Time, the Pains of Imprisonment, and ‘Coping’

This chapter explores how a sample of women experienced, and was transformed by, a husband’s or boyfriend’s long-term imprisonment. It draws on theoretical tools provided by research on long-term imprisonment specifically, including emerging work on how long-term prisoners experience the pains of imprisonment over a long sentence. A previous chapter has suggested that some pains of imprisonment may be ‘acute’ for families outside — that is, these pains could persist throughout the sentence. This chapter explores how these acute pains are experienced over a long sentence by partners. As it has already been shown that sociological work on imprisonment provides excellent theoretical tools for examining the experiences of families, research on long-term imprisonment specifically was chosen as it, too, can help one to understand the experiences of partners outside.