Out There/In Here: Masculinity, Violence and Prisoning

Moving between the spaces of the outside community and prison—"out there" and "in here"—this study explores the complicated connections between masculinity and violence in the lives of men incarcerated at a provincial prison. The discussion traces the men's lives and highlights their understanding of their own violence, while looking at the ways in which prison perpetuates the violence inherent in dominant masculinity. By revealing the voices of the jailed men, this analysis is able to show that prison is a gendered space that is not a solution to the public's concerns about crime and violence. Rather, it is a place in which masculine pressures encourage marginalized men to take part in aggression, dominance, and the exercise of brute power as legitimate social practices.

Moving between the spaces of the outside community and prison—"out there" and "in here"—this study explores the complicated connections between masculinity and violence in the lives of men incarcerated at a provincial prison. The discussion traces the men's lives and highlights their understanding of their own violence, while looking at the ways in which prison perpetuates the violence inherent in dominant masculinity. By revealing the voices of the jailed men, this analysis is able to show that prison is a gendered space that is not a solution to the public's concerns about crime and violence. Rather, it is a place in which masculine pressures encourage marginalized men to take part in aggression, dominance, and the exercise of brute power as legitimate social practices.

Elizabeth Comack is a professor of sociology at the University of Manitoba and a research associate at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives–Manitoba. She is the coauthor of The Power to Criminalize: Violence, Inequality and the Law and coeditor of Criminalizing Women: Gender and (In)justice in Neoliberal Times. She lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.