Mediating Punishment? Prisoners’ Songs as Relational ‘Problem-Solving’ Devices

Citation

Crockett Thomas P, Collinson Scott J, McNeill F, Escobar O, Cathcart Froden L & Urie A (2020) Mediating Punishment? Prisoners’ Songs as Relational ‘Problem-Solving’ Devices. Law Text Culture, 24 (1), pp. 138-162. https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol24/iss1/7

Abstract
In this article we share some findings from the Distant Voices – Coming Home project. It is a partnership between the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and the West of Scotland, and the Glasgow-based arts charity Vox Liminis. Distant Voices aims to explore and practice re/integration after punishment through creative collaborations (primarily songwriting) and action-research. The project is complex and interdisciplinary, blurring boundaries between creative practices, community-building, research, knowledge exchange and public engagement. As such, this article does not present a synthesis of project f indings, but instead discusses original music created within the project, proposing that an analysis of the ‘musical event’ (DeNora 2003) of the songwriting can tell us about punishment and re/integration.

Keywords
prisons; songwriting; musicology; sociology of music; relational; ontology; creative research; collaboration; songs

Journal
Law Text Culture: Volume 24, Issue 1

People

Dr Phil Crockett Thomas

Lecturer in Criminology, Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology