Radzinowicz prize for best criminology article

The Prize, awarded annually by the Editors of the British Journal of Criminology for the article they judge has contributed most to knowledge of criminal justice and criminology, is for his article ‘Whitening Black Men: Narrative Labour and the Scriptural Economics of Risk and Rehabilitation’.

The paper explores the impact of the racism that sits at the heart of concepts of ‘rehabilitation’ in England and Wales, with a particular focus on prisoners on indeterminate sentences.

All prisoners have their identity stripped from them and, ultimately, reconstructed by the institutions in which they are incarcerated. However, for life and indeterminately sentenced prisoners, he argues, the effects of this process, reinforced over extended periods, creates a particular set of burdens.

One of these burdens is the ‘narrative labour’ required of prisoners to mitigate negative assessments, made about them by ‘experts’ hooked upon the dual conceptual thorns of risk and rehabilitation, in order to navigate the prison’s labyrinthine pathways to release.

These pathways are particularly treacherous for Black lifers, as the concepts of risk and rehabilitation are infused with both racist and colonial forms of anti-Blackness, and a ‘rehabilitative’ white ideal.

From social relations, to appearance, to language use, more of the life of a Black prisoner is interpreted negatively than other prisoners.

The paper explores how, in order to mitigate their perceived risk and navigate the prison’s pathways to release, Black lifers, are forced to adopt narrative labours that downplay their Blackness and increase their perceived adherence to the white ideal (i.e. to ‘whiten’ their ‘Blackness’). 

Speaking today, Dr Jason Warr said:

I would like to thank the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, the Editors of the British Journal of Criminology, and its prize panel for awarding me the 2023 Radzinowicz Prize. This is a huge honour for me personally, and an important recognition of the insights and impact that a narrative criminology can have. I am also really excited that this was awarded for an article on such an important topic.

It has been 20 years since Phillips and Bowling highlighted the need for an explicit focus on the experiences of racialised populations in the criminal justice system of the UK. However, this focus is one that is still not mainstreamed in British criminology.

Despite being untenable, there is still a resistance, a hesitancy, perhaps even a wilful neglect, within our field to explore how our racist and colonial past informs concepts, professional practices, and institutions in the here and now. As such, the awarding of this prize comes at an important juncture for criminology.

Professor Eamonn Carrabine, Editor-in-Chief of The British Journal of Criminology, said:

Jason Warr’s paper is an ambitious, bold and powerful statement of narrative criminology, obliging us to see and think about imprisonment in new ways.

We felt among the judges that the article is genuinely groundbreaking. It combines conceptual innovation with deep immersion in the social and cultural worlds of the two institutions he studied, producing a compelling analysis of the racialization at the heart of carceral logic.

In drawing a distinction between the very good and the great – which is our role as judges awarding the prize – the article has all the hallmarks of outstanding scholarship, tackling urgent questions with verve and imagination.

Find Jason Warr’s article, and other Radzinowicz prize-winning articles, here.