“Prisons Were Made for People Like Us”: British Pakistani Muslim Experiences Upon Release From Prison

• Author: Colin Webster,Mohammed Qasim
• Published date: 01 June 2020
• Date: 01 June 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0032885520916880
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0032885520916880

The Prison Journal

2020, Vol. 100(3) 399 –419

© 2020 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0032885520916880

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Article

“Prisons Were Made

for People Like Us”:

British Pakistani Muslim

Experiences Upon

Release From Prison

Mohammed Qasim1 and Colin Webster1

Abstract

British Muslim young men who offend upon reentry from prison reported

that “Prisons were made for people like us.” At one level, this meant that

the challenges they faced were likely to be intractable and insurmountable,

regrettably returning them to prison. At another, their social integration

after release from prison was hampered by something more than their

individual choices and agency. Cycling between neighborhood, offending,

and prison, it was their characteristic social relations and the peculiar social

structural constraints placed upon them as a group that best explained their

experiences upon release from prison.

Keywords

Muslim prisoners, employment, resettlement, family breakdown, reoffending

Introduction: Social Integration, Muslim

Ex-Prisoners, and Theory

Concern about the social integration of ex-prisoners around the world has

increased as prisoner numbers have risen (Baldry et al., 2006; Melossi, 2015).

This growing movement to better prepare offenders about to return to their

1Leeds Beckett University, UK

Corresponding Author:

Colin Webster, Leeds School of Social Sciences, Leeds Beckett University, City Campus,

Calverley Building, Leeds LS1 3HE, UK.

Email: C.Webster@leedsbeckett.ac.uk

916880TPJXXX10.1177/0032885520916880The Prison JournalQasim and Webster

research-article2020

400 The Prison Journal 100(3)

communities, however, reveals that preparation alone cannot ameliorate the

challenges that the ex-prisoner faces upon release from prison. Adjusting to

the world outside prison can be an extremely demanding task for ex-inmates

(Pager, 2003). As documented by a number of incarceree’s autobiographies,

lost time cannot be recaptured (James, 2005). Nevertheless, most offenders

who leave prison do so with high hopes for their future (Hartfree et al., 2008).

Plans to move into employment, education or training, stay off drugs and out

of prison do not always go as planned, as many find that life away from

prison can be equally, if not more, challenging than the life they experienced

in prison. In some cases, their plans are unrealistic; in others, the obstacles

faced related to housing, employment, family support, and relationship with

partners can cause the ex-inmate to struggle with life away from the prison

and to start questioning whether prison life was more difficult than life away

from prison (Hartfree et al., 2008).

Although plausible, these and other observations from the reentry litera-

ture seem to us under theorized. In contrast, this article argues that there

continues to be something intractable about socially integrating those released

from prison and insuperable about the challenges faced by those undergoing

such experiences. These difficulties go beyond whether the formerly incar-

cerated try hard enough or are motivated enough and whether they choose

and act in their own best interests. Indeed, they go beyond ex-offender per-

sonal accounts to the social structural constraints placed upon them, reflected

in the well-known inadequacy of the support services offered them.

The intent of the article is, from the start, to frame our choice of theory by

way of a riposte to the under theorizing of much of the reentry literature. Our

theoretical choices can be characterized broadly as an approach derived from

the political economy of crime and punishment. Second, linked to our stated

socioeconomic structural and social relations theoretical approach, we locate

empirically the position and profile of Muslim Pakistani young men in British

society. Specifically, we describe and explain the peculiarities of the place

that British Pakistanis occupy in the prison system and social structure, and

how this may be linked to experiences of persistent and concentrated poverty.

In other words, how the general social profile of the prison population is

disproportionately found among young Pakistani men, without suggesting in

a deterministic way that the social conditions experienced by this group

makes offending and imprisonment more likely than for other groups. Of

course, these conditions and their criminogenic consequences are mediated

and mitigated by an array of interacting risks, exigencies, and motivations

that lead to alternative experiences, identities, and pathways (Qasim, 2018).

Pakistani young men, as we will show, are notably penalized in significant