Moving Beyond the Impasse: Importation, Deprivation, and Difference in Prisons

• Published date: 01 January 2025
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00328855241292791
• Author: Laura Kelly-Corless,Helen McCarthy
• Date: 01 January 2025
• Subject Matter: Articles

Moving Beyond the

Impasse: Importation,

Deprivation, and

Difference in Prisons

Laura Kelly-Corless

1

and Helen McCarthy

2

Abstract

This theoretical article uses an intersectionality lens to show that, together,

the importation and deprivation models can act as an important theoretical

tool for understanding the lives of incarcerated people who deviate from the

expected population of young, white, able-bodied, hearing males. We use

examples from the lives of incarcerated d/Deaf people and incarcerated

women to introduce a pain-difference continuum, where the extent to

which someone differs from what is ‘expected’in prison correlates with

the types of pains/deprivations they experience. We acknowledge the impact

of imported oppression and coin the term “imported coping,”where people

utilize pre-existing strategies to navigate prison’s pains.

Keywords

prison, intersectionality, deaf, importation, deprivation

Introduction

The importation and deprivation models are conceptual frameworks used to

understand how imprisoned people experience and adapt to the prison envi-

ronment (Akers et al., 1977). In the importation model, adaptation to prison

1

University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK

2

York St. John University, York, UK

Corresponding Author:

Laura Kelly-Corless, University of Central Lancashire, Preston PR1 2HE, UK.

Email: LKelly-Corless@uclan.ac.uk

Article

The Prison Journal

2025, Vol. 105(1) 62–83

© 2024 SAGE Publications

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00328855241292791

journals.sagepub.com/home/tpj

life is primarily shaped by individuals’“imported characteristics”(Mertens &

Vander Laenen, 2019, p. 1344), including behaviors, personality traits, con-

nections, and networks, as well as age, race, gender, nature of conviction, and

history of mental illness (Brosens et al., 2015). In contrast, the deprivation—

or indigenous—model explains behavior as an outcome of and response to the

norms and deprivations of the prison environment, regardless of difference

(Leigey, 2019). The models have historically been placed into a dichotomy,

with scholars including Sykes (1958), Grosser (1960), Goffman (1961),

and Irwin and Cressey (1962) publishing accounts which favor one over

the other when considering prison life. However, in recent decades, it has

become accepted that the two models co-exist and interact, inf‌luenced by

institutional power (Crewe, 2009), relationships and social organization

within prison (Phillips, 2012), sentence length (Wright et al., 2017), miscon-

duct and violence (Lai, 2018), and the individual (Schmidt, 2016).

The limitations of deprivation-oriented texts such as Sykes’(1958) and

Goffman’s (1961) have been widely documented (see Haggerty &

Bucerius, 2020). Their respective studies focus on individuals incarcerated

in a particular place and time and are underpinned by the assumption that

the tools for adjustment are a direct outcome of the institution itself. In

reality, adjustment is complex, noncumulative, and personal, especially for

many minority populations—who are the focus of this article (Bosworth,

2003; Kelly, 2018; Kruttschnitt & Hussemann, 2008; Warren et al., 2004).

Incarcerated people are not a homogenous group of like-situated individuals

able to automatically adjust to the expectations of the role and the everyday

realities of prison life (Warren et al., 2004). Despite this, Sykes’and

Goffman’s ideas continue to resonate, as prisons often assume homogeny

by orientating policy, practice, and culture around the behaviors of a

certain population (Carlen & Worrall, 2013; Thomas, 2003), and can limit

meaningful adjustments which allow those who are ‘different’to adapt to,

and fully access, the environment (Crawley, 2005; Crewe et al., 2017;

Dhami et al., 2007; Kelly, 2018). Throughout this article, Goffman’s idea

of “batch living”(1961, p. 11) is referenced, where “all …are treated alike

and required to do the same thing together”(p. 6), to illuminate what

happens when individuals are unable to adjust to the prison environment if

treated like everyone else. Sykes’(1958) pains of imprisonment are also

used to understand how deprivations are felt differently and more intensely

the further someone deviates away from what is “expected”in a prison envi-

ronment, which we are identifying as a “pain-difference continuum.”

This article adds to existing literature by applying an intersectionality lens

to show how the models can act as a theoretical tool for understanding the

lives of groups that would usually be seen as ‘different’or having ‘minority’

Kelly-Corless and McCarthy 63