ABSTRACT

This chapter identifies key areas underpinning the research. Firstly, I argue that stepping back from theories of crime and punishment allows a richer and more nuanced understanding of how young people experience prison, their lives before prison and how they imagine their futures. Secondly, I discuss how racial, class and legal status are imposed on and internalised by young prisoners and why attention to them is necessary, drawing on Bourdieu and Fanon to illuminate the ways in which power is distributed, experienced and resisted. Finally, I suggest that what is needed is a move towards a phenomenology of youth imprisonment.