Mindfulness Meditation in a Men’s Detention Facility

Incarcerated individuals are repeatedly told that their situation is a product of their own choices and that self-improvement is the path to a more 'workable' reality. An ethnographic study of a meditation class inside a prison shows how this message is powerfully reinforced by volunteers, including chaplains. The researcher, acting as a participant-observer, found that many incarcerated people endorse this individual-responsibility narrative even while they also offer strong critiques of the systemic forces that shape their lives. The chapter illustrates the dominance of self-improvement stories in prison settings and the complex way prisoners can hold both personal accountability and systemic critique simultaneously.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This chapter illustrates the predominance of narratives about individual self-improvement in prisons, through an ethnography of a meditation class in an incarceration facility. It describes how the researcher becomes participant-observer in this class, shadowing the chaplain who conducts the class, practicing along with the students, and immersing themselves in the prison environment. This ethnographic immersion reveals the power of the prison’s messaging, when replicated by volunteers: that incarcerated individuals must take ownership of their situation, their choices, their attitudes, retooling their reality and reframing it as more “workable” since it is a product of their own choices. It shows the resonance that this idea has for incarcerated persons, many of whom seem to endorse it despite their strong systemic critiques.