Freedom within bars: maximum security prisoners’ negotiations of identity through rap

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the construction of prisoners’ identity through rap in England’s high security prisons. While hip hop studies has often addressed rap’s connection to the social practices of criminalized youths, prison rap cultures have received scant attention. This paper draws on a series of rap workshops and interviews with prisoners to investigate the experiences of black prisoners in high security prisons and how identities are produced and negotiated through rap. Rap is associated with the production of a range of identities and identifications, enabling prisoners to accommodate themselves to the conditions of their incarceration and to challenge aspects of the criminal justice system that they experience as unfair or illegitimate.

KEYWORDS:

• Culture
• England
• hip hop
• prison
• racism
• rap

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. According to the dispersal model, the most dangerous, escape-prone or difficult to control prisoners are ‘spread around a number of maximum security facilities so that their impact on the system is dissipated’ (Wortley 2002, p. 47).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [AH/M011275/3]; Economic and Social Research Council [ES/L003120/1].