Supuesto práctico número 4: derecho de huelga de los

Rubin and Rubin (1995), when discussing qualitative interviewing, note that

“what we hear depends on when we ask the question and to whom” (p. 38).

They go on to use the example of how an interview when someone’s mother has just died is likely to be very different to one conducted with the same person a year later. In a similar way, the temporal distance of my participants from the instance of familial imprisonment they are recalling will also impact on how they recall and speak about that experience.

One participant in particular illustrated how the stories that are told, and the emotions that are spoken of, can change depending on the situation. When Amie joined KIN, her brother had been out of prison for a few years after serving a single long-term sentence. During the project however, he returned to prison. At one of the sessions where we were working on pieces of writing, she spoke of no longer identifying with one of the pieces she had written earlier in the project, prior to her brother receiving his second sentence. When I asked about this during her interview she said the following:

Kirsty: ‘Cause you, kind of, used the writing that you’d done before but then you were saying, like, you don’t really feel like that relates to it now.

Amie: Oh well, it was this one, it was, erm, yeah, I mean all of this, like, I feel like I relate to but then, like, this is talking about, like, transformation and stuff and I definitely felt like that so much before,

‘cause I felt like he had been out and I had, like, kind of, like, dealt with it and was now talking about it. And I do definitely feel like that to an extent but now that, obviously this new, like, he’s back in and it’s all happened again, I don’t feel like, ‘Oh, I’m just absolutely fine about it,’

do you know. So, I don’t relate so much to that any more, you know.

Kirsty: ‘Cause, it’s, kind of-, Amie: It’s more raw, isn’t it?

Where a family member’s imprisonment is not a single incident within a young person’s life and is instead something which has occurred repeatedly, this, again, can impact on narratives in interviews. For example, reflecting back on what it was like when the family member first went to prison or when they first visited them can become clouded by the many other visits since or sentences they have received. None of the young people taking part in this research had recently experienced the imprisonment of a family member for the first time.

All were at a point where they were in a place to reflect back, although for some it was still ongoing. This opportunity to reflect can change how things are now seen by the young person and narrated within the interview. For example, Kev talks about the “deep and meaningful” conversations he had with his dad through their letter writing. He also noted, however, that this was not something he saw at the time but only recognised in retrospect:

“So, it’s, I, but, aye, at the time, aye, definitely was mair open and heartfelt but I didnae see it at the time, you know…”

While the young people were all at a point to reflect back they were not all at the same stage in this process. For some their family member had been released, while some were still in prison. For those who had been released, some were ‘doing well’, e.g. dealt with substance misuse issues and were no

longer offending, whereas others were not. Some of the young people had close relationships with their family member while others did not, and had never had.

There were also incidences of the family member having served one long sentence compared to serving a series of shorter sentences over the young person’s life. The result of these differences meant that some were speaking of something they were currently living while others were reflecting back, bringing in potential elements of reflective bias or changed narratives, where the situation can be seen differently depending on the result of that experience and the time since it was being lived.

Ross and Wing’s (2018) research on memory has shown that, where there was a more positive outcome to an intervention, the participant’s memories of it are also more positive, indicating the importance of recognising multiple facets of experiences; someone’s distance from the event and its outcome. While this is more quantitative, psychological based research, the premise is the same here;

that events with more positive outcomes may be remembered and spoken of differently than those whose resolutions are less so.

In respect of the young people in KIN particularly, but with the potential to apply to those in Glenview, perhaps in different ways, the concept of the “social contagion paradigm” (Roediger et al., 2001) in memory studies may also be relevant. It outlines the potential for social interactions to influence individual memory of events. Harris et al.’s (2017) work applying this paradigm to autobiographical memory concluded that almost all their participants recalled details from the scripted memory of the partner, with whom they had shared a narration of their experience, rather than simply their own initial individual recall. Further, they note that “social interactions can lead people to shape their memories in certain ways: to recall some details and forget others, or to emphasise particular aspects of their memory” (p. 325). Fivush (2004) outlines ideas of self-silencing where people self-censor during conversational recall.

Harris et al. (2010) found this occurred in their own research, where participants changed previously made statements to those more in line with the group they had been conversing with. While my own research is not a clinical or psychological study, nor one particularly focused on memory, these concepts are valuable when considering how participants recount events where they have been involved in the discussion of them with others, particularly over a long

period and where they may be in respect of shared situations, prior to interviews taking place. This is not to question accuracy of recall, something that is not necessarily a focus of this research, but simply to provide context for the data coming from the interviews and upon which this thesis is based.

Where an event has been particularly traumatic this can also cause a repression of certain memories. For example, when I was asking Sam what he remembered about what it was like at home before his dad “disappeared” he responded:

Sam: Well, I remember some, like, most of the things I remember probably weren’t the happiest things to remember.

Kirsty: Okay.

Sam: Like, I don’t know, like, because, like, now I don’t really talk to my parents and they’re both, like, obviously separated, I think I’ve just, kind of, phased out memories a lot.

Kirsty: Okay.

Sam: I just, kind of, like, push myself to forget most of them because that’s obviously the way I was brought up.

The length of time someone has ‘lived with’ something occurring in their life may also alter how they subsequently speak about it. Hulley et al. (2016) found that long-term prisoners can adapt over time to cope with the demands of their lengthy sentences and periods of confinement. Their research builds on previous work which found that improved coping techniques were part of how prisoners adapted to prison life generally (Sykes, 1958; Crewe, 2009). Leigey and Ryder (2015: 736) also spoke of prisoners becoming “accustomed” to being apart from their family and that they developed “strategies to cope” with other limiting aspects of prison life, such as the lack of privacy. I would suggest that this may be similar for family members of prisoners. Lanskey et al. (2015) spoke of participants in their study who had adapted to their situation, who were “upset at first but got used to it” (p.490), indicating that depending on when they were interviewed their telling of their experiences and the emotions related to them may change. Whether this adaptation occurs over a longer period of time, either for those who have been sentenced to one long-term sentence or who serve a series of short-term sentences over a longer period of time, or whether this occurs even over short-term sentences, these coping strategies and becoming

accustomed to the situation may also affect how families then speak about it.

For the young people who took part in this research, and for whom the experience of a family member’s imprisonment was not new, they may have already formed coping strategies or grown used to visiting and the restrictions placed on them through their arms-length interactions with the prison system.

Their narratives around this therefore may have changed over time and this should be borne in mind when reading about the data and its analysis in the following chapters. For example, when I asked Morven about differences between visiting in a Young Offenders Institution and an adult prison she commented on the differences in the attitudes of the people visiting who were now “used to it”:

“…people just seemed, like, less afraid in there, so, like, the atmosphere, I suppose [a YOI]’s kind of full of, like, first time offenders so, like, the families were just a bit, like, ‘What’s going on?’ like, everyone felt the same. Whereas by the time we got to [the Adult Prison] everyone’s kinda more used to it. And I think that kinda helped the atmosphere just seeing all the people being more comfortable.”

Scott also spoke about the differences in his reaction to his brother’s sentences:

Kirsty: Yeah. So has, yeah, has it felt different for the different sentences that he’s got, like, compared to that first shock maybe and then-,

Scott: Yeah, yeah, there was, like, the first time it was like woah, shock and then the second time it’s just, like, it’s not that bad and then the third time, you’re just, like, get on with it, you know what I mean, it’s the third time he’s in jail, you’ve just gotta get on with it-,

Kirsty: Yeah.

Scott: And then it’s, like, the, most of the time you just get on with it and if you don’t speak to him for, like, a week, the time passes and by the time you know it they’re out.

The physical location of participants within a prison can have an impact on both the practicalities of interviewing and the data from the interviews, but it may

also impact on temporal aspects of interviewing. For example, where a young person is currently within a prison and may have been in a prison visit recently, this may impact on the narrative that they tell about their experience of visits as a family member when they were younger. For example, Darren, when talking about visiting his dad when he was younger, also links this to his recent experiences as the visitee, as well as being the visitor to his dad more recently:

“‘Cause when I go up now I can remember it when I see it again, know, and you can remember, like, the room you’re in and stuff […] Just, like, bits like that, but that’s, I don’t really know, I cannae, I can, cause I’ve been there, like, no long ago as well. Like, you can remember it, it’s, just the same as every time, once you get into a routine you cannae really forget the routine.”

This not only has the potential to influence how people remember previous events but also to trigger specific memories due to them recently experiencing this, although from the other side, as a prisoner rather than their family member.

As I made clear in Chapter 3, interviews are not used here as a method to gather

‘the truth’. They are instead interactions where the interviewer and interviewee construct a representation of the experience at that point in time. The point in time therefore must be acknowledged with a reflection on the temporal distance from that which is being spoken about, its frequency in that person’s life and the outcome or current position of the individual in their journey.