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
