Prison Lives: Critical Issues in Reading Prisoner Autobiography

Abstract

The voices of prisoners are seldom heard as contributors to the evaluation of imprisonment. Official discourse is hostile to their accounts. Prisoner autobiography is a small but established genre in prison writing. The article presents a critical introduction to the study of these texts. Two groups of authors are identified in a sample of post‐war British autobiographies. Several key themes are identified and it is argued that, although problematic, prisoner autobiography should receive more systematic attention as a contribution to the penological archive.