I were in this same pose, lined up on the curb as police questioned us. I started to feel the adrenaline rush and was surprised it took me so long to notice. I was pacing the classroom, opening and closing my hands to keep them from shaking. I kept trying to see as much as I could out the window. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, maybe a gurney rolling up to the building? A bodybag?

God I hope everyone is ok, I hope it wasn’t one of our students…

Wow, what an asshole. Did I really just think that? Even if it wasn’t one of our students, it was still somebody.

I needed to focus, my thoughts were all over the place, I needed to do something but all I could do was pace. Somewhere deep inside me a voice said, well, you’re a researcher, aren’t you? I immediately turned on one of the computers and started typing up notes. I vaguely remembered something about how our brains can’t store memories in moments of high stress or trauma. I wanted to capture everything, so I just started typing my experience. I glanced at the clock on the wall.

5:30 pm, Welp at least I can tell time again.

Eventually the Education Building Officer came upstairs and filled me in on what happened. Two men were fighting and wouldn’t stop after two cans of pepper spray were unloaded on them. The officer in the bubble fired a warning shot at the shotbox—a target high on the wall found in every communal area in the prison. If the men didn’t stop, they would have been shot. Anyone still standing would have been a target. I thought of my teenage years in high school, fights breaking out during lunchtime and the campus security guards vainly blowing their whistles and yelling. When the guys were teenagers, they had been locked up in juvie for years and were already used to gunshots in the cafeteria.

Ok, everyone is fine. Well, maybe not fine, but nobody got shot.

…That's a pretty low bar.

The officer and I both assumed DCC would go on lockdown; at this point, I was just waiting around to go home, and he was waiting to escort me out. Interview 14 is out the window. I hope the lockdown doesn’t last more than a few days. I had 3 more interviews scheduled this week and it takes at least 2 weeks for new call passes to be issued. For the guys, lockdown is 24 hours in their cell. I was sitting here worried about scheduling.

The officer tells me this is the first gunshot since DCC opened. Through the interviews, I’ve learned gunshots were common in the max institutions, at least every other week, and the people injured were rarely part of the original fight. No wonder the guys were so good at ducking.

Only one gunshot in over 30 years, that's not bad at all…am I actually convincing myself how cushy it is in this prison?

The officer and I are shocked to learn there won’t be a lockdown, and programming will continue for the night. I was supposed to be conducting Interview 14 while the other volunteers held Resource Room time, but the officer informs me the volunteers were turned away at the gate during the confusion. I’m the only one here so I guess I’ll just sub in the Resource Room. Besides, we are over an hour into our regular session. I wouldn’t want to cut an interview short. It's not even clear which students will show up tonight.

6:15pm, I can already hear the guys talking about it as they climb the stairs.

The vibe is different from usual as the students file into the room. Everyone is talking a little louder, you can feel the high energy in the air. One of the guys nudges another, “Man that remind you of being back at the max joints??” Like most of the men, these two have crossed paths at different institutions over the last 15 + years they have been incarcerated, starting back in juvie. As the guys start to settle down, one of the students who was with me outside the chow hall comes in, smiles, and does a quick fake duck. He starts laughing and recounts the story.

“Wait, you were there Ms. Kurisu??” one student asks.

“Yeah man she was, you heard shots fired and boom, she dropped right down with us.”

I want to respond, “Yeah that was nuts!” I want to tell them I was about to bolt until I saw how they reacted; I want to ask them how they are really feeling through the jokes they so often use to process trauma; I want to ask them about comparing DCC to the max institutions. But, those questions are considered fraternization and can only happen in the context of the Research Team debrief sessions, and not everyone in here is part of the project. I’m also wary this is a security issue, it's never happened before, and talking about it so openly may be a bad look.

We try to get back to business as usual. The men who didn’t get a computer station sit in the corners reading or discussing class with each other. I sit at the only table in the room and chat with a few Research Team members about how the project is going. We are well aware of the optics and the three students sit across from me—a challenging feat considering we are at a round table.

This is so stupid; Jim gets to sit right next to them.

I’m used to having a buffer: empty chairs on either side of me no matter which room we are in. In the early days I once joked, “What, do I stink or something?” after I noticed how students consistently kept their distance during class. They told me it wasn’t a set rule but was just “better” if they didn’t sit immediately next to me. The only exception was if there were no empty chairs. Tonight, the three Research Team members sat scrunched together, sharing the semicircle as I had the other half to myself. Jim is a male volunteer and even though he is also at the prison often, and planning on conducting a PAR dissertation with the guys, he doesn’t have to worry about maintaining physical distance.

With 20 minutes before I must leave, I hop on the main computer to print my notes from earlier. I do the usual routine, grab spare scratch paper, recite “face down, feet first” so I can remember how to manually print double-sided, I take out the toner cartridge and vigorously shake it before replacing it. I hit print and hold my breath as I wait for the familiar blinking “error” light. On interview nights, I’m much more stressed when printing, fearful I’ll forever lose the data from the 3-hour session with the Research Team member. I’ve been known to bang the toner cartridge on the ground, rummage the trash bins for scrap paper, and yell more than a few obscenities. But of course, the night I don’t have interview data is the night it's an easy fix: just a paper jam. I bet if I had done Interview 14, the printer would have stalled out.

End of the night

8:00pm, time to go

There's a flurry of activity as the guys replace equipment and I make the rounds locking everything back up. I say goodnight to the officer and walk down the stairs with the guys. Our voices echo in the building but as soon as we step outside, I go silent. We aren’t supposed to socialize, and I know the eyes in the towers are on us. I think about leaving a classroom at the end of class on the traditional UIUC campus. I often end up accidentally walking with students in the same direction, which at worst is just a little awkward. I can see the nervous look on their faces and imagine them thinking “omg I have to make small talk with my TA.”

At the prison, I veer as far to the left of The Walk as possible, lining my feet up between grass and concrete, acting like the edge is a tightrope. I also quicken my pace so the students fall behind me. It just now crosses my mind that maybe they slow down for the same reasons. I never asked them. Of course, the male volunteers often walk in stride with the students, loudly finishing up their conversations and even saying “good night” as they part ways.

For the first time, I see one of the elusive wild bunnies scamper across our path. Without thinking I quickly look behind me to see if the guys saw it too. I see them smiling but immediately remember I’m not supposed to have contact with them. I fix my face, turn around, and keep my eyes on the outer door of the Armory.

8:20pm, Sweet nicotine

I climb in my truck and have a cigarette lit before I even fasten my seatbelt. Usually after an interview I engage in verbal memoing as I talk into my digital recorder on the hour-long commute home. Tonight, I just want to get home. I’m ready to decompress and try to salvage what I can of my lack of research tonight. I also have to type up an EJP report. No doubt the volunteers who were sent home have already emailed the listservs about the gunshot; I want to make sure folks know everyone is ok. Relatively.

I haven’t eaten since lunch and there's only a few places still open I can stop and get food. I grab a gas station hot dog, bag of chips, and some beer on the way home; it's a better dinner than the guys are having back in their cells right now.

9:45pm, finally home

I open my laptop and look over the notes I printed at the prison. I was supposed to come home with 3 hours’ worth of data from Interview 14. I was looking forward to the familiar rush of reading through the notes for the first time, scribbling in the margins to remind myself of a particular moment or body language during the interview, and thinking through the ways this student's story is both the same and different as the ones I’ve heard before.

Instead, all I have is a stream-of-consciousness account of what happened tonight. How am I supposed to use this as data? This highlights an interesting dilemma: I have chosen to use a PAR approach in order to center the experiences of those housed in prison. But so much of our interaction is controlled, especially because I am a female researcher, and it turns out that my existence can have special and profound implications for those participating in the research. I look at the notes printed on the precious scrap paper. What am I supposed to do with these ramblings? Can I even call them field notes? Will anyone even care to read them?

10:35pm, Enough navel-gazing. All of this is a problem for Future You. Finish the EJP report.

Epilogue: Interview 14 was completed 28 days later.

∼∼∼

This evening illustrates the complexities of engaging in PAR in a prison setting when the outside researcher in a woman, and the inside researchers are housed in a men's medium security prison. The pervasiveness of social control infiltrates every aspect of the research process. Though this particular night was unique in the reason why Interview 14 was canceled, rescheduling interviews was a common occurrence. Out of the total 39 interviews in this project, no less than 15 were rescheduled owing to bureaucratic red tape, delayed call passes, unexpected family visits, changes in work schedules, and occasionally, without explanation. This narrative is not intended to deter researchers from pursuing PAR in a prison environment. Instead, by shedding light on the physical, mental, and emotional demands of such work, I aim to better equip potential researchers for the realities of prison research—a setting where, despite extensive preparation, one may end the night without an interview.