Papers by Anton Symkovych
Criminology & Criminal Justice, Aug 22, 2025
Young people whose language performance does not meet socially expected standards are overreprese... more Young people whose language performance does not meet socially expected standards are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. Pragmatic language skills encompass the social aspects of language, which include constructing narratives, the rules of conversations, turn-taking, topic management, and non-verbal communication. Current research on pragmatic language impairments in criminalised young people – that is, on their symptomatic difficulties with social communication and language – remains inconclusive. The purpose of this study is to uncover the perceptions and framing of pragmatic language impairments in a sample of studies involving boys and girls from Australia and the United States. Drawing on content analysis of a sample of pertinent research, we expose the deeply gendered framing of pragmatic language performance and associated behaviours of criminalised young people. We demonstrate that available studies often represent female participants’ problematised use of pragmatic language as a personal choice, thus locating the problem within the individual and responsibilising girls and young women. However, for male participants, current research often presents problematised use of pragmatic language as a consequence of institutional failures. We argue that this gendered framing has political implications for criminalised young people and future research.
Social Problems, 2025
How individuals incarcerated in the Global South engage with the official rehabilitative model re... more How individuals incarcerated in the Global South engage with the official rehabilitative model remains largely under-documented. Through analysis of the narratives of men and women living in a large, medium-security correctional complex in Gauteng, South Africa, I argue that the grandiloquent official discourse of rehabilitation constitutes an important resource for those incarcerated. Highlighting the importance of local context in debates about carceral rehabilitation, I demonstrate that not only prisoners’ personal circumstances, but also the wider socio-economic context of enduring colonial legacies of structural inequalities shape their interactions with the penal regime. By foregrounding what those subjected to penal power make of their incarceration, I argue that the official rehabilitative discourse helps many to make sense of their predicament, actualise their lives, and sustain hope. I highlight how individual narrative strategies are channeled by and mapped on the officia...
Theoretical Criminology, 2023
Bentham's idea of the panopticon has long influenced the theorisation of prison order. Howeve... more Bentham's idea of the panopticon has long influenced the theorisation of prison order. However, this model of control has been applied almost exclusively to prisoners. Drawing on ethnographic work in Ukraine, I argue that the disciplining of prison officers through institutionalised mutual surveillance was just as important to the maintenance of prison order. Broadening the theorisation of prison order by introducing the concept of hyperopticon, I argue that prison order in a Ukrainian prison hinged on two opposites: collectivism of prisoners and atomisation of prison officers, both depending on the system of multifaceted and excessive surveillance.
Routledge eBooks, Aug 31, 2023
Gender relations implicate power and male privilege. Prisons largely house underprivileged men. H... more Gender relations implicate power and male privilege. Prisons largely house underprivileged men. How then do incarcerated men negotiate masculinities when gender relations in society-at-large, power relations inside prisons, and masculine ideas and ideals continue to change? Drawing on a semi-ethnographic study in a men’s prison in Ukraine, I detail how the dynamic nature of gender normative ideals coexist with the more constant features of gender order: masculine surveillance, censure, and stratification. I highlight that notwithstanding the existence of alternative and subordinate masculinities, the power of hegemonic masculinities in prison is far from waning despite continuously shifting normative expectations and evolving masculine ideals. Whilst adding to the scholarship that questions the hypermasculine image of the men’s prison world, this chapter, by foregrounding the costs men in prison bear in their daily struggle to attain and maintain masculine status, explains how men in prison are simultaneously victims and perpetrators of patriarchy.
Current Sociology, 2018
Building on a semi-ethnographic study in a Ukrainian prison, the first research of its kind in th... more Building on a semi-ethnographic study in a Ukrainian prison, the first research of its kind in the region, this article discusses the normative and governance system of a post-communist prisoner world. The article offers empirical support for Skarbek’s theory of prison social order by demonstrating how prisoner extralegal governance evolves along with the changing structures in and outside the prison to sustain a predictable and tolerable environment within a dehumanising and intrinsically volatile context. Nevertheless, prisoner self-governance, although generally fairly administered, is itself brutal and institutionalises inequality. As the history of prison ‘societies’ in the US and UK demonstrates, far-reaching penal policy changes can radically transform the inner prison world. Such changes, widely referred to in Ukraine as the ‘humanisation of the penitentiary system’ and ‘Europeanisation’, have corroded the power and legitimacy of the traditional model of social control. Even...
Springer eBooks, Dec 12, 2024
The Prison Journal, 2019
Although prison order rarely rests on naked force, its availability defines a prison. A penologic... more Although prison order rarely rests on naked force, its availability defines a prison. A penological truism holds that officers’ deployment of force signals a breakdown in order, not normality. However, is the truism universally valid? Adding evidence from a former Soviet bloc country, the study examines the place of force in officers’ daily work in a men’s medium-security prison in Ukraine. Drawing on a semiethnographic study, the findings show that even though availability of force was central to preventing escapes and securing prisoner compliance, its actual deployment was relatively rare. Officers’ consideration and actual use of both legal and illegal force depended on legal ramifications, the position of the superiors, and prisoner reaction. It also reflected their views on the adequacy of formal penal power and legitimacy of force for corrective purposes.
European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 2020
Although temporary prison leave humanises custodial punishment, offsets its negative effects, and... more Although temporary prison leave humanises custodial punishment, offsets its negative effects, and prepares prisoners for (re)integration into wider society, its use proves to be controversial and uneven across jurisdictions. Since the collapse of the USSR, the former Soviet countries have been pursuing different criminal justice policies, liberalising some penal practices whilst retaining many punitive Soviet legacies. Through analysis of the legal provisions regulating temporary prison leave and official statistics in Ukraine, I demonstrate the apparent strain between the official policies and practice. Whilst legally available, temporary leave for prisoners in closed prisons is almost never granted in this Eastern European country. I argue that for Ukraine to reconcile the official rhetoric of rehabilitation and social reintegration of offenders and actual implementation of penal policies, the country must reverse the underlying requirements governing temporary prison leave and ex...
The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 2017
Most research on prison sex has originated in the global West, often employing quantitative metho... more Most research on prison sex has originated in the global West, often employing quantitative methodology. Building on a semi-ethnographic study of a Ukrainian prison, this article explores how prisoners and officers perceive prisoner sex. Rape was not reported in this prison, despite the relatively young prison population. I argue that the informal prisoner power structure of the prison underworld diminishes sexual abuse. Thus, contrary to much of the literature, masculinity, homophobia, and informal prisoner hierarchies can equally instigate and restrain prison violence and sexual victimisation.
European Journal of Criminology, 2020
Penal authorities and society in general perceive prisoners as untrustworthy. Much of the adminis... more Penal authorities and society in general perceive prisoners as untrustworthy. Much of the administration of punishment constitutes the assessment and management of the risks that prisoners pose. In this article, I explain how Ukraine balances the noble goals of prisoner reintegration with an inherent mistrust of prisoners. Drawing on a semi-ethnographic study of a medium-security prison for men, I discuss how, in anticipation of their freedom, prisoners also calculate their perceived risks. Through examination of how prisoners assess their vulnerability to risky behaviour and opt out from gradual release, I argue that prisoners as well as the state often deem themselves untrustworthy subjects. Furthermore, I discuss the roles of the informal prisoner society and (paucity of) prison’s rehabilitative efforts in prisoners’ decisions concerning their transfer into semi-open conditions. I argue that, rather than being an alternative – and even a threat – to parole, gradual release, suppo...
The Prison Journal, 2019
Although prison order rarely rests on naked force, its availability defines a prison. A penologic... more Although prison order rarely rests on naked force, its availability defines a prison. A penological truism holds that officers’ deployment of force signals a breakdown in order, not normality. However, is the truism universally valid? Adding evidence from a former Soviet bloc country, the study examines the place of force in officers’ daily work in a men’s medium-security prison in Ukraine. Drawing on a semiethnographic study, the findings show that even though availability of force was central to preventing escapes and securing prisoner compliance, its actual deployment was relatively rare. Officers’ consideration and actual use of both legal and illegal force depended on legal ramifications, the position of the superiors, and prisoner reaction. It also reflected their views on the adequacy of formal penal power and legitimacy of force for corrective purposes.
Theoretical Criminology, 2020
While being structurally subordinate, prisoners are neither powerless nor mute. Drawing on semi-e... more While being structurally subordinate, prisoners are neither powerless nor mute. Drawing on semi-ethnographic research in a Ukrainian medium-security prison for men, in this article, I advance the concept of ‘negative visibility’—that is, an administration’s fear of external attention and intervention, and make a case for the interplay of prisoner resistance with a managerial culture. Using Soviet penal and managerial legacies as an example, I argue that structure can be both constraining and enabling even within the milieu of the gross power imbalance of which prison is an archetype, thereby attesting to the coherence of agency and structure and the contingency of power. Furthermore, by highlighting that prisoners may undermine officer power for all sorts of reasons, including opportunistic and selfish ones, this study cautions against romanticizing the ‘defences of the weak’ and a priori politicization of prisoner resistance.
Current Sociology, 2018
Building on a semi-ethnographic study in a Ukrainian prison, the first research of its kind in th... more Building on a semi-ethnographic study in a Ukrainian prison, the first research of its kind in the region, this article discusses the normative and governance system of a post-communist prisoner world. The article offers empirical support for Skarbek’s theory of prison social order by demonstrating how prisoner extralegal governance evolves along with the changing structures in and outside the prison to sustain a predictable and tolerable environment within a dehumanising and intrinsically volatile context. Nevertheless, prisoner self-governance, although generally fairly administered, is itself brutal and institutionalises inequality. As the history of prison ‘societies’ in the US and UK demonstrates, far-reaching penal policy changes can radically transform the inner prison world. Such changes, widely referred to in Ukraine as the ‘humanisation of the penitentiary system’ and ‘Europeanisation’, have corroded the power and legitimacy of the traditional model of social control. Even so, the inability to resolve many inter-prisoner disputes through official channels and the state’s signal failure to meet the demand for protection and arbitration proved the utility of the private justice embedded in the inmate code and the institution of the illicit adjudicators, thus surpassing their legitimacy deficit and retaining the essence of the Soviet underworld
Men and Masculinities, 2018
The article sets out to show how power and identity intertwine. Its close look at Ukrainian priso... more The article sets out to show how power and identity intertwine. Its close look at Ukrainian prison culture complements a recent string of studies in the “West” by demonstrating the nuanced role of violence and masculinity in men’s prisons. Whereas much of the extant literature links prison violence to a hypermasculine culture, this article, based on a semiethnographic study in Ukraine, details how a masculine-centered, hierarchical prisoner structure curtails violence. Even so, prisoners are forced to exercise masculine agility, as their provisional manliness determines their place in the hierarchy and thus, by extension, their quality of life. I explore how prisoners and officers construct, prove, and maintain their masculine identities in a milieu of rigid structures and limited resources. I demonstrate how masculine models and discourses are diverse, dynamic, and contested and argue that men as agents tap into them to frame flexible identities to suit their needs.
British Journal of Criminology, 2018
Analyzing data from a semi-ethnographic study in a Ukrainian medium-security prison for men, I di... more Analyzing data from a semi-ethnographic study in a Ukrainian medium-security prison for men, I discuss how officers and prisoners negotiate order to produce a manageable, stable, predictable, peaceful and relatively habitable prison environment. Broadening the debate about power and order by introducing a case study from a non-‘Western’ context, I argue that prisoners and officers, apart from utilitarian compromises, also employ moral reasoning in their power negotiations. I demonstrate that in the context of prison’s radical deficit in legitimacy, exacerbated by a corrupt, under-reformed, post-totalitarian state, non-conformity with legal norms might be more legitimate than legal conformity.
Howard Journal of Crima and Justice, 2017
Most research on prison sex has originated in the global West, often employing quantitative metho... more Most research on prison sex has originated in the global West, often employing quantitative methodology. Building on a semi-ethnographic study of a Ukrainian prison, this article explores how prisoners and officers perceive prisoner sex. Rape was not reported in this prison, despite the relatively young prison population. I argue that the informal prisoner power structure of the prison underworld diminishes sexual abuse. Thus, contrary to much of the literature, masculinity, homophobia, and informal prisoner hierarchies can equally instigate and restrain prison violence and sexual victimisation.
Krytyka, 2015
Дивно, що вся країна обговорювала новий патрульний автомобіль ім. Авакова, але про патрульних не ... more Дивно, що вся країна обговорювала новий патрульний автомобіль ім. Авакова, але про патрульних не велосипедах щось не дуже чути. І тут питання не тільки в екологічному транспорті, а у видимій і безбар'єрній присутності правоохоронців у громаді та у їхній прямій взаємодії і довірі. "Штаб закрыт, все ушли на фронт", тобто з кабінетів у народ -ось важливий елемент успішної патрульної служби
Krytyka, 2015
When the war is used by the government to fend off criticism, often legitimate, when the civil so... more When the war is used by the government to fend off criticism, often legitimate, when the civil society is busy assisting those in the war zone, whilst exercising self-restraint in challenging the laissez-faire and ineffective government, the West must pressure Kyiv to finally uproot corruption and undertake radical reforms. Otherwise Ukraine will crumble even without further Russian intervention.
Uploads
Papers by Anton Symkovych