A Prison within a Prison?

This study uses a narrative analysis to explore the masculinity narratives of male prisoners. Individual interviews were conducted with nine men aged twenty-two to forty-seven. Using a method described by Agar and Hobbs, extracts were taken from each narrative and grouped around local, global, and themal coherence. These showed that participants fell into three groups: one accepting and internalizing the normative codes of hegemonic masculinity, another growing up within these codes but transforming them through key life turning points into something “softer and gentler,” and the third defining their sense of self outside hegemonic norms. The implications of these findings for the men's emotional well-being and for working with hypermasculinity in prisons are discussed along with ideas for developing this research.