‘Suppression on top of oppression’: A symbolic interactionist perspective on the affective experience of incarceration

Penological research has extensively documented how incarcerated men’s identities are shaped by the prison setting, highlighting how these men cope with and adapt to the ‘pains of imprisonment’ through careful emotion management. Significantly less research has focused explicitly on the role of emotion in incarcerated men’s constructions of their selves. In this article, I draw on 24 in-depth interviews with incarcerated men to reveal how the prison setting generates negative emotions (such as sadness, shame, humiliation, and anger) that in turn perpetuate the isolation that these men face. Emotions thus constitute an overlooked source of these men’s social marginalization. Additionally, I draw on theoretical literature derived from symbolic interactionism (and identity theory in particular) to explore how participants cope with, and make efforts to overcome, their negative emotions by engaging in active emotion and identity work centred on constructing morality narratives of pride, self-worth, and superiority.