Why queer methodologies?

Rates of self-harm and self-destruction are high among prisoners. Previous research has explored formerly incarcerated people’s paradoxical accounts of pleasure in combination with pain and suffering in prison. It has also focused on how factors such as gender and sexuality relate to the persistent problem of self-harming.

This project aims to offer a queer interpretation of these phenomena through a more holistic, less pathologizing frame of understanding self-harming and self-destructing experiences in prison settings.