The Pains of Hope: Families of Indeterminate Sentenced Prisoners and Political Campaigning by Lay Citizens

Abstract

This paper examines the politics of crime and insecurity as experienced ‘from below’. We draw on in-depth interviews with families of indeterminate-sentenced prisoners, and policy participants, in order to understand families’ experiences of their relative’s imprisonment under the discredited English Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence and their public campaigning against it. We situate these experiences within broader structural trends, which we conceptualise as penal-familial assemblages. We argue that the experiences cause ‘pains of hope’ for families through a double liminality: first, due to the uncertainties caused by the indeterminate sentence, which brings neither closure nor release. Second, meaningful state action on campaigners’ demands remained elusive, with moments when change appeared close but ultimately remained just out of reach. In conclusion, we draw out the lessons from our study for analysing penal politics. We argue, in particular, for a humanistic recognition of the centrality, and the pains, of lay citizens’ efforts to seek to achieve progressive penal policy change.