Imprisoned work: Experiences of prisoners during and after imprisonment
What does it mean to work in prison?
Work is often the main occupation of prisoners, even in Saxony, one of the few federal states that does not require prisoners to work. The structure of prison life often revolves around work. Work is a central component of the resocialization concept, which aims to prepare prisoners for a life free of punishment after release. Work is intended to teach discipline and skills that can be helpful in securing a future job. Work also provides the prisoner with additional economic resources. This income is intended to enable working prisoners to support their relatives outside the prison. In practice, however, wages are often too low to make this possible to any significant extent. Instead, a large proportion of the income from the prison is used to finance their own time in prison, for example to cover the cost of telephone calls and “luxury items” such as tobacco and coffee.
The ideal of teaching skills through work is being challenged by the changing meaning and form of work in society, as digital skills and the ability to work remotely become increasingly important in discussions about the future of work. However, the split between different types of work and vocational training in the prison at least shows the potential for flexibility and adaptation in the world of prison work.
There is still little information on how prisoners view and experience their work in prison, how this work relates to their own experiences or skills, or how it affects their future planning or their ability to cope with the various challenges after release, particularly in relation to finding work.
This project aims to investigate the significance of work and the money earned from it for prisoners. The aim is to examine prisoners’ experiences of working in prison as well as their relationship to their previous work experiences before imprisonment and their expectations of future employment after release. To this end, interviews will be conducted with first-time prisoners and those already in prison. In these narrative interviews, the connections between personal identity and work will be explored. It will be examined to what extent work is central to the ability to define oneself and to position oneself narratively in the past, present and future. The aim of the project is to contribute to the conceptualization of “resocialization”, especially against the background of current changes and developments in the world of work.
