Dress Behind Bars: Prison Clothing as Criminality

by Juliet Ash

From nineteenth-century broad arrows and black and white stripes to twenty first-century orange jumpsuits, prison clothing has both mirrored and bolstered the power of penal institutions over prisoners’ lives. Vividly illustrated and based on original research, including throughout the voices of the incarcerated, this book is a pioneering history and investigation of prison dress, which demystifies the experience of what it is like to be an imprisoned criminal. Juliet Ash takes the reader on a journey from the production of prison clothing to the bodies of its wearers. She uncovers a history characterized by waves of reform, sandwiched between regimes that use clothing as punishment and discovers how inmates use their dress to surmount, subvert or survive these punishment cultures. She reveals the hoods, the masks, and pink boxer shorts, near nakedness, even twenty first-century ""civvies"" to be not just other types of uniform but political embodiments of the surveillance of everyday life.

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[WORN Fashion Journal]

The subject of prison clothing never really enters my mind, the image of a man in a black and white striped suit and some screenshots of A Man Escaped being the only images it conjures. Dress Behind Bars made me question why I had never given the subject a second thought. Juliet Ash discusses its development in detail, framing the subject in contemporary thought, political and social reforms and financial restraints, making the subject compelling by putting it in context.

Apparently, my lack of knowledge on prison clothing is understandable, given that the image of the striped prison uniform is in itself misleading. The black and white striped uniform was abolished by 1914 in most American prisons. Regardless, early American films adopted this notorious uniform into the cinematic vocabulary as a shorthand to depict criminals. Some examples are Charlie Chaplin’s The Adventurer (1917) and Buster Keaton’s Convict 13 (1920). The resultant fictional stereotype was that of the “heroic underdog humiliated by clothing.”

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Ash draws upon contemporary contexts to further the reader's understanding of the development of prison clothing beyond its depictions in popular culture. For example, let’s dig deeper into the end of the black-and-white striped uniform. At the turn of the century, when prisoners were still wearing the striped uniform in America and the broad arrow in Britain, the fin-de-siècle fashion system outside of the walls was marked by “public participation in the novel and the new.” The stark contrast between these conditions increased the level of humiliation endured by the prisoners. This, along with the realization that prison clothing is a highly ineffective instrument for rehabilitation, motivated penal reforms in the first decades of the twentieth century. The result was the eradication of “uniforms that visibly stigmatized.”

Ash then investigates the aftermath of this abolition and finds that harsh conditions still existed. In the spirit of 1920s America, prisoners provided cheap labour that fuelled the American economy. This influenced the subsequent prison clothing regulation in that prisoners’ productivity levels became a priority. In Auburn prison, the striped uniform was replaced by “workwear greys.” Compared to America, British penal reforms developed at a much slower pace. The use of clothing with broad arrow was still visible well into the 1930s. The Depression further encouraged the lack of progress in that production of new clothing was only to commence after “articles, and materials [had been] used until exhausted.”

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The part of Dress Behind Bars that I love the most is its bibliography. Ash has considered an amazingly wide variety of prison diaries, going as far back as the 1800s. These include personal accounts from Sylvia Pankhurst, Mahatma Gandhi, Oscar Wilde and Charles Dickens. Written from first-hand experiences, they vividly realize the extent to which prison clothing conditions evoke humiliation or resistance. In addition, she dedicates half a chapter especially to “descriptive autobiography” of inmates writing about their sartorial experiences throughout their time in prison. Of course, Dress Behind Bars is also contextualized within published works of notable costume historians such as Christopher Breward and Rebecca Arnold.

Impressive as it is, there is a downside to this A-list bibliography and Ash’s thorough analytical approach. As a book that opens a new topic and is based on original research, Dress Behind Bars is a bit hard to approach. While sticking to a chronological order, the much more complicated connection in the chain of causality often leads to arguments that are sporadic in the temporal sense (read: confusing). So, no, it’s not really a summer read. I would however, recommend it for those winter days as you sit by the fire clinging to survival. You will learn so many cool facts about the history of prison clothing that will surely come in handy for a few Did-You-Know’s at next spring’s cocktail parties. (reviewed by Marsya Maharani)

[Jamie]

Hard to get through, but glad I did. Landed on this book because the author is cited a lot for their work.

[Lisa]

A thorough survey of the history of prison clothing from ~1800 to today, focusing on the British and American prison systems. (The author discusses prisons in other nations, especially those colonized by Britain, but these are gestural remarks that only provide starting points for truly interested readers.)

Juliet Ash describes the far-from-linear evolution of regulations regarding prison dress. For example, permitting inmates to wear their own clothing could mean a recognition of the basic dignity of captives or it might be a form of malign neglect. It could also be a manipulative incentive or a reflection of elite (political prisoner) status or simply institutional frugality. The vacillation between rehabilitative and punitive intent in dress guidelines is also striking. From the 1830s, reformists fought hard to abolish hoods, prison stripes, the broad arrow, and other dehumanizing apparel. Yet, post-9/11, we have reverted to those designs and made them even less humane, more geared to depersonalize, alienate, and stigmatize. Even when uniforms have been intended to uplift or rehabilitate the prisoner, financial considerations, global economics, class biases, and gender stereotyping have undercut the effort.

Ash discusses a number of interesting experiments regarding prison dress, such as a Scottish unit that allowed inmates and staff all to wear civilian clothing, attempts to establish second-hand boutiques in prisons, and inmate-designed and -produced clothing lines.

The historical account is the strongest aspect of this book, but the writing can feel repetitive, as Ash sets up and reaffirms theses, or repeatedly reminds us of the nonlinear nature of prison dress reform. Near the end, Ash considers media representations of prison dress. Photos would have been helpful here, but Ash notes that permissions were difficult to obtain (some because copyright owners did not wish to be associated with criminality despite their willingness to exploit it). Ash also tries to show how individuals use writing and other creative forms to process their experience of prison dress. Although the effort to amplify the subjects' voices is laudable, it could've been done better. Chopped up into seemingly arbitrary categories, it feels rushed or squeezed in at the end.

There are black and white photos throughout the text. Some are helpful; others are not clear enough for the reader to see what is being commented upon.

A fascinating topic handled with varying degrees of success.