23 - Shipping Out

Summary

Rhythms in movement and daily activity through prison spaces reveal much about the nature of life inside and I had anticipated moving around as I familiarized myself with the daily ebb and flow considerably more than happened in practice. Prisoners, of course, were not free to come and go through the gates, and I was in no position to escort them. Staff were busy and I was conscious of the need to minimize the nuisance I represented. As I have stated elsewhere, much of my time was spent standing in the same spot on the main wing. People could find me if they chose, avoid me if they did not want to engage and staff knew where I was. Adapting to the conditions of the prison environment offered many lessons in research practice. Once the ear attuned and sufficient time had been spent standing still, these strategies amplified the significance of leaving, arriving and waiting. So much waiting.Shipping out is a term which captures the otherness of prison spaces and the cultural roles that ships and prisons play. They are ‘other’ places against which we measure our relative belonging. Our here-ness assumes definition when contrasted with the there-ness behind the wall. Boats and ships are spurs to the imagination of the great and mysterious beyond: ‘In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates’ (Foucault and Miskowiec, 1986

). Prisons similarly shore up our sense of social belonging. Setting sail and disembarking signify the arrival and departure from watery mysterious realms. In prison, leaving and arriving take on potent, ritualistic meaning. Being a constant point of reference as the tides of movement ebbed and flowed around me taught much about the nature of the prison and its relationship with the outside. Like an awkward pebble in the tide of hustle and bustle, I was sensitized to the comings and goings of others. Adopting this strategy heightened my awareness of spatial and temporal experience in relation to inside and out, and other times and places. This became more poignant as I prepared to leave Midtown myself.