Ben Jarman

Ben’s PhD builds on and develops pilot research carried out for his MPhil, which formed the basis of a 2020 article in the British Journal of Criminology (see below). One focus is how the perceived moral status of an offence affects life-sentenced prisoners' feelings about the rehabilitative opportunities on offer in prison. Do people who have committed particularly heinous offences feel a heavier burden of shame? If so, how does this affect their feelings about the idea that they ought to change, and their attitudes to rehabilitative services and opportunities (such as work, training, education or offending behaviour programmes) on offer from the prison?

The PhD’s emerging findings point to a more nuanced view of adaptation to imprisonment than has been described in recent studies, emphasising ‘imported’ factors in its account of how people adapt to very long sentences. There appear to be significant differences in attitudes to punishment and risk reduction among men sentenced in youth, middle age, and when older. There are also considerable differences in ethical self-evaluation among those whose offences took place in different circumstances, with some more readily shouldering labels such as ‘risky’, ‘dangerous’ or ‘murderer’ and working within this identity, and others continuing to dispute or question their culpability even as they participate in risk-reducing interventions and work towards objectives on their sentence plan. Although much of this will not surprise practitioners, the PhD will provide a systematic description of these patterns, and situate this within a growing body of work considering the ethical and moral (as well as simply the risk- and recidivism-related) implications of sentencing and punishment.

The PhD supervisor is Prof Ben Crewe.

Ben’s other interests are in historical criminology, the history of imprisonment, and the work of voluntary sector organisations in criminal justice. In 2017/18 he worked with colleagues from Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh, conducting archival research on penal establishments where there have been allegations of non-recent child abuse by staff.