Based on a nine-month ethnographic study in Hydebank Wood Secure College, this paper explores the sources of vulnerability affecting young men in prison. Academic research in young men’s prisons has focused on young men that idealise strength, stoicism, and autonomy; and depicted institutions where violence, bullying and victimisation are widespread. However, the prison is a transient environment and those young men that experience feelings of power and dominance in prison through the perpetration of bullying and victimisation are regarded as inherently vulnerable in the wider social context.

This paper seeks to expose and dissect the emotional underbelly of the highly macho young male prisoner society. It discusses how imprisoned young men of all types inner (and sometimes public) lives were dominated by feelings of vulnerability and their inability to cope with the rigours of imprisonment. While a range of sources of vulnerability affected young men in Hydebank, this paper will focus on three primary sources that were discussed most frequently by the young men themselves: physical and mental health; self-harm, including suicide; and medical and illicit drugs.

Young Men, Vulnerability, and Imprisonment (PID079)

Speakers

Dr Conor Murray