In this episode, Dr Omar Phoenix Khan speakswith Professor Kate Gooch, Professor in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Bath, about her ethnographic research in young offender institutions and her recently published book Prison Violence: In Search of Recognition and Respect (Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology).

Kate is one of the leading scholars of youth custody and prison violence in England and Wales. Her research explores the causes, forms and dynamics of harmful activity within custody, including violence, homicide, self-harm and organised crime, with a particular focus on the moral, social and cultural contexts in which harm is produced. She regularly presents her findings to HMPPS, the Youth Justice Board, the Ministry of Justice and HM Inspectorate of Prisons, and trains prison senior management teams.

The conversation covers Kate's concept of carceral capital as a richer alternative to hegemonic masculinity for understanding why young men in custody are violent. Moving beyond gender performance, carceral capital encompasses material display, custodial experience, physical presence and the survival strategies young people carry in from youth custody and the street. Kate's account of what the stockpiling of Jaffa cakes actually signals, or the significance of a handshake, is a small illustration of the analytical work only serious ethnographic fieldwork makes possible.

Kate reflects on what that fieldwork actually involves: embedded over many months across landings, adjudications, segregation, carol services and away days, doing what the officers called "loitering with intent." She is candid about the gender politics of conducting research in men's prisons as a woman, the concept of moral dualism that shapes her positionality, and why she is not, as she puts it, a totalabolitionist, while making a clear case that the conditions in which young people are held are themselves an injustice.

The episode also examines the relationship between trauma and violence. Kate recounts a searing adjudication hearing inwhich a young man disclosed at the close of proceedings that a family member had just died in a crash. There was simply nothing in the infrastructure to meet that moment. This, she argues, is how distress becomes violence: not because these young men are defined by the worst thing they have done, but because custody forecloses every other form of discharge.

This episode will interest anyone working inor thinking about youth custody, prison violence, ethnographic methods and the politics of what counts as justice inside a sentence.

Read Kate's work:Gooch, K. (2026). Prison Violence: In Search of Recognition and Respect. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan.

 Doolan, C. & Gooch, K. (2021) Preventing prison staff assaults.

Gooch, K. (2020). “You’ve got a Hard Edge”: The Gender Politics, Complexities and Intimacies Undertaking Prison Research at the Edge. In Prison Stories: Women Scholars’ Experiences Doing Research Behind Bars.

Also mentioned:

Maguire, D. (2021) Male, Failed, Jailed : Masculinities and"Revolving-Door" Imprisonment in the UK - Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology (Referenced in episode) SeeEpisodes 9-10 with Dr David Maguire21: Prof. Alison Liebling - Appreciative Inquiry and the moral performance of prisons25: Prof. Ben Crewe - Understanding Life Imprisonment

Prof Kate Gooch | University of Bath

Keywords: youth custody, young offender institutions, prison violence, self-harm, carceral capital, hegemonic masculinity, ethnography, HMIP inspections, trauma, youth justice, moral dualism, custodial conditions, austerity, positionality, women in prison research.

Podcast researched & hosted by Dr Omar Phoenix Khan, University of Bath. Theme music by SHEZ.