ABSTRACT
Researching the prison can be a challenging, fascinating, fatiguing, exhilarating, exhausting, tedious, poignant business. This chapter provides a brief potted history of some of the 'classic' sociological studies of prisons, prisoners and prison staff, against a backdrop of the political and policy contexts in which they were conducted. It takes the reader through the process of doing research in prisons – frequently summarized as 'getting in, getting on and getting out'. The chapter describes the emotional dimensions of researching the prison; what it feels like to observe and, to some degree, participate in the everyday, interior world of the prison. As Crewe, many accounts of doing prison research suggest that it is 'intense, unpredictable and emotionally taxing', yet fail to note that it is 'rarely dangerous', with both prisoners and prison staff being 'generally welcoming' to the researchers in their midst.
