It is widely known that Aboriginal men and women are overrepresented in the Canadian prison system. A long history of colonial violence and its contemporary manifestations has placed a disproportionate number of Canadian Aboriginal peoples at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. In many ways, Canadian prisons have become the means through which society has chosen to respond to this history. Examining Indigenous men’s experiences and creative writing in a provincial correctional institution provides an opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of how these men consider and respond to the very real impact colonialism has on their lives. Through participant interviews I analyze the Inspired Minds: All Nations Creative Writing program at Saskatoon Correctional Centre and the way in which it has informed, challenged and changed participant experiences and relationships. Indigenous masculinity and transformative learning theory are utilized to better understand and interpret the experiences of program participants. Indigenous masculinity presents a lens which highlights how their lives have been impacted and shaped through community experiences with ongoing colonialism. Further it allows for a nuanced understanding of how heteropatriarchal masculinity is reinforced and perpetuated within the prison and how the classroom works to challenge these representations. Transformative learning theory allows for a deep understanding of the way in which the prison classroom can challenge the above norms by providing a contested learning environment. Inspired Minds: All Nations Creative Writing provides evidence that arts and education based programs can challenge the toxic, hegemonically masculine institution of the prison by creating a classroom space wherein participants are able to become active learners through the utilization of transformative learning principles.

With the expansion of the use of private prisons and detention centres worldwide and the increasing involvement of private actors in the provision of custodial services, this doctoral thesis considers life inside two private prisons in England. Using theoretically informed ethnography it evaluates the effect of responsibility on men imprisoned in two private prisons in England. Firstly, it briefly reviews the background and development of prison privatisation in England and Wales and considers the role and place of private prisons as part of a wider neo-liberal shift. Secondly, using qualitative data gathered inside two private prisons, it evaluates if these prisons, through their regimes, are trying to create responsible self-governing prisoners. The thesis reviews both, how regimes and practices in place in these two prisons attempt to forge responsible prisoners, and how individual men and groups of prisoners experience, feel about, cope with and assimilate penal messages of self-governance and responsibility. Finally, it questions both the impact of responsible prisoners for prisons and the impact of responsibility on prisoners and argues that, whilst there is a benefit to fostering environments in which prisoners are enabled to become responsible and self-governing, a careful balance must be maintained, as for some men the responsibility itself becomes characteristic of the "pain of imprisonment".

The aim of this qualitative study is to investigate correctional officers’ perception of themeaning of manliness for inmates in a swedish high security prison, and how gender plays arole when working close to inmates. The study also explores how the officer’s own genderplays a role in their interactions with the inmates. Data from seven interviews withcorrectional officers has been analyzed using three concepts from different gender theories -the ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and ‘subordinated masculinity’ concepts by Connell(1995/2008), as well as the concept of ‘hypermasculinity’ by Toch (1998). The researchshows that correctional officers believe that a hypemasculine ideal is important amonginmates. The perception was that hegemonic qualities result in a higher status and position inthe prison’s hierarchical structure, while subordinated characteristics result in a lower rank.However, the meaning of manliness greatly varied depending on the situation and socialsettings. Officers adapted different strategies when dealing with the inmates’ expressions ofmanliness and the study demonstrates that an interaction between an inmate and acorrectional officer is influenced by the officer’s gender.