TY - JOUR
AU1 - Halsey, Mark
AB - Abstract This article examines the link between unresolved childhood trauma and loss issues and the impact on serious offending into and beyond early adulthood. Drawing on in-depth interview data with second- and third-generation prisoners, I revisit the work of Fairbairn and position criminal conduct as the material manifestation of the persistent and treacherous ‘return of bad objects’ in adult offenders’ lives. Close attention is given to how custodial environments address prisoners’ trauma and loss issues, and, more pointedly, to how the failure to bring such issues safely to the fore has real implications for prisoner reintegration and public safety. In concluding, I argue that even the best therapeutic work in custodial environments is liable to falter if not matched with concerted efforts to transform the social, economic and cultural milieus to which people return on release. Introduction Over the last two decades, a body of criminological research has emerged that foregrounds the psychodynamics of crime and the impact of unresolved trauma and loss at individual–societal levels (Smith 1999; Gadd 2000; Valier 2000; Asser 2002; Gadd and Jefferson 2007; Bereswill 2011; Gadd and Corr 2015). Such work links the ‘inner world’ of offenders to, among other aspects, the intersubjective processes of splitting, projection and externalization (Brown 2003; Robinson 2011) and, in grappling with the reflexive effects of particular cultural and social milieus, departs sharply from less sophisticated attempts to mine the ‘psychological’ causes of crime (see Falk 1966). Gadd and Corr (2015: 82–3) capture the spirit of the ‘new’ psychosocial criminology by observing: The substance of criminology is, of course, ridden with … dangerous matter. But if we are to truly understand it, we will need to ensure that our analyses go beyond the patterning of crime rates, whether in general or for different groups of offenses. What we need as well are opportunities for understanding offending behavior in terms of its logic within the lives of particular offenders, a logic that sometimes evades them too. Taking Gadd and Corr’s lead, the aims of this article are two-fold. First, and in an effort to bring some qualitative nuance to large-scale cohort studies of child abuse and subsequent offending, I delve into the life of one prisoner in Australia (‘Kevin’) to explicate how the repeat experience of physical and psychological violence shaped his sense of self and, specifically, his early entrée into crime and subsequent progression into serious adult offending. Building on previous work (Widom 1989a; 1989b; 1995; Murray and Farrington 2005; Widom and Wilson 2009; Besemer 2012; Ogloff et al. 2012; Wakefield and Wildeman 2014), and placing the life of Kevin into the wider data set of research participants (i.e. the Generations Through Prison (hereafter GTP) study), I show how the ‘extraordinary absence’ of Kevin’s biological parents (through early death and incarceration) created opportunities for other adults (primarily his mother’s ‘new’ boyfriends) to amplify the trauma and abuse in his life. Moreover, I illustrate how the abuse suffered by Kevin was intergenerational insofar as the violence done to him was similar to that experienced (and externalized) by, in particular, his mother, and grandparents. My second and more substantive aim is to delve deeper into the criminogenic implications of childhood trauma and loss. I argue the crimes committed by victims of serious childhood violence equate to an internalized pain or rage manifesting as externalized violence. Fairbairn (1943), after Freud (1927), terms this the ‘repression and return of bad objects’. For Aboriginal prisoners (such as Kevin), I read the return of these bad objects as simultaneously personal (i.e. as attaching to an individual’s life course) and politico-historical (i.e. as encompassing the trauma of dislocation from ancestral lands, the demise of numerous tribes through disease and forced assimilation, as well as the pains of over-incarceration, lateral violence and disproportionate experience of preventable death and injury) (Cunneen et al. 2013). Accordingly, I use Fairbairn’s work to show how any psychotherapeutic ‘solution’ to unresolved trauma and loss needs to be coupled with the equally if not more important work of transforming the cultural, social and economic contexts in which most serious offenders are raised, and to which they typically return following release from custody. Therapeutic approaches should, moreover, focus not only on the needs of traumatized children (who may become adult offenders), but also on the histories of violence and abuse sustained by their parents or other caregivers. This, arguably, is one of the key hidden stories of the criminal justice system—the long and complex chain of repressed experiences and transferred violence working its way through one generation of prisoners to the next. Relevant Studies For all the infamous and less known offenders whose early life was imbued by serious violence (see Mailer 1979; Parker 1990; Halsey 2008; Hedegaard 2013), comparatively little has been written from a qualitative perspective, on how and why child victims of abuse become offenders. Widom (1989a; 1989b) was the first scholar to specifically study the impacts of violence on children’s offending trajectories (see also Widom and Ames 1994). In a sample of 908 confirmed cases of child abuse and neglect drawn from a Midwest US jurisdiction over the period 1967–71, ‘[a]bused and neglected children [aged up to 11 years had] a higher likelihood of arrests for delinquency, adult criminality, and violent criminal behavior than matched controls’ (Widom 1989a: 162). Significantly, ‘victims of physical abuse had the highest level of arrests for violent criminal behavior’ (Widom 1989a: 163), with ‘blacks’ accruing a violent criminal record at nearly twice the rate of ‘whites’. More recently, Carlson and Shafer (2010) examined the histories of trauma and ‘stressful life events’ of 2,279 male and female prisoners in Arizona (all of whom were parents). Of the 838 males returning a survey, 49.8 per cent had suffered physical violence by a family member, 17.8 per cent had been sexually abused by a family member and 8.7 per cent had been sexually abused by a stranger. Of 1,441 female respondents, 73 per cent had suffered physical violence by a family member, 51.2 per cent had been sexually abused by a family member and 32.7 per cent had been sexually abused by a stranger (Carlson and Shafer 2010: 482). When the results were stratified in accordance with ethnicity, no significant differences emerged—in fact, ‘whites’ suffered physical violence, sexual abuse by a family member or stranger, at slightly higher rates than Latino, Indian, Black and Asian respondents. Such work points to the deleterious effects of childhood trauma, and, specifically, to the likelihood of criminality for those unable to connect to the right kinds of support. The added burden of parental incarceration in children’s lives has also emerged as of central importance. As Swisher and Shaw-Smith (2015: 952, emphasis added) observe: Paternal incarceration in the absence of physical abuse is associated with 24.4% higher delinquency than youth without either an incarcerated parent or physical abuse. Repeated physical abuse in the absence of paternal incarceration is associated with 27.8% higher delinquency than other youth. Worse off are youth who both have an incarcerated father and report physical abuse, with 38.5% higher delinquency than youth without either risk factor. Below, I show in detail how particular factors serve to compound children’s initial trauma such that serious crime becomes a device for diminishing their sense of victimization as they age into and through their adult years. My aim is not to defend the crimes committed by people who have been victimized in their early years or who have been seriously traumatized by events befalling them in out-of-home care scenarios. Instead, I use prisoners’ own words to explain the complex interplay of victimization, offending and intergenerational incarceration in their lives, and to suggest what might be done to prevent this. Central are strategies requiring offenders and their captors (but also citizens generally) to see each as constitutive of the other rather than as subjects who occupy categorically distinct moral and social universes. In psychodynamic terms, the tendency to see and be seen by the other as either a part or bad object has to cease. As Brown (2003: 429), after Asser (2002) explains, it is only by bringing disparate groups (such as prisoners and guards, victims and offenders) together in open, safe and critically oriented discussion that one can begin ‘to overcome the systems of mutual projection that operate to increase violence and reoffending’ (Brown 2003: 429). Data and Key Definitions Data informing this article stem from a larger cohort of in-depth interviews, lasting up to two and half hours, with prisoners recruited to the GTP project. From mid- to late 2013, a survey instrument (26 items for adults and 22 items for juveniles) was distributed to all persons in custody (N = approx. 2,100) in one Australian state in sequential fashion across 11 sites. As well as producing some self-report data about the problem of intergenerational incarceration, the key purpose was to give prisoners the opportunity to nominate for interview and for them to contact formerly or currently incarcerated family members of a different generation with the view to also recruiting them to the project (Kevin’s mother, e.g., responded to the survey and, during her interview, nominated him as someone to approach). A total of 282 surveys comprise the data set (with 240 respondents reporting two or more generations of incarceration). Table 1 gives the results by Indigenous status of survey respondents, with the third-generation (3di) column including data obtained from those reporting four (n = 3) and five (n = 2) generations, respectively.1 The columns on the far right provide the basic demographic data of those interviewed to a particular point in time (mid-2015) and give a sense of the extreme social and economic deficits in their lives. Of the 214 adult prisoners who met the eligibility criteria for interview (i.e. having at least one family member from a different generation who was or is incarcerated), 110 (51 per cent) so nominated.2 In selecting interviewees, respondents were ranked in accordance with generational depth (with third-, fourth- and fifth-generation prisoners given priority) as well as the quantum of family members ever incarcerated. Table 1 Select demographics of GTP participants % Indigenousa Survey respondents Interviewees 1di (n = 42) 2di (n = 172) 3di+ (n = 68) 2di = 12 & 3di+ = 27 (n = 39) 7.1 (n = 3b) 21.0 (n = 36) 47.1 (n = 32) 59.0 (n = 23) Ind NI Total Ind NI Total Ind NI Total Ind NI Total % Completed only year 9 or below 66.7 20.1 18.6 50.0 33.1 34.0 68.8 38.9c 52.9 82.6 50.0c 71.8 % First incarcerated at or <14 years 33.3 12.8c 11.6 55.6 25.7c 32.0 68.8 41.7c 54.5 73.9 50.0c 59.0 % Served time for:  Offences against person 0.0 35.9 32.6 50.0 41.9 43.6 34.4 50.0 44.1 47.8 50.0 48.7  Robbery/extortion 0.0 15.4 14.3 16.7 10.3 11.6 34.4 13.9 23.2 26.1 12.5 20.5  Drug offences 0.0 15.4 16.7 2.8 15.4 12.8 0.0 39.9 7.2 0.0 12.5 5.1  Burglary/break & enter 100.0 23.1 28.6 27.8 21.3 22.7 25.0 11.1 17.6 26.1 18.8 23.1 Mean longest period incarceration 2y 7m 4y 1m 3y 6m 3y 8m 4y 3m 3y 9m 5y 2m 5y 6m 5y 6m 7y 6m 7y 8m 7y 7m Mean family members currently locked up 0.6 0.5 0.5 1.8 0.5c 0.6 4.6 0.9c 1.7 4.8 1.0c 2.2 Mean family members ever incarcerated 1 1.1 1.1 3.7 2.4c 2.6 7.2 3.9c 5.5 7.0 3.3c 6.3 % Ever incarcerated:  Father – – – 58.3 52.2 53.5 81.3 77.8 79.4 73.9 68.8 71.8  Mother – – – 19.4 10.3 12.2 43.8 22.2 32.4 47.8 18.8c 35.9  Both parents – – – 13.9 5.1 7.0 37.5 16.7 22.2 34.8 18.8 28.5  Father and/or mother – – – 63.9 57.4 58.7 87.5 83.3 84.1 87.0 68.8 84.6  Uncle 0.0 2.6 2.4 80.6 41.9c 50.0 96.9 41.7c 67.6 100.0 62.5c 87.2  Brother 33.3 20.5 21.4 61.1 32.4c 38.4 60.6 27.8c 57.4 87.0 37.5c 66.7  Sister 0.0 5.1 4.6 5.6 7.4 7.0 50.0 13.9c 30.9 39.1 18.8 30.8 % Slept rough (avg. nights) 33.3 (6.0) 38.5 (8.7) 37.2 (21) 58.3 (435) 50.0c (78) 51.7 (273) 75.0 (301) 44.4c (74) 58.8 (302) 95.7 (660) 43.8c (99) 74.4 (635) % Foster care (% more than 10 families) 33.3 (33.3) 25.6 (2.6) 25.6 (4.8) 36.1 (11.1) 16.9c (2.2) 20.9 (19.4) 59.4 (12.5) 19.4c (2.7) 38.2 (19.2) 65.2 (8.7) 37.5 (6.3) 53.8 (14.3) % Total full-time employment >5 years (avg. years emp.) 33.3 (2.3) 59.0 (9.0) 71.0 (11.5) 47.2 (1.3) 75.0c (5.3) 48.7 (6.6) 40.6 (1.5) 77.8c (7.4) 56.1 (4.7) 47.8 (1.4) 87.5c (4.8) 32.0 (3.1) % Indigenousa Survey respondents Interviewees 1di (n = 42) 2di (n = 172) 3di+ (n = 68) 2di = 12 & 3di+ = 27 (n = 39) 7.1 (n = 3b) 21.0 (n = 36) 47.1 (n = 32) 59.0 (n = 23) Ind NI Total Ind NI Total Ind NI Total Ind NI Total % Completed only year 9 or below 66.7 20.1 18.6 50.0 33.1 34.0 68.8 38.9c 52.9 82.6 50.0c 71.8 % First incarcerated at or <14 years 33.3 12.8c 11.6 55.6 25.7c 32.0 68.8 41.7c 54.5 73.9 50.0c 59.0 % Served time for:  Offences against person 0.0 35.9 32.6 50.0 41.9 43.6 34.4 50.0 44.1 47.8 50.0 48.7  Robbery/extortion 0.0 15.4 14.3 16.7 10.3 11.6 34.4 13.9 23.2 26.1 12.5 20.5  Drug offences 0.0 15.4 16.7 2.8 15.4 12.8 0.0 39.9 7.2 0.0 12.5 5.1  Burglary/break & enter 100.0 23.1 28.6 27.8 21.3 22.7 25.0 11.1 17.6 26.1 18.8 23.1 Mean longest period incarceration 2y 7m 4y 1m 3y 6m 3y 8m 4y 3m 3y 9m 5y 2m 5y 6m 5y 6m 7y 6m 7y 8m 7y 7m Mean family members currently locked up 0.6 0.5 0.5 1.8 0.5c 0.6 4.6 0.9c 1.7 4.8 1.0c 2.2 Mean family members ever incarcerated 1 1.1 1.1 3.7 2.4c 2.6 7.2 3.9c 5.5 7.0 3.3c 6.3 % Ever incarcerated:  Father – – – 58.3 52.2 53.5 81.3 77.8 79.4 73.9 68.8 71.8  Mother – – – 19.4 10.3 12.2 43.8 22.2 32.4 47.8 18.8c 35.9  Both parents – – – 13.9 5.1 7.0 37.5 16.7 22.2 34.8 18.8 28.5  Father and/or mother – – – 63.9 57.4 58.7 87.5 83.3 84.1 87.0 68.8 84.6  Uncle 0.0 2.6 2.4 80.6 41.9c 50.0 96.9 41.7c 67.6 100.0 62.5c 87.2  Brother 33.3 20.5 21.4 61.1 32.4c 38.4 60.6 27.8c 57.4 87.0 37.5c 66.7  Sister 0.0 5.1 4.6 5.6 7.4 7.0 50.0 13.9c 30.9 39.1 18.8 30.8 % Slept rough (avg. nights) 33.3 (6.0) 38.5 (8.7) 37.2 (21) 58.3 (435) 50.0c (78) 51.7 (273) 75.0 (301) 44.4c (74) 58.8 (302) 95.7 (660) 43.8c (99) 74.4 (635) % Foster care (% more than 10 families) 33.3 (33.3) 25.6 (2.6) 25.6 (4.8) 36.1 (11.1) 16.9c (2.2) 20.9 (19.4) 59.4 (12.5) 19.4c (2.7) 38.2 (19.2) 65.2 (8.7) 37.5 (6.3) 53.8 (14.3) % Total full-time employment >5 years (avg. years emp.) 33.3 (2.3) 59.0 (9.0) 71.0 (11.5) 47.2 (1.3) 75.0c (5.3) 48.7 (6.6) 40.6 (1.5) 77.8c (7.4) 56.1 (4.7) 47.8 (1.4) 87.5c (4.8) 32.0 (3.1) aIndigenous respondents reported the incarceration of their father at 1.36 times the rate of non-Indigenous (NI) respondents, their mother that three times the rate of NI respondents, both parents at twice the rate of NI respondents, their uncle at 2.29 times the rate of NI respondents. bLow number 1di has limited explanatory power. cSignificant difference. View Large Table 1 Select demographics of GTP participants % Indigenousa Survey respondents Interviewees 1di (n = 42) 2di (n = 172) 3di+ (n = 68) 2di = 12 & 3di+ = 27 (n = 39) 7.1 (n = 3b) 21.0 (n = 36) 47.1 (n = 32) 59.0 (n = 23) Ind NI Total Ind NI Total Ind NI Total Ind NI Total % Completed only year 9 or below 66.7 20.1 18.6 50.0 33.1 34.0 68.8 38.9c 52.9 82.6 50.0c 71.8 % First incarcerated at or <14 years 33.3 12.8c 11.6 55.6 25.7c 32.0 68.8 41.7c 54.5 73.9 50.0c 59.0 % Served time for:  Offences against person 0.0 35.9 32.6 50.0 41.9 43.6 34.4 50.0 44.1 47.8 50.0 48.7  Robbery/extortion 0.0 15.4 14.3 16.7 10.3 11.6 34.4 13.9 23.2 26.1 12.5 20.5  Drug offences 0.0 15.4 16.7 2.8 15.4 12.8 0.0 39.9 7.2 0.0 12.5 5.1  Burglary/break & enter 100.0 23.1 28.6 27.8 21.3 22.7 25.0 11.1 17.6 26.1 18.8 23.1 Mean longest period incarceration 2y 7m 4y 1m 3y 6m 3y 8m 4y 3m 3y 9m 5y 2m 5y 6m 5y 6m 7y 6m 7y 8m 7y 7m Mean family members currently locked up 0.6 0.5 0.5 1.8 0.5c 0.6 4.6 0.9c 1.7 4.8 1.0c 2.2 Mean family members ever incarcerated 1 1.1 1.1 3.7 2.4c 2.6 7.2 3.9c 5.5 7.0 3.3c 6.3 % Ever incarcerated:  Father – – – 58.3 52.2 53.5 81.3 77.8 79.4 73.9 68.8 71.8  Mother – – – 19.4 10.3 12.2 43.8 22.2 32.4 47.8 18.8c 35.9  Both parents – – – 13.9 5.1 7.0 37.5 16.7 22.2 34.8 18.8 28.5  Father and/or mother – – – 63.9 57.4 58.7 87.5 83.3 84.1 87.0 68.8 84.6  Uncle 0.0 2.6 2.4 80.6 41.9c 50.0 96.9 41.7c 67.6 100.0 62.5c 87.2  Brother 33.3 20.5 21.4 61.1 32.4c 38.4 60.6 27.8c 57.4 87.0 37.5c 66.7  Sister 0.0 5.1 4.6 5.6 7.4 7.0 50.0 13.9c 30.9 39.1 18.8 30.8 % Slept rough (avg. nights) 33.3 (6.0) 38.5 (8.7) 37.2 (21) 58.3 (435) 50.0c (78) 51.7 (273) 75.0 (301) 44.4c (74) 58.8 (302) 95.7 (660) 43.8c (99) 74.4 (635) % Foster care (% more than 10 families) 33.3 (33.3) 25.6 (2.6) 25.6 (4.8) 36.1 (11.1) 16.9c (2.2) 20.9 (19.4) 59.4 (12.5) 19.4c (2.7) 38.2 (19.2) 65.2 (8.7) 37.5 (6.3) 53.8 (14.3) % Total full-time employment >5 years (avg. years emp.) 33.3 (2.3) 59.0 (9.0) 71.0 (11.5) 47.2 (1.3) 75.0c (5.3) 48.7 (6.6) 40.6 (1.5) 77.8c (7.4) 56.1 (4.7) 47.8 (1.4) 87.5c (4.8) 32.0 (3.1) % Indigenousa Survey respondents Interviewees 1di (n = 42) 2di (n = 172) 3di+ (n = 68) 2di = 12 & 3di+ = 27 (n = 39) 7.1 (n = 3b) 21.0 (n = 36) 47.1 (n = 32) 59.0 (n = 23) Ind NI Total Ind NI Total Ind NI Total Ind NI Total % Completed only year 9 or below 66.7 20.1 18.6 50.0 33.1 34.0 68.8 38.9c 52.9 82.6 50.0c 71.8 % First incarcerated at or <14 years 33.3 12.8c 11.6 55.6 25.7c 32.0 68.8 41.7c 54.5 73.9 50.0c 59.0 % Served time for:  Offences against person 0.0 35.9 32.6 50.0 41.9 43.6 34.4 50.0 44.1 47.8 50.0 48.7  Robbery/extortion 0.0 15.4 14.3 16.7 10.3 11.6 34.4 13.9 23.2 26.1 12.5 20.5  Drug offences 0.0 15.4 16.7 2.8 15.4 12.8 0.0 39.9 7.2 0.0 12.5 5.1  Burglary/break & enter 100.0 23.1 28.6 27.8 21.3 22.7 25.0 11.1 17.6 26.1 18.8 23.1 Mean longest period incarceration 2y 7m 4y 1m 3y 6m 3y 8m 4y 3m 3y 9m 5y 2m 5y 6m 5y 6m 7y 6m 7y 8m 7y 7m Mean family members currently locked up 0.6 0.5 0.5 1.8 0.5c 0.6 4.6 0.9c 1.7 4.8 1.0c 2.2 Mean family members ever incarcerated 1 1.1 1.1 3.7 2.4c 2.6 7.2 3.9c 5.5 7.0 3.3c 6.3 % Ever incarcerated:  Father – – – 58.3 52.2 53.5 81.3 77.8 79.4 73.9 68.8 71.8  Mother – – – 19.4 10.3 12.2 43.8 22.2 32.4 47.8 18.8c 35.9  Both parents – – – 13.9 5.1 7.0 37.5 16.7 22.2 34.8 18.8 28.5  Father and/or mother – – – 63.9 57.4 58.7 87.5 83.3 84.1 87.0 68.8 84.6  Uncle 0.0 2.6 2.4 80.6 41.9c 50.0 96.9 41.7c 67.6 100.0 62.5c 87.2  Brother 33.3 20.5 21.4 61.1 32.4c 38.4 60.6 27.8c 57.4 87.0 37.5c 66.7  Sister 0.0 5.1 4.6 5.6 7.4 7.0 50.0 13.9c 30.9 39.1 18.8 30.8 % Slept rough (avg. nights) 33.3 (6.0) 38.5 (8.7) 37.2 (21) 58.3 (435) 50.0c (78) 51.7 (273) 75.0 (301) 44.4c (74) 58.8 (302) 95.7 (660) 43.8c (99) 74.4 (635) % Foster care (% more than 10 families) 33.3 (33.3) 25.6 (2.6) 25.6 (4.8) 36.1 (11.1) 16.9c (2.2) 20.9 (19.4) 59.4 (12.5) 19.4c (2.7) 38.2 (19.2) 65.2 (8.7) 37.5 (6.3) 53.8 (14.3) % Total full-time employment >5 years (avg. years emp.) 33.3 (2.3) 59.0 (9.0) 71.0 (11.5) 47.2 (1.3) 75.0c (5.3) 48.7 (6.6) 40.6 (1.5) 77.8c (7.4) 56.1 (4.7) 47.8 (1.4) 87.5c (4.8) 32.0 (3.1) aIndigenous respondents reported the incarceration of their father at 1.36 times the rate of non-Indigenous (NI) respondents, their mother that three times the rate of NI respondents, both parents at twice the rate of NI respondents, their uncle at 2.29 times the rate of NI respondents. bLow number 1di has limited explanatory power. cSignificant difference. View Large At interview, participants were asked to tell of the key turning points in their lives (Abbott 1997; Laub and Sampson 2003) and how particular events (usually of a cumulative and traumatic kind) impacted their perceptions of, and orientations towards, self, others and their social contexts. Participants were also asked to recount the nature of help they received to deal with their personal experiences of trauma and loss. A grounded approach to data analysis was used (Glaser and Strauss 1976; Dey 2007) with all interviews transcribed verbatim and read for emergent common themes as well as disparities. Coding focused on major trauma and upheaval in participants’ childhoods as well as connections to their own pathways into (and reasons for) criminal behaviour. In nearly all cases, transcripts revealed moments of what I call transformative violence leading to the onset of serious offending, and before that, to fundamental changes in participants’ sense of safety, place and identity. The experience of transformative violence was corporeal (directed at the physical body) with many also witnessing violence against family members. In all cases, such events had a profound impact on the life course. The definition of trauma relevant to Kevin’s story (indeed most of interviewees) is drawn from van der Kolk (1987: 31), ‘The essence of psychological trauma is the loss of faith that there is order and continuity in life. Trauma occurs when one loses the sense of having a safe place to retreat within or outside oneself to deal with frightening emotions or experiences’. Discontinuity in the life course combined with the loss of a safe place to protect and reassemble a ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’ sense of self is widely reflected below. Equally, the crisis of trust enveloping victims of abuse and their consequent inability to reach out for help is also writ large through most of the transcripts. This is particularly so for adults (interviewees) who, as children, continued to reside in the places where transformative violence occurred or, worse, where the perpetrators remained in the home or in ready proximity to their victim(s). As van der Kolk (1987: 11, emphasis added) contends: Disruption or loss of social support is intimately associated with inability to overcome the effects of psychological trauma. … Conversely, many people remain fairly intact after psychological trauma as long as their environment restores a sense of trust and safety. … [A] lost sense of basic safety often leads to a life-long inability to trust and a chronic rage that may be turned against others or against the self. Tracing the emergence of this ‘chronic rage’ is vital as it is through this rage that particular communities bear the heavy weight of unresolved trauma (and loss). The three questions framing the narrative excerpts below are these: (1) What does trauma and loss look like in the lives of second- and/or third-generation prisoners? (2) In the context of committing crime, what ‘causal’ weight do such prisoners give to the trauma suffered in their childhood? (3) How has their own incarceration and/or that of their parents and/or abusers inflamed or helped to stabilize the trauma-related dimensions of their lives? The first question requires an elucidation of traumatic scenes by those who have survived such violence. The second goes directly to the criminogenic impacts of unresolved trauma. And the third relates to the role of incarceration in making problems worse or more manageable. Together, they function to structure discussion of how child victimization can provide the impetus for serious offending in juvenile and adult years. Although just ‘one’ case, Kevin’s life permits a window onto the complex micro (personal), meso (group) and macro (societal) factors involved in such. If done well, ‘Rather than stripping individuals of community and macro-historical context, narrative analysis can inform our understandings of cultural influence and the underlying sociostructural dynamics of a society’ (Maruna and Matravers 2007: 431). Case Study: Kevin’s Story Aged 24, Kevin is a third-generation prisoner born to an Aboriginal mother and Anglo father in regional South Australia. His grandmother and great-grandmother are also of Aboriginal descent.3 Kevin’s mother was 14 years old when she gave birth to him, and had started abusing alcohol and drugs just prior to falling pregnant. At two years of age, his father committed suicide. In Kevin’s words, ‘He took pills, … laid down, choked on his vomit and died’. His death created the opportunity for other older males to later traumatize Kevin in countless cruel ways. To age 10, Kevin lived mainly with his grandmother (and for brief periods with his mother), moving frequently from one town to another. He completed only nine years of schooling but has mainly good memories of his childhood to about age eight or nine (I will return to relevant events there shortly). At age 16, Kevin started stealing cars and motorbikes and served a number of short detention orders for his crimes. At age 18, he became a father, and did so again at age 19. He met the mother of his children while in juvenile detention but now describes her as a heroin addict and drug dealer. Their children reside with his grandmother (of the maternal line). Kevin told of seven other family members who have ever been incarcerated and described the effect of imprisonment in his familial lineage as having a major effect on his own life. His mother—who when interviewed was serving a long sentence for child abuse and neglect—said of her own life: ‘Looking back now, since I’ve been in gaol, I don’t think that I’ve ever not been around violence or been around police involvement or having someone in gaol, something like that in my life’. She noted that successive of her partners cycled in and out of prison and were rarely on the scene to give Kevin the guidance and stability he needed. Kevin’s mother had in fact endured a shocking start to life. As she recalled: ‘My mum used to belt me around … and my step-dad used to belt me. … From about six weeks old I ended up with fractured bones in my head from my mum. … [M]y aunty was there and she said … that they [i.e. my mum and my step-dad] were fighting and mum threw me [across the room], and [the violence] just continued from there’. In short, Kevin was born to a mother who was struggling with the psychological trauma of her own interminable abuse. Things were, therefore, always on a knife-edge in terms of his well-being. In his late teens, Kevin developed a dependency on methamphetamine, valium and ecstasy. Following the death of his biological father, Kevin’s life took a particular turn for the worse when his stepfather (one of several ‘parental’ figures) made it his own personal mission to deeply humiliate and taunt him. [T]he only photo [I had] of … my real father, [my ex-step-dad] ripped up in front of me. I can’t remember what I done, but I done something and to punish me he ripped it up in front of me, which scars a young fella. … I had one of those little green money boxes with the tin lid … with a photo of my dad and a little article saying my dad’s deceased. He grabbed the whole thing and ripped it up and threw it in the bin. … I was about nine [years old]. The cruelty of this act was only outdone by the physical violence Kevin witnessed and physically sustained. This was perpetrated by his ex-stepfather chiefly towards his mother, but Kevin would also frequently be in the firing line. With hindsight, Kevin saw this violence as the actions of an excessively jealous person bent on preventing a meaningful bond between a mother and her son. The following excerpt graphically illustrates this point and is concomitant with what I call ‘transformative violence’. I understand if it is too painful to relate, but what is one of the worst memories of what [your ex-step-dad] has done to you and your mum? … The worst memory that I have would be the day that I came back from school. [I was about 11 years old]. … We were in the lounge room and he … let the other kids go out and play and apparently I’d done something wrong. … Now that I’m older I can see it – he wanted my mum to himself. He didn’t want to share my mum. [He] was like a dog with a chew-toy. … Anyway, one day he let the kids go out to play … and then it all started with an argument and a slap to my mum. He ended up beating the shit out of her, and I mean beating the shit out of her. He kicked her in the face. He kicked her in the gut. It was just brutal. And you saw it? Yeah, I was sitting in the lounge room. He absolutely belted the shit out of her and I remember that because my mum used to sleep in the lounge room. We had a white doona [quilt cover], and I shit you not, it would have been totally red [from the blood]. … But what’s even worse is that it doesn’t matter how many times my mum’s told the cops this and that, he’s never done a day of gaol in his life. This type of event profoundly affected Kevin’s psyche and spilled over into his basic day-to-day functioning. He spoke of the aftershock of what he’d experienced in the following exchange: How do you recover from those episodes? … I didn’t eat for four days. I was that traumatised. … I sat in my room and didn’t move off my bed for four days. It took two days for [him] to even notice that there was something wrong. He came in and was like, “What’s wrong with you?” He’d just say, “Don’t be a fucking pussy”. And he’d walk out. … How do you go to school after that sort of thing has happened? What do you do as a kid when you are trying to sit there and learn when you’ve just gone through that? I’m going to answer your question with a bit of ... a poker face. Because of this [violence], I have a really good one. I’d be sitting there bawling my eyes out on the inside, but looking like I am at you right now [i.e. expressionless]. And this is you in class, you mean basically putting on a brave face? It was literally like that. Get a mask and put it on and that was it. … Did all of this affect, not just your whole schooling, but your outlook towards people? It does. The brutality experienced by Kevin is further demonstrated in his recollections of his 12th birthday ‘celebrations’. [M]um wanted us to go down [to the local park] for my birthday, but [my ex-step-dad] said, “[N]ah, we’ll just go down there in a couple of weeks”, because it was [approaching my sister’s] birthday. … So mum and him had an argument about that, which led to him slugging my mum around for a bit on my birthday. And then mum went down [to the shops] and got him cigarettes and some beers, and he got drunk. … So yeah, that blew over in about a three-hour period. And then they sent me to [my room] which I thought was a bit of a joke [because it was the middle of the day]. … [But] when I went to my room, there ended up being a pushbike on my bed. So I got excited and went outside and started riding it around. But because I didn’t put my helmet on, and I didn’t tell [my step-dad] that I was going outside, he stabbed my tyres with a pen. I think it was a pen or a knife. So he ruined my birthday. It was just over little petty things, you know? He’d get so angry. ... Like if I called him [by his first name], damn, I’d come out with … black-eyes and busted ears. Seriously, he would physically punch you as a small kid? Yeah. What did he want you to call him? He wanted me to call him “Dad”. … [B]ut the way he was treating me I didn’t want to call him dad. … I didn’t even want him in the family. … But my mum used to always say, “One day I’ll leave him, blah, blah, blah”. And I thought, “Why don’t you just do it?” But now that I’m older I do understand that it would have been hard for her to just leave, because when she did finally want to leave him he tried to run her over with the car. At age 13, Kevin finally broke free (or so he thought) from his stepfather’s reign of terror. He remembers the day vividly as it came in the wake of being thrown around the room for not properly cleaning the dishes. I was standing at the door one day and being 13, I wanted to be out with my mates. … [My ex-step-father] come around and he was like, “Shut the fuck up. ... [You’re not going out with your mates]”. [He was angry] because the [previous] day … he threw me across the lounge room because I left a mark on one of the dishes. … So I said, “I’ve had enough of your fucking shit, I’m leaving”, and he didn’t like that one bit. … I’ve kind of turned around … because I thought he was going to belt me, so I just grabbed [a plank of wood] and just [struck] him on his jaw. Over the next three years, Kevin resided in successive youth hostels (around ‘14 to 15’ such places) and went in and out of juvenile detention. But putting physical distance between him and his ex-stepfather was just the first stage of a very long journey towards something approximating psychological wellness. Kevin’s rage had been internalized for several years and it was working its way through him and onto unsuspecting parties. From day dot to [when I was 13 and broke my ex-step-dad’s jaw], I had so much bottled up from him. Even to this day, when I get into a fight he’s always back here [gestures to back of his head]. That anger I have for him is in every single fight that I have, or every argument. ... Like, I had an altercation the other day [with this random guy in this prison] and I was yelling and I actually called him [mentions ex-step-dad’s name]. … I’ve had arguments with my missus and called her [by his name]. That’s just how much … he’s got in my head and messed with it so bad. Kevin’s projections of his ex-stepdad played out in very violent ways. His anger—like that of his ex-stepfather’s—would unleash on the smallest of provocations. The following is one such example—narrated by Kevin in terms of ‘stills’ from a movie scene. I can only give you bits and pieces of it because it was like a [movie] clip show. … It was just me belting this fella. I was this much [indicates with fingers] from killing him. And at the end of it my mate told me [I’d beaten him over] a comment [he made] about my pants or something. And I ended up going to court. ... What about the guy, was he very badly injured? He was very badly hurt, but this fella … [was] a very large fella. And I actually put him in a coma for three weeks. I ended up going to a psychiatrist and I admitted to the whole thing. And they put it down [to the fact] that I had schizophrenia or something, that I really need to be heavily medicated. I turned around and said that I don’t want any pills, and I ended up getting a suspended sentence for it. Due to the way his father died, Kevin had a strong aversion to medication—especially pills. He also wanted someone to understand the source of his problems and not just treat the symptoms. Following receipt of his suspended sentence, Kevin did an extraordinary thing—he took it on himself to track down his victim with the view to apologizing and explaining his behaviour. The first thing I did [after being sentenced] was that I went and found out where the fella was. … I actually asked for him, and I ended up going there and apologising. … He didn’t want to see me. He was calling me names. I tried to explain to him a little bit about me, about my father, and that my step-dad got angry. I turned around and said that it all just built up and I just let it go. I knew I was in the wrong. It’s not like I was out to kill someone, it was just because of, you know, it was the day after [my ex-step-dad] came back [into my mum’s life]. I had a phone call from [him], and it was just in the back of my mind – it was just a phone call, you know, five hours earlier. And it was in the back of my mind like a throbbing headache. And then this fella said something. ... I know [my ex-step-dad] wasn’t there, but I actually pictured that big fella being [him]. When I hit the fella, all I was seeing was [him]. Kevin, in short, was trying on his own terms to deal with the return of bad objects (Fairbairn 1943). For him, that meant ‘coming clean’ in relation to those he had hurt—literally confessing something of his life story to them. This seemed to have some positive therapeutic benefit for Kevin (and the victim). But the turmoil unfolding in his mother’s life totally overwhelmed him—she was, in fact, found guilty of jointly presiding over one of the state’s worst cases of long-term child abuse and neglect. The news hit Kevin like a train. [W]hen [your mum] went to prison, what impact did that have on you? What do you remember about that? Well, the day my mum went to gaol I stole 14 cars and belted six people, ... started drinking, and gave myself alcohol poisoning. … When the doctors found me, when my mates called the ambo [ambulance], the doctor reckons that I put myself in a medically-induced coma. I was “gone” for two and a half days. He reckons I had that much alcohol and that many drugs that I put myself into a coma. How old were you when your Mum went to prison for the first long sentence? … I was about 19. … How long did it take before things settled down with you? It still hasn’t. It is difficult to imagine how a young man copes with the notoriety of the crimes and lengthy prison sentence of his own mother—especially when he knows something of the extreme abuse that his mother herself sustained for most of her life. The truth, of course, is that Kevin did not cope. He instead directed his rage and confusion at innocent people, and, notably, at himself. For this, he received a prison sentence of three years. After release from that sentence, Kevin has only managed to stay out of prison for a few weeks at a time. At interview—some 13 years after witnessing the brutal beating of his mother—Kevin spoke of the way this violence ingrained itself within his psyche. I have nightmares about it. The other day I actually woke up in [my prison cell] dripping [with] sweat. … I actually dreamt about that altercation. ... I literally woke up dripping with sweat. Because after beating my mum he’d be back beating me. … [I remember he threw me] into the TV ... [which] cracked [it]. … [So] he [then] hit me [with] the TV, which cracked it [even worse]. During interview, Kevin was incredibly nuanced and insightful regarding what he thought would help him eventually overcome the cycle of trauma, crime and incarceration in his life. He spoke in particular of the need to secure the basic conditions for human dignity—shelter, employment and companionship—as being an integral part of the process of repairing his psychological fragility. [Prison] does ruin your life a lot. When I get out of gaol, I’ve got to get out and start my life all over again. Even if I can go back to my [girlfriend], … I’ve got to find clothes, I’ve got to find a car, get a job. Like, if I don’t get a job, then I got to start selling [drugs] again. … You’ve got to start over and over and over again. And it’s so hard, … [especially] if you’re going to get out and you’ve got nowhere to go to. Like many prisoners, Kevin’s perspective speaks to the yawning gap between what he personally needs to recover from the trauma and loss in his life as against what the system is prepared to offer him. I want to know the labels that have been put on you. ... I’ve been told that I’ve got … a bad case of paranoid schizophrenia. ... [That] I’ve got a temper issue, that I’ve got bi-polar [disorder]. … [E]very time I see a psychiatrist or whatever, they tell me something different. What do you think it all means? I just think I’ve got one messed up head from everything that’s happened. And you’re trying to sort through it? Exactly. And as soon as I can get all the anger out in terms of [my ex-step-dad] and that, I can go back to being me. The idea of an ‘essential self’ has been extensively critiqued. Foucault (1971), e.g., has argued that the self exists only in relation to the discourses that constitute it (e.g. medicine and the healthy self, psychology and the well-adjusted self). Nietzsche (1990/1886), similarly, has contended there is no such thing as an eternal self behind the masks we wear or that are given us (the mask of criminality, the mask of fatherhood, the mask of loyalty). But Kevin’s comments speak to the opposite of this. For him, as for many victims of abuse, the idea of reclaiming an undamaged self (or the ‘real me’) is a powerful prospect. It is a self that endures in spite of all the subjectivities (the victimized self, the shameful self, the enraged self, the violent self) that damaged the ‘original self’. Perhaps, though, what is really at stake here is not the quest to recover a lost self so much as how someone who has suffered so much abuse can build, in conjunction with appropriate others, a new self—a better future. Discussion Clearly, one case study does not permit reliable generalization to wider prison populations. But in terms of interviews conducted for the GTP project, Kevin’s situation is far from the exception with well over half of interviewees telling of surviving extreme physical violence and/or sexual abuse in their early childhood and/or teenage years. His story reveals a young adult whose childhood experiences of violence—and the psychological and physical trauma ensuing from such—was only compounded by placement in community residential care facilities, juvenile training centres and, ultimately, prison. It is true that such institutions do not always do more damage to people’s lives and that the harmful effects of incarceration need to be distinguished from the strained circumstances predating time in such places (see Murray 2010). But almost without exception, interviewees’ lives—including Kevin’s—were further complicated by places designed to ensure their safety, if not their social and psychological recovery. Kevin, like so many of his peers and those before him, waged a constant battle against the threat and ‘return of bad objects’ (Fairbairn 1943). This battle plays out against property, against intimates and against other unsuspecting victims (strangers). Bad objects, Fairbairn (1943: 329) reminds, are the set of experiences lodged in the unconscious that, when brought to the conscious level, ‘can never be contemplated with equanimity’. Such objects—a (step)parent, a foster carer, an abusive youth worker or correctional officer—produce feelings of intolerable shame, anger and trauma in the person who has carriage of them. The pivotal question—in terms of public safety—is whether the (re)activation of bad objects results in violent and otherwise destructive behaviour. Accordingly, how the (re)emergence of objects is managed by those in professional proximity to traumatized persons (prisoners) is of pronounced importance. Kevin’s story tells of an incarcerated adult, who, as a child, tried with varying levels of success, to repress the bad objects in his life. When his defence mechanisms broke down (i.e. when repression no longer ‘worked’), the most common solution was to incarcerate him in the hope that any further release (externalization) of bad objects would at least occur within the ‘safe’ confines of juvenile detention facilities or prison. His situation is reflective of many others in the GTP project whose childhoods were marked by extreme violence entirely beyond their own making. Each (eventually) moved from their initial home environment, to extended family (or into foster care or ‘boys homes’), to the juvenile justice system, then to adult corrections. Most suffered additional abuse within one or another of these settings, and they all experienced the costly reactivation (return) of bad objects ‘accumulated’ in their childhood (as victims of (unreported) crime). In other words, they all transferred their sense of anger and loss onto those who stood in their way. The archetypal example of transference can be seen in Kevin’s victims whom he envisaged (and even enunciated) as his ex-stepfather. It can be seen in other interviewees’ stories as well—in Ethan’s ‘revenge’ not against the person(s) who actually sexually assaulted him, but against someone who ‘stood in’ for such and who bore the brunt of his transferred rage. It is present in Leroy’s crimes of car-jacking and armed robberies—a rage directed against the communities that had rejected him from birth. It can be seen in Justin’s violence against anyone who sought to get close to him (for fear of such closeness being a ruse to sexually abuse him). And the process of transference can be seen in Mick’s retreat into drug abuse (where the needle helped, for a while, to quell the effect of bad objects), and his subsequent descent into a violent crime spree involving hostage taking (where the hostage ‘stood in’ for all adults who’d abused or neglected children in out-of-home care scenarios). Fairbairn (1943: 337–8) succinctly captures the impetus driving these scenarios: When … an escape of bad objects occurs, the patient finds himself confronted with terrifying situations which have hitherto been unconscious. External situations then acquire for him [sic.] the significance of repressed situations involving bad objects. The phenomenon is thus not a phenomenon of projection, but one of “transference”. My contention is that the systems designed to detect, monitor and manage trauma in children’s lives (and those of their families) have seriously underestimated the power of bad objects in offenders’ biographies. Of the serious crimes committed by participants in the GTP study, the majority can be viewed as the externalization of internal conflict related to unresolved childhood trauma. Such events—in their minutiae and their enormity—leave an indelible trace: it ‘scars a young fella’ (Kevin); ‘I … called it a chip on my shoulder for 25 years of my life’ (Justin); ‘There’s only so much a kid can take’ (Leroy). In the absence of wider recognition and effective redress of the extreme psychological damage sustained by such children, governments inadvertently help to ensure that many of their problems will play out, eventually, in unsuspecting neighbourhoods, if not on the nightly news in their adult years (as has been the case for several of the participants in the GTP cohort). As Fairbairn (1943: 332) writes: However much he [sic.] may want to reject [bad objects], he cannot get away from them. … He is accordingly compelled to internalize them in an effort to control them. But, in attempting to control them in this way, he is internalizing objects which have wielded power over him in the external world: and these objects retain their prestige for power over him in the inner world. Listening to the stories of second-, third- and fourth-generation prisoners, it is clear that the wounds left by childhood violence and the incarceration, abandonment or violent death of one parent or another were never properly sutured by other guardians. Intergenerational incarceration was by no means the foundational cause of trauma in participants’ lives, but it unquestionably lessened the chances of their healing and recovery (see Wildeman and Western 2010). Parental imprisonment or early death provided other adults the opportunity to move into already strained and fragmented familial contexts. When such adults (usually males) brought their own histories of abuse and neglect to these environments (as with Kevin’s scenario), the effects on children were devastating—more so than the impact of dealing with an incarcerated or deceased parent (Arditti 2012). The story of Kevin, in short, depicts an adult who as a child accumulated a litany of bad objects—a sequence of psychologically disturbing and personally humiliating experiences—and who, through his offending, sought (unconsciously) to expunge such objects from his life. The really problematic dimension is that Kevin, along with many others, was required to deal with his psychological trauma in the context of repeated and prolonged exposure to the pains of custodial life (Sykes 1958; Crewe 2009). A Way Forward In terms of turning such situations around, Fairbairn (1943: 337) makes the important distinction between the ‘therapeutic release of buried bad objects in analytical treatment’ as against the ‘active externalization of internalized bad objects’ which usually plays out on the streets. Paramount to the controlled release of bad objects is the safety and ‘emotional geography’ of the environment in which this occurs (Crewe et al. 2014). A key question, therefore, is: How conducive are custodial settings to such a task? In the case of medium- and maximum-security facilities, the provision of safe and supportive (humane) contexts within which to deal properly with people’s trauma is limited. These are ‘tight’, ‘deep’ and ‘weighty’ environments where ‘the possibility of violence and predation, as much as the actual level of aggression and exploitation, [are what] many prisoners find fearful and debilitating. … [I]t is this insidious sense of threat that means that most prisoners describe the atmosphere of most prisons as tense and enervating, regardless of whether they are personally confident of their safety’ (Crewe et al. 2014: 57). Since many serious offenders carry deep-seated trauma and loss issues, the ‘moral climate’ of custodial environments cannot be ignored in the context of people’s recovery (Liebling 2005). In most prisons, ‘[t]he potential for splitting is rife, with the ready-made split of prisoner/prison officer [being paramount], and the fact that the prison environment is so explicitly separated from mainstream society’ (Smith 1999: 433). Captor and captive tend only to reflect the worst (projected) parts of the (imagined) other leaving little or no room for ‘healing’ to occur. It is precisely in the midst of this ‘toxic’ hall of mirrors that Smith (1999: 441) suggests ‘there is a role for psychodynamically orientated counselling … which takes account of the social structure of the prison, and how this is used by prisoners and officers to reinforce their defence mechanisms against the powerful conscious and unconscious anxieties that being in prison evokes’. Asser (2002: 16, emphasis in original), taking Smith’s lead, gets to the heart of what is at stake: [I]t can in fact be a great relief to a prisoner to be housed in an institution which keeps feelings of guilt and loss at bay through institutionalized splitting and projection of bad part-objects, and in which the negative projections of staff ‘justify’ the prisoners’ counter-projections. By projecting out all the bad on to the staff, prisoners often leave prison in a self-idealized state which makes them not less likely to commit crime in the future, but in many cases more likely to commit even more emotionally and physically violent crime, using even more intense splitting and projection of badness into future victims. Those staff who do attempt to deal with prisoners as whole objects can be ‘pulled down into the paranoid-schizoid soup’ (Fox 1997). They are then shamed into the conformity of treating prisoners as bad part-objects, setting in motion the projective cycle which ensures that prisoners do not have an opportunity to address their offending behaviour, making it likely that once released they may re-offend. Except in the most therapeutically oriented prisons (e.g. HMP Grendon,4 United Kingdom), trauma and loss issues are rarely encouraged to surface because prisoners and guards are caught in a dynamic where mental hardness, physical toughness and dismissiveness predominate (see Sykes 1958: 84–108). Getting to the core of trauma and loss requires displays of vulnerability, empathy, as well as attentiveness to the affective dimensions of people’s lives. In the following excerpt, Kevin gives a textbook example of guards projecting the image of prisoners as always already devious, and he labels this a symptom of ‘the hidden games’ that proliferate in custody. I’ve always had the utmost respect for most of [the officers], except for the fact that we’re still criminals, and so there’s that divider [i.e. form of splitting]. But the other night I was asleep, and because my cell-mate had [part of] my blanket on him – like, it was [accidentally] hanging off the top bunk over the side – I had the screws turn the light on, bang on the door, kick the door, [and] call me fuckface. … For the blanket hanging down? Yeah, because they couldn’t see [my cell-mate’s] face. Like, what would he be doing? There’s absolutely no way he can get out. … When I finally woke up, I woke up to “You fucking maggot dog”. … [T]hey kept turning the light on and off, kept yelling and then turned the light off, closed the trap and then walked away. What other context would human beings relate to each other in such a manner and view it as a routine part of their work-life? Such exchanges are neither trivial nor isolated and their cumulative effect is to stifle the emergence of a therapeutic alliance. No one overcomes trauma and loss in environments where micro-humiliations are de rigueur. As Asser (2002: 16) argues, ‘Staff therefore need … to be trained in how to bridge the institutional gulf between themselves and prisoners, because this would help prisoners get to know staff better, take back their negative projections, and reduce the damaging levels of self-idealization’. The key implication of this is that, ‘Once staff are able to think more about prisoners as whole objects, the prisoners would then be supported more in trying to think in a whole-object way about the loss and pain associated with their criminal behaviour’ (Asser 2002: 17). On the face of it, these are lofty ideas and run directly against the grain of how prisons are usually imagined and operated. Indeed, prisons are one of the few places specifically designed to prevent feelings of a common humanity coming too sharply into play. The prospect, therefore, of guards ‘letting down their guard’ is a risky one and lends itself to being (re)coded as an invitation to corruption, if not downright violence and mayhem (see Goldsmith et al. 2016). But Asser (2002: 17) pre-empts this concern: The paranoid-schizoid fear is that any whole-object relating between staff and prisoners will lead to some serious, and potentially violent, incident like an escape attempt or a hostage situation – this equates to feelings that the idealized part-object will be damaged by the denigrated part-object – my argument, however, is that treating prisoners as whole objects actually enhances security rather than diminishing it, because it is the self-idealization of criminals which makes them dangerous. Moving from the trade in part-objects to whole-objects has real consequences for safety—both in terms of the psychological health (renewal) of individuals and in terms of prison climates. Commenting specifically on the precondition for the psychological recovery of Aboriginal people traumatized by intergenerational violence, Atkinson (2002: 244) writes: [P]eople … need to feel safe before they [can] look honestly and openly at who they are and the context and content of their lives, or examine their trauma stories. A safe place is an environment where people can begin to find the parts of themselves that have become lost, the fragmented bits of stories that have been too painful and shameful and so have been disowned, pushed down and denied. Prison could be one such place for commencing the recovery process, but without major change this is very unlikely. Psychologists (let alone psychiatrists) tend to be in short supply and when visiting correctional facilities rarely spend more than an hour or so with any prisoner. Moreover, prisoners must confront not only their bad objects (in both time- and typically resource-poor circumstances), but need also to manage the multitude of pressures common to prison life before and after each ‘session’ (lack of privacy, reduced out-of-cell hours, overcrowding, restricted visits, receipt of bad news by letter or phone, feelings of powerlessness and so on). These pressures make substantive progress on the psychological front incredibly difficult. This is problematic because, as Fairbairn (1943: 333) contends, ‘it is only when the internalized bad objects are released from the unconscious that there is any hope of their being finally cast out’. Certainly, ‘complex needs units’ provide some specialized help for prisoners struggling with psychological trauma. But these cater for very small numbers and focus mainly on those whose behaviour poses the highest immediate threat to the security and good order of the facility. The very limited access to psychological and psychiatric services in adult correctional systems—and the failure to address the stultifying effects of splitting and projection in such places—has all manner of implications not just for adjustment to custodial life, but for the prospects of successful (re)integration into the general community on release (Maruna and Immarigeon 2004). Kevin’s case is a paradigmatic example of prisoners’ psychological trauma being insufficiently addressed (or just plain ignored) and manifesting as serious violence following release from custody. It would, though, be absolutely remiss not to place the psychological recovery process (and the conditions leading to psychological damage) of people such as Kevin into a larger context. As May (1976) writes: ‘Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they too are significant’ (quoted in Atkinson 2002: 69). The capacity to practice forms of selfhood, family, peer associations and community in mainstream ways is intimately tied to economic circumstance—to class. It is a truism that the overwhelming majority of people who fill the world’s prisons come from severely disadvantaged backgrounds where ‘innovation’ (Merton 1938) and/or the use or threat of extreme violence are the day-to-day currencies for getting by or ‘making it’ (Bourgois 1996; Contreras 2012). There is, in other words, an undeniable political economy to crime and violence, and to the nature and shape of intergenerational trauma and incarceration (Greenberg 1993; Foster and Hagan 2007; Wakefield and Wildeman 2014). Recovery from childhood trauma therefore has to link to fundamental transformations in the neighbourhoods and institutions where traumatic events (of the criminal kind) disproportionately occur. Releasing serious offenders into contexts where illicit drug use, violence, homelessness and joblessness abound is a surefire way to maximize recidivism. These issues, though, also arise in relation to the subjugation and continued marginalization of particular peoples. For example, roughly 11,000 adult Aboriginals are incarcerated on any day in Australia’s prisons (equivalent to around 3 per cent of the total Aboriginal population). If non-Aboriginal people were incarcerated to the same extent, the daily prisoner population would total about half a million (given a current non-Aboriginal adult population of 17,000,000). Instead, the prison population sits at just under 40,000 (but climbing), and the incarceration rate of Aboriginal people remains 13 times higher than for non-Aboriginals (Report on Government Services 2016: Table 8A.1). Wacquant (2009: 74) speaks of the structural violence pertaining here in the following terms: [W]hen we are tracking the carceral stock of the United States [or Australia, UK, and like countries] we are indeed dealing overwhelmingly with the most precarious and stigmatized segments of the urban working class, disproportionately nonwhite, and in a regular if fractious relationship with various public aid programs targeted at the poor, from orphanages and housing to health and income support. Whatever offenses they may have committed, their trajectory cannot be mapped out and explained within the compass of a “classless criminology”. In past work I have discussed in detail the neighbourhood and societal conditions in which offenders’/prisoners’ lives unfold (Halsey and Deegan 2015). No person is an island. As Gilles Deleuze (2007: 216) writes, ‘There is no beginning, there is no end. We always begin in the middle of something’. Like all people, Kevin grew up ‘in the middle’ of a complex set of familial, economic and cultural circumstances. He was located in surroundings heavily governed by class and gendered scripts—subtle and not so subtle codes about how to survive and scrape together a living, of how to be a man, and about how to cope with adversity in life. He was born and raised (or forced to fend for himself) in some of the poorest neighbourhoods in Australia. As Krugman (1987: 129) puts it: ‘Traumatic experience is only one major factor shaping the lives of victims of battering, abuse, [and like]. The families in which these events occur are never otherwise normal; there are usually high levels of stress (e.g., poverty, unemployment, single parents alone with large families), poor interpersonal boundaries, character disorders, alcoholism, and other serious problems’. This is why it is essential to deal with the ecology of trauma (including the toxic social ecology of many custodial environments) and not just the individual carrying bad objects. There also has to be a bridge enabling passage from the world of criminality and violence to the world of relative stability and non-violence. Unless such bridges are built, and unless safe passage is offered to prisoners, their forebears and their offspring, then the problem of intergenerational (childhood) trauma becoming serious (adult) criminal conduct will recur. Concluding Remarks This article has offered a qualitative account of the interplay between familial dysfunction, childhood trauma and the role of key state institutions (foster care, juvenile detention and adult prisons) in exacerbating or ameliorating the effects of such abuse. It is true that most children with confirmed cases of abuse and neglect and/or who experience parental incarceration, do not become enmeshed in the juvenile or criminal justice systems (Widom 1989a: 164). However, of the roughly 10 per cent of cases that do fall into that situation, the costs are high—both in terms of the economics of policing, prosecution and incarceration, and in terms of the additional damage done to offenders’ chances of ever leading a ‘normal’ life. The cost to victims, of course, is substantial as well (Allard et al. 2014), and the generally early age of criminal onset means that such children are far more likely to be long-term (‘life-course persistent’) clients not just of the juvenile justice system, but of the criminal justice system too (Moffitt 1993). In recent years, several child protection systems have undergone (and are undergoing) independent review.5 Several participants in the GTP study have appeared before the Australian Royal Commission. In most circumstances such appearances were the first occasion—beyond being interviewed for this research—they had told their story. Indeed, I was struck by the number of prisoners who said that talking about intergenerational incarceration was the first occasion whereby they had felt safe enough to discuss (most often, without any prompting) the history and effects of child abuse. Caleb, an Aboriginal man aged 34, who was beaten by his father from age two, given away by his alcoholic mother to become a ward of the state when aged three, first incarcerated at age eight for robbery at knife point, placed in more than 30 foster homes, forced to attend more than 10 schools, and who spent a quarter of a century cycling in and out of various custodial facilities, is an archetypal case in point: Do [your family] understand anything about your life and … what you’ve had to go through? No. I haven’t told anybody. … This is the first time I’ve spoken about it. Fuck. [starts crying] … So you never had … a [community corrections officer] or casework, or social worker [to help you]? I have, but they’ve never done it. I was just left to cope [on my own]. Obviously they thought I was uncontrollable. As argued, correctional personnel have to find safe ways for people in their care to tell of events which, in many instances, will likely turn out to be the ‘true’ driving force behind their offending. Whatever the remedy, it is essential that a reflexive posture is adopted in relation to ‘healing’ practices. There can be trauma associated with being passed over or in being incorrectly assessed at particular points in one’s life course. But there can also be trauma associated with the ‘solutions’ or ‘panaceas’ offered to particular persons who find the courage to speak up. As Stevens (2016: 20) reminds, ‘Naming something “trauma” does not always help, and it never only “helps”’. As ever, questions of penal reform are always sociopolitical questions. And here, the key sociopolitical question is whether a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship between victimization, serious crime and intergenerational trauma will be actively sought by authorities. 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Google Scholar CrossRef Search ADS PubMed Footnotes 1 di=family members of direct (mother, father, son, daughter) and indirect lineage (uncle, aunt, nephew, niece). 2 Despite attempts to do so, it was not possible to obtain ethical clearance to interview juvenile survey respondents. 3 For an in-depth discussion of the effects of colonization on Indigenous Australians, see Blagg (2008). 4 Of all prisons in the United Kingdom, HMP Grendon has one of the lowest recidivism rates and has consistently reported the lowest assault and self-harm rates since opening in 1998 (on HMP Grendon, see Genders and Player 2004). 5 See, e.g., the stories emerging under the Australian Government’s Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (ongoing); the Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse in England Wales (ongoing); and the Audit of the Californian Welfare Services (California State Auditor 2011). © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
TI - Child Victims As Adult Offenders: Foregrounding the Criminogenic Effects of (Unresolved) Trauma and Loss
JF - The British Journal of Criminology
DO - 10.1093/bjc/azw097
DA - 2017-01-21
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/child-victims-as-adult-offenders-foregrounding-the-criminogenic-GSEiKXIAdM
SP - 1
EP - 36
VL - Advance Article
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -