Post-prison re/integration? A Glasgow case study

Rubio Arnal, Alejandro (2021) Post-prison re/integration? A Glasgow case study. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

In spite of a recent rise in interest about life after prison in academic, policy and research circles all around the globe, people often face acute, compounded and permanent adversities on release. This may be at least partly due to our limited knowledge on life after prison and to the lack of a thorough conceptualisation of it to guide policy and practice. Thus, the aspiration of this thesis, and of the research on which it is based, is to try to foster and contribute to an improvement of life after prison by building on and extending our current knowledge on this matter. Bearing this in mind, this thesis aims to conceptualise, understand, interrogate and reimagine post-prison re/integration by analysing my critically participative research findings and integrating this analysis with pre-existing literature.

To do so, I conducted a case study with the purpose of dialogically exploring men’s post-prison re/integration in Glasgow, excluding people that have committed sexual offences. I created, facilitated and was a member of a dialogic inquiry group which met a total of 13 times over 13 months. The inquiry group was formed by a heterogeneous group of people who held different expertise on and/or were differently affected by this phenomenon. This, combined with the study’s participative and dialogic approach, conferred on its findings a degree of intersubjective validity which should be kept in mind and valued.

In this thesis, by synthesising and bringing into dialogue my data with existing literature, a clear storyline is unveiled, exploring the reasons behind the multiple and severe adversities faced on release: I show that post-prison dis-integration is fostered through a process of cumulative dis-integration which often starts before the sentence and carries on well beyond release. In presenting a complex and nuanced picture of this process, I show the key role played by the structure/context; firstly, by outlining that people who were already dis-integrated are highly over-represented in prison and, secondly, by showing how our societal response to potentially imprisonable acts produces, reinforces and exacerbates dis-integration and inequalities.

My research data presented and analysed in this thesis not only supports already existing evidence both in Glasgow and beyond; it also complements it, enhancing our understanding of post-prison re/integration by giving fine-grained examples of dis-integration and the reasons behind it. Different key theoretical, research, societal, and policy and practice implications can be derived from this evidence.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Additional Information: Supported by funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, the College of Social Sciences of the University of Glasgow, and the SCCJR.
• Colleges/Schools: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences
• Supervisor's Name: McNeill, Professor Fergus, Happer, Dr. Catherine and Ferrie, Dr. Joanna
• Date of Award: 2021
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2021-82399
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 24 Aug 2021 10:54
• Last Modified: 24 Aug 2021 10:54
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.82399
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/82399