Sound, Order and Survival in Prison: The Rhythms and Routines of HMP Midtown. By KateHerrity, Bristol: Bristol University Press. 2024. p.210 £27.99. ISBN: 9781529229455

The last decade has seen a resurgence in “prison research:” This resurgence focuses primarily on prisons as institutions and their impact on the individuals who reside and work there. However, this work is characterized by a notable lack of attention to the commonalities shared by prison workers and prison residents, despite the obvious overlap. The resurgence in prison research has international roots, evidenced by the conceptual focus of Benjamin Lessing (2016), David Skarbek (2014), and Rajeev Gundur (2022). Collectively their work points to the role of larger geo-political and external milieu on the institutional and cultural forces in prisons. Perhaps the most important conceptual work in this area comes from Ben Crewe and Allison Liebling at Cambridge and Richard Sparks at Edinburgh over the course of the last decade. Among the many strengths in their work is the ability to identify and describe the inter-dependence of life inside the prison and its impact on and redundancy with society external to the prison. Now comes Kate Herrity with a new focus on internal and external contexts of prison life (Sound, Order and Survival in Prison, 2024, Bristol: Bristol University Press). Among the more notable features of this work is the ability to identify and describe the commonalities in how prison life is experienced by administrators, custodial and social service staff as well as imprisoned individuals. “Prison” research has progressed from looking at criminal and penal records to interviewing and observing incarcerated persons to interviewing and observing staff as they interact with those who are incarcerated and other staff. Most work focuses on a narrow range of sensory functions: what staff and incarcerated persons see and experience. Herrity focuses her attention on sound in the penal institution and how it shapes and is shaped by life on the inside. This focus was no doubt shaped by her work in the Emerald Studies series in culture, criminal justice and the arts series (Herrity, Schmidt and Warr, 2021). The depth of her knowledge in this area is a key feature of the book, one that promises future developments of even greater impact. While “sound” is a fundamental attribute to life in and out of prison, it is rarely acknowledged in scholarly examinations of the culture or structure of life in prison. As anyone who has “been on the inside” of carceral institutions knows, two sensory functions are engaged upon entering a prison: smell and sound. Prisons have an institutional “funk” that lingers despite how many times floors are mopped and left to dry. Herrity made variations in the “soundscape” of “HMP Midtown” the focus of nearly a year of observation and listening, both to human interaction as well as the routine activities of prison life. Because there is a “routine” of sounds that varies by time, location, persons present and context (among others) Herrity thought it important to be physically present throughout the daily and weekly cycle of “time on the clock”. She describes in "insider's" detail events in the prison that would not have been seen or heard at other times of the day. Prisons depend on rhythms and predictability, and sounds are primary characteristics of life in the carceral state. Herrity describes in detail the relationships and “intimacy” researchers develop with individuals they are studying and the potential threats posed to studies of life behind prison walls. These include ethical guidelines for research with human subjects and the decency that researchers must bring to their work. This discussion is one of the outstanding features of the book, as it documents her integration into the sounds and sights of prison life. Much of prison life involves “exchanges” of food, commissary, narcotics, illicit services and the like. Newcomers to prison are often tested by the offer of information or introductions to other incarcerated persons. These challenges often pose ethical and legal challenges to the independence of a researcher. It is a credit to this work that they are dealt with in a straightforward manner. In the 12th chapter, “Polyrhythmia” she describes in considerable detail the “thrum and bustle” of life inside the prison and how space serves to segregate days into manageable periods of time. The ability to understand that the routines and orders of institutional life both shape and are shaped by the sounds of everyday life is a key finding of her work. She wisely takes up the question of whether or not total institutions have a backstage (Herrity, 2024, p. 48). She argues that such a position is based on a false perception of the hidden and semi-private elements of life in confinement. This illustrates one of the strengths of the book, its ability to link the ethnographic findings with principles of social order. Herrity sagely integrates her ethnographic observations--macro and micro--with the classic works of Donald Clemmer, Stan Cohen, Erving Goffman, and Gresham Sykes, as well as many of the “new classics” in prison research by Allison Liebling, Richard Sparks, and Ben Crewe. These “classics” provide a foundation for the observations Herrity made over the course of her study. As such, her work advances the field in many ways, not the least is its contribution to both method and conceptualization. This is the kind of work, integrating new findings with extant knowledge of prisons that is sure to advance the field. Like most ethnographic studies there is a substantial focus in Sound, Order and Survival in Prison on plans for conducting interviews, making observations and coding “data”. Her work was facilitated by nearly-unfettered access to staff and incarcerated persons. Her discussion of spending time alone at night rings true for the emotions such experiences have. Yet they are important to her study, as are the lengthy periods of relative quiet. She succeeds in avoiding the trap of “binary” explanation. That is, Herrity observes that much prison scholarship has the underlying foundation of “us versus them.” Or “our life” and “their life.” This view stifles the identification and interpretation of more complex phenomena. Her discussion of choosing an ethnographic frame (sound) was telling for the framing of questions, interviews and observations, as well as the routines of research. The physical characteristics of the prison (size, ingress and egress, etc.) shaped the daily patterns of life in HMP Midtown and are clearly reported. This reader wanted to know more about how gender played out in the interactions she observed, with an emphasis on masculinities. But, alas, no book could cover it all. Sound, Order and Survival in Prison (2024) offers a unique view of events, interactions and persons in prison. This view includes numerous reflections by the author on how micro processes are linked to macro forces in prisons most of which involve an understanding of the role of sound in institutions. The impact of “sounds” on daily life and exceptional events is never far away from the central empirical findings of the book. The book has laid a foundation for future work on penal settings, as well as transitions from community to prison and from prison to community. I, for one, eagerly anticipate Herrity's next book.