Policy Press

Sound, Order and Survival in Prison

The Rhythms and Routines of HMP Midtown

By Kate Herrity

Published

Jan 31, 2024

Page count

210 pages

ISBN

978-1529229455

Dimensions

234 x 156 mm

Imprint

Bristol University Press

Published

Jan 31, 2024

Page count

210 pages

ISBN

978-1529229493

Dimensions

234 x 156 mm

Imprint

Bristol University Press

Published

Jan 31, 2024

Page count

210 pages

ISBN

978-1529229493

Dimensions

234 x 156 mm

Imprint

Bristol University Press
Sound, Order and Survival in Prison

The soundscape of prison life is that of constant clangs, bangs and jangles. What is the significance of this cacophonous din to those who live and work with it? This book tells the story of a year spent with a UK prison community, bringing its social world vividly to life for the first time through aural ethnography.

Kate Herrity’s sensory criminology challenges current thinking on how power is experienced by the imprisoned and the lasting effects of incarceration for all who spend time in these environments.

“Kate Herrity's research on the sounds of prison life is one of the most vivid – or rather, resonant – new contributions to prison studies in many a long year. It refreshes our feel for what is involved in inhabiting that world as very few other studies have done. Our methods and our concepts for apprehending that reality can never be quite the same again.” Richard Sparks, University of Edinburgh

Kate Herrity is the Mellon-Kings Research Fellow in Punishment at the University of Cambridge.

1. Just Landed

2. What Are You Hearing, Right Now?

3. Warp and Weft

4. “He’s Never Even Had a Magnum!”

5. Weft and Warp

6. A Night Inside

7. Talk to Me

8. Kackerlackas

9. A Kettle, a Penguin and a Word Arrow

10. Emotional Contagion

11. Arrhythmia

12. Polyrhythmia

13. Jingle Jangle

14. Disentangling Power and Order

15. Learning the “Everyday Tune”

16. Listening To Power

17. Singing Frogs, Looping the Slam

18. The Auld Triangle

19. The Hustle and Bustle

20. Phasing

21. Polyrhythmia Revisited

22. Bells, Whistles, Ships and Prisons

23. Shipping Out

24. References