Dress behind bars - prison clothes as criminality

This project will examine prison dress in both an historical and contemporary context and within the prison film genre. Whilst it's primary focus is the U.K. and the U.S.A. it also considers related global practices, where research is available, particularly within the context of late 20th and early 21st centuries. There have been numerous academic studies of prison life and history, but this is the first publication which focuses exclusively on prison dress. This invisibility or visibility of prisoners has dominated prison history from the 18th century to the present. Prison dress provides an arena for the discussion of both the individual and the institution in relation to politics, gender and race.

In addition to film studies, the inter-disciplinary nature of this project includes research into empirical historical material, penal history, dress history in relation to uniforms and corporal identity, criminological debate, oral histories and 19th and 20th century prison art and literature. Correspondence from, and interview material with, prisoners themselves, prison reform groups, those who work as designers in prisons and curators of prison photography and dress are an integral part of the study.

The project sets out to demystify both the reality and experience of incarceration through critically examining how prison dress has changed historically in relation to legislation, how it has been differentiated between genders, how it has been subverted by prisoners as a form of personalisation in deliberately depersonalised institutions and how it has been culturally defined in film and television.