Simpson, Ella ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5561-4606 (2027) A story of creative writing in prisons: working on generative justice. In: Chamberlen, Anastasia and Bernatek, Ruth, (eds.) Carceral Arts Global Perspectives on Creativity, Justice & Resistance Edited by Anastasia Chamberlen and Ruth Bernatek. Bristol University Press, Bristol, UK. ISBN 978-1529252286 (In Press)

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Abstract

The emerging literature on ‘generative justice’ has tended to focus on the solidarity of reintegrative communities after punishment (McNeill, 2024,, cf Grossi, 2024, Cohen and Winemiller, 2026; McGowan and Perrin, 2026). The damage done by the ‘binary logics of criminal justice’ (McNeill, 2022) is highlighted in this literature, which also, to an extent, reinforces such binary logics by separating out the possibilities of generative justice in the prison from opportunities existing in the community. Grounded in my knowledge as a former creative writing facilitator turned prisons researcher, this chapter argues that creative practitioners may act as facilitators, perhaps even initiators of the type of relational, reciprocal spaces within the carceral space that some people with convictions go on to co-create after release. In other words, creative practitioners enable a little bit of the outside on the inside. The research outlined attempts to capture through a creative storyboarding technique some of the tacit intentions and motivations constructed in the narratives of 19 experienced, professional creative writing facilitators about their journeys into gaol. The research identifies three ‘scripts’ (Hyvarinen, 2021: 20) that speak to how the arts are valued or devalued in society, which practitioners draw upon to construct their own stories of how they came to work in prison; ‘The suffering artist’, ‘the (inadvertent) healer’ and ‘the (human) revolutionary’ narratives are shaped by and simultaneously breach broader scripts about the arts, and their role in the tensions between resistance and desistance in the carceral space. Findings from the practitioners’ shared narratives are considered alongside the seven common features of generative justice, in order to articulate the potential relational dynamics practitioners bring to their work in prisons, which may support or even catalyse generative justice.

Item Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	PhD fee waiver paid by Bath Spa University.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	narrative criminology, generative justice, creative arts, criminal justice
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) K Law > K Law (General)
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Law and Criminology
Last Modified:	02 Jun 2026 14:53
URI:	https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/53662

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