ABSTRACT

Confinement, like other varieties of punishment has been furthered by a variety of technologies and techniques (see Hallsworth and Kaspersson, Chapter 33, this volume). These have ranged from those designed to cause death (like immurement), those designed to cause humiliation (like the stocks) to those designed for spatio-temporal control of the body (like the dungeon through to the prison). The nineteenth century saw the emergence of new kinds of disciplinary control which began to re-interpret confinement in terms of rehabilitation and therapy. New prison designs centred upon enhancing discipline or moral rectitude, the medicalisation of prison environments and the increasing role of psychiatry all served to further this therapeutic model of the prison and the technologies associated with this. In this chapter I will consider how contemporary technologies like television (along with emerging digital technologies in this context) are co-opted into this philosophy of confinement. This chapter draws on ethnographic research into in-cell television and the emergence of digital media in a closed adult male prison (Knight 2012, 2015b, 2016). Decisions to introduce communicative and digital technologies in prison settings have always been fraught with anxieties, especially in relation to the potential dangers of prisoners reaching the outside world (Knight 2015b). In highlighting this, the chapter begins by describing television’s birth into prisons in England and Wales and contextualises the policy in which it is justified. This is an important juncture in penal history as it marks a shift towards a ‘neo-paternal’ model whereby much emphasis and effort is placed on the need to regulate and control behaviour. The chapter then moves on to describe how technology like television can be imagined as a mode of governance by drawing on the detailed business of emotional control from the perspectives of both prison staff and prisoners. The kinds of relationships prisoners have with technology demonstrates how television has become part of ‘a plethora of less expensive and less intensive therapeutic techniques … through which individuals may seek a resolution of their inner distress’ (Rose 1999: 217). The chapter ends by reviewing the nature and implications of the care-giving qualities of television and digital technologies, which have begun to be introduced more recently.