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

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.