Arts in Criminal Justice and Corrections: International Perspectives on Methods, Journeys and Challenges, Edited by Amanda Gardner and Laura Caulfield

It was the first day of my study I had planned as part of my PhD research. I had prepared all the materials the night before, took an early train to ensure I was on time, went through all the checks at the prison gate, set up my room and waited for the first participant to come in for their interview. I welcomed him with ease, introduced myself and went through the consent form. I turned on the audio recorder. ‘It’s just like the fucking police’. My heart sank. I don’t think I told anyone about how big a misgiving this interaction felt, not until much later when I had a couple of research projects under my belt. This memory came back to me as I read Amanda Gardner and Laura Caulfield’s edited collection, ‘Arts in Criminal Justice and Corrections’. The most distinctive element of the collection is that it is not a traditional edited collection of studies, rather it is a collection of essays about how the researchers have developed their methods of research over their careers (and there are careers of various lengths and kinds represented throughout the text). Many of the contributors acknowledge the messiness of undertaking research including the feelings of unease when something is not said quite right, when an ethics approval gets revoked or the tensions felt when navigating stakeholders and funders.