1 ‘Be easy, see wagwan’: Introduction

The shape of the field

Crime, risk and harm

Chapter outline

2 ‘My story’s boring’: Why young prisoners’ stories matter

The political economy of crime

Understanding prisons or understanding prisoners?

The fact of blackness and double consciousness

Shame and (symbolic) violence

Towards a phenomenology of long-term imprisonment.

Conclusion

3 ‘Real talk’: Methodology and reflections on fieldwork

Getting in

Research as ‘passing’

Becoming participant

Paper files and straw men

Ethics and safety

4 ‘Just gotta ride it’: Adaptation, survival and change

Life before Cypress

From the first day to everyday

The carceral habitus.

Conclusion

5 ‘That’s just their pen and ink’: Resisting the pains of imprisonment

Atmosphere, accessories and alienation

'It's just not a nice place to be'

Deprivation of corporeal experience

Identity

Conclusion

6 ‘Obviously, you can’t just back down...’ Violence and identity

‘Gangs’, groups and good old fashioned fighting

Place, space and keeping face

Violence and collective identity

Collectivism vs individualism

Conclusion

7 ‘Clothes, food and love...’: family, fatherhood and the limits of fratriarchy

Something in the way

‘It is what it is’: maintaining family ties

Fatehrs and fatherhood

Things fall apart

Allies, associates and alliances

Conclusion

8 ‘Jail’s not gonna do nothin’...at all’: Conclusion

Biography, habitus and trauma

The experience and resistance of imposed class, racial and legal status and prisonisation

Beyond the (purely) sociological imagination

Impelling the phenomenology of youth imprisonment