Primary Submission Category: Non-health institutions (business, political, education systems)
“Very much an unspoken punishment”: A directed content analysis of accounts of incarceration stigma from the American Prison Writing Archive
Authors: Evan Eschliman
Presenting Author: Sarah Pollock*
Stigma is widely recognized as an integral aspect of carceral punishment that negatively affects the health and well-being of millions of people in the U.S., yet how and to what extent incarceration stigma aligns with social science’s conceptualizations of stigma remains underexplored. This project identifies and analyzes first-hand accounts of incarceration stigma from people who are currently incarcerated. Nine stigma-related keywords (e.g., discrimin*, judgment*, sham*) were used to identify relevant essays from the publicly-available American Prison Writing Archive. A directed content analysis using Link & Phelan’s (2001) component processes of stigma (i.e., labeling, stereotyping, separation, and status loss and discrimination within a power differential) was then conducted. Two coders inductively and deductively coded the essays, then discussed and reconciled their codes and any discrepancies. 978 unique essays were identified, and a random 10% subset (n = 98) was used for this preliminary analysis. Writers articulate how people who are incarcerated are labeled via structural processes (e.g., sentencing, assignment of ID numbers), which leads to individuals being associated with negative stereotypes (e.g., dangerousness, immorality). The writers describe how incarceration relegates them to a separate, lower economic and social class, and report experienced and anticipated status loss and discrimination (e.g., loss of employment and housing opportunities). Writers also provide accounts of how the predatory and excessively harmful nature of incarceration and associated systems of penal control (e.g., parole) occurs along a steep power gradient. Emergent themes included courtesy stigma, particularly toward writers’ children; continuity with race-/ethnicity-based discrimination and dehumanization; and resources for resistance against stigma. These findings suggest that incarceration stigma has clear resonances with prominent social science stigma frameworks.