Forensic Psychologists
Prisons, Power, and Vulnerability
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- Description
- Contents
- Reviews
- About
This book explores how forensic psychology has come to inhabit a central unifying discursive presence in the life world of modern carceral institutions. Providing a sociological and qualitative account of forensic practitioner psychologists, the author looks both in, and alongside, the work of such practitioners to explore how they simultaneously occupy positions of power and vulnerability.
Focusing not only on how practitioners themselves come to embody a pervasive system of disciplinary expertise, but also on how they experience other forms of penal control, the book offers a novel and complete exploration of forensic psychology, the modern prison, and power.
This is an accessible text for prison practitioners, criminological and sociological researchers and forensic psychologists on the nature and reality of forensic psychological practice in the contemporary prisons of England and Wales.
Chapter 1. Introduction: Forensic Psychology and Her Majesty’s Prison Service.
- Chapter 2. Disciplinary Capital: Forensic Psychology, Power, and Expertise.
- Chapter 3. Risk, Rehabilitation, and the Development of Forensic Psychological Services.
- Chapter 4. The Values and Perspectives of Forensic Psychologists.
- Chapter 5. Occupational Experiences of Forensic Psychologists.
- Chapter 6. Adjuncts of Penal Power.
- Chapter 7. Subalterns of Penal Power.
- Chapter 8. Gender, Sexism, and the Prison.
- Chapter 9. The Paradox of Being Vulnerable Adjuncts.
This is a landmark study of the distinct form that psychological power has come to take in prison, despite being wielded by an insecure, beleaguered workforce. It is written with insight and imagination. The prison is a place of punishment, and yet it seeks to 'remake' the prisoner. The forensic psychologist has come to lie at the heart of this contradiction, largely serving the institutions' interests using a new, and flawed, 'disciplinary capital'. Jason Warr’s analysis of just how 'entangled with power' they have become is original, critical, and shrewd.
Forensic Psychologists fills an important gap in the prison governance literature by exploring the conflicted and complicated role of the prison psychologist, a newly influential and intimidating actor in contemporary prisons. This fascinating and accessible book will be of interest not only to prison scholars, but also to scholars of power, capital, habitus, emotional work, and gender in the workplace.