?ing?Coercion in Male Custodial Settings ― An Ethnography of Italian Prison Officers Using Force

This book offers a sustained study of on one feature of the prison officer’s job: the threat and use of force, which the author calls ‘doing’ coercion. Adopting an interactionist, micro-sociological perspective, the author presents new research based on one and a half years of participant observation within an Italian custodial complex hosting both a prison and a forensic psychiatric hospital.

Based on observation of emergency squad interventions during so-called ‘critical events’, together with visual methods and interviews with staff, ‘Doing’ Coercion in Male Custodial Settings constitutes an ethnographic exploration of both the organisation and the implicit and explicit practices of threatening and/or ‘doing’ coercion. With a focus on the lawful yet problematic and discretionary threatening and 'doing’ of coercion performed daily on the landing, the author contributes to the growing scholarly literature on power in prison settings, and the developing field of the micro-sociology of violence and of radical interactionism.

As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology and criminology with interests in prisons, power and violence in institutions, and visual methods.

Luigi Gariglio, PhD in Sociology at the University of Milan, is Research Fellow at the University of Turin, Department of Cultures, Politics and Society. He has been teaching and researching in Sociology, Sociology of Communication, Visual Studies and Visual Research Methods. He was Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford, Centre for Criminology.