13 - Jingle Jangle

Summary

‘Those keys, can't forget where you are.’ (Prisoner, fieldnotes)

As different rhythms of everyday comings and goings unfolded within the prison soundscape, the nuanced complexity of flows of power between people and place became more apparent. The jangle of keys and clang of gates reverberated with the potency of the prison, a symbolic violence upon those who felt the weight of its meaning.

The Midtown soundscape signified the extent to which power flowed in a broader relational sense than is depicted from within the constraining peripheries of vision. Officers enacted power over prisoners by evoking symbols of both their relative status and that of the prison. The sound of keys echoed with their literal function, but also jangled with symbolic representation of broader social censure. The prison soundscape reverberated with the power to punish that was felt in multifarious ways, most keenly by those stripped of their freedom, but also by those who worked in these spaces. Different individuals and actors were more or less disturbed by particular elements of the soundscape; I focus on a selection of examples to demonstrate what impact this could have, and what it says about operations of power and the violence in which it manifested.

Power flowed through the soundscape, both in its making, and the wider potency of the prison it signified. Nathan, interviewed for my undergraduate dissertation, described being held in Seg while in a young offender institution (YOI). An officer had left a radio on to keep the young men company through the night while they were held in isolation. A second officer walked through and shifted the dial a fraction, so they were left with white noise all night long. The mean-spiritedness reported here bears no comparison to the thoughtlessness of clanging gates at unsociable hours that many reported at Midtown. Power ran in electric, invisible lines, so often wielded carelessly. When it was not, the effect on relationships could be profound. Much noise emanating from routine practices was attributable to institutional thoughtlessness; ‘the ways in which prison regimes (routines, rules, timetables, etcetera) simply roll on with little reference to the needs and sensibilities of [prisoners]’ (Crawley, 2004: 350).