‘You’re all so close you might as well sit in a circle...’ Carceral geographies of intimacy and comfort in the prison visiting room

Moran, Dominique and Disney, Tom (2018) ‘You’re all so close you might as well sit in a circle...’ Carceral geographies of intimacy and comfort in the prison visiting room. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 100 (3). pp. 179-194. ISSN 0435-3684

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/04353684.2018.1481725

Abstract

This paper considers the intimate exchanges taking place in a space whose public/private designation is indistinct; the prison visiting room. Drawing on extensive research with serving prisoners, their visitors, and prison staff in the UK, and using as an interpretive lens recent geographical conceptualizations of comfort as affective complex, it seeks to better understand how the spaces provided for prison visitation affect the ‘doing’ of intimacy in ways that arguably detract from the potential benefits of prison visitation in supporting the well-being of both prisoners and visitors. The paper suggests that the bodily practices involved in achieving comfort-as-condition-of-possibility may simultaneously undermine the propensity for the resultant corporeal comfort to deliver this effect.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Carceral geography, comfort, intimacy, prison visiting
Subjects: L700 Human and Social Geography
L900 Others in Social studies
Department: Faculties > Health and Life Sciences > Social Work, Education and Community Wellbeing
Depositing User: Tom Disney
Date Deposited: 22 Aug 2018 15:40
Last Modified: 01 Aug 2021 09:47
URI: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/35391

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