Introduction

Christie's (1986) conception of the ideal victim has been highly influential within victimological circles since its publication. Since then, numerous changes have occurred to address the victimisation of many marginalised groups, which arguably extends the notion of the ideal victim beyond what it was initially held to be. The development of hate crime legislation and high-profile cases of harms with intersecting characteristics go beyond Christie's initial thoughts, resulting in more people recognised as ‘deserving victims’. Yet, routinely omitted from this ideal victim discourse is the male prisoner. Men in prison have often experienced high levels of physical, sexual, emotional and structural victimisation before, during and after their incarceration. Indeed, male prisons are presumed to be highly violent and harmful places; they are represented as such within popular cultural fictitious (see Wilson and O’Sullivan, 2004) and factual (BBC, 2017) depictions. Yet, rarely is the victim status of the non-vulnerable male prisoner recognised in popular or academic discourse. While those who have been institutionally recognised to be vulnerable are given a certain amount of attention – which, in itself, has potentially harmful implications through the impact of the acknowledgement of vulnerability upon notions of masculinity (see Sloan, 2016) – there is a distinct lack of attention given to the victim status of the general male prison population.

In this chapter, I address this conflict between prisoner and victim labels, and draw upon ethnographic data from time spent within an adult male category C prison in England for a doctoral study into masculinities in prison (Sloan, 2011; see also Sloan, 2016) to develop the argument of why men in prison should perhaps be seen more as victims and could, dare I say it, even fit into the ‘ideal’ victim construct when considered with a broader mindset. I focus on men in prison for two key reasons: (1) they comprise 95% of the prison population of England and Wales while simultaneously receiving very little direct (gendered) attention relative to women, young people or other distinct minority groups in prisons (see Sloan, 2018); and (2) my research focuses on men in prison and I thus have qualitative interview data to support my discussions from men rather than from women.