Distant Voices: Coming Home - Participant Interviews, 2017-2019

McNeill, Fergus and Collinson Scott, Jo and Crockett Thomas, Phil and Escobar, Oliver and Urie, Alison (2022). Distant Voices: Coming Home - Participant Interviews, 2017-2019. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-855595

Distant Voices responded to pressing public policy and political challenges created by huge rises in the numbers of people subject to penal sanctions and by high levels of reoffending. Turning conventional understandings of 'offender rehabilitation' on their head, the project was concerned not with 'correcting offenders' but rather with exploring and changing how they are received when 'coming home' after punishment.

The project aimed:

(1) to improve academic and public understandings of social re/integration after punishment;
(2) to develop innovative practices to better support re/integration; and
(3) to better engage a range of citizens, communities and civil society institutions in re/integration.

As a collaborative action research project drawing on criminology, popular music, politics and other disciplines, Distant Voices combined creative practices (principally songwriting and sharing), research and knowledge exchange to enable dialogue and learning about re/integration -- and to practice and support it. Its participatory methods drew together a wide range of differently situated citizens, organisations and associations to form a 'community of enquiry' and of creative practice.

This range of participants worked across three inter-related activities. (1) In 'Co-creative inquiry' justice-affected people worked with one another, with researchers and with musicians to write songs that explored, represented and reflected on re/integration. (2) In 'Co-creative dialogue', some of the songs were shared and discussed through the production and release of an album and 2 EPs, a large range of public performances, a podcast series (The Art of Bridging), and other web-based materials. (3) In 'Co-creative discovery', a core group of the wider community of enquiry worked together to explore their learning and to assess what had been achieved in and through the project.

Through these activities, Distant Voices aspired to develop theories and concepts of reintegration and rehabilitation, to influence related behaviours, to inform interventions and, more broadly, to encourage the development of a fairer and more vibrant society.

Data description (abstract)

This data set comprises transcripts of audio-recorded semi-structured interviews with participants in 2-day or 3-day collaborative songwriting workshops (which we refer to as 'Vox Sessions') which were loosely themed around reintegration after state punishment. The workshops were undertaken in a variety of settings, in prisons and communities, with criminal justice-involved people.

Data creators:

Creator Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
McNeill Fergus	University of Glasgow	https://orcid.org/ 0000-0003-3547-6482
Collinson Scott Jo	University of the West of Scotland	https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-5317-0375
Crockett Thomas Phil	University of Glasgow	https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8960-098X
Escobar Oliver	University of Edinburgh	https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-6628-9359
Urie Alison	Vox Liminis	https://orcid.org/ 0000-0003-1992-4302

Sponsors:

Economic and Social Research Council

Grant reference:

ES/P002536/1

Topic classification:

Law, crime and legal systems
Politics
Society and culture

Keywords:

PUNISHMENT, REHABILITATION (OFFENDERS), CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM, PRISON SYSTEM, PAROLE, CREATIVITY, COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, POPULAR MUSIC, DEMOCRACY

Project title:

Distant Voices: Coming Home

Grant holders:

Fergus McNeill, Jo Collinson Scott, Oliver Escobar, Alison Urie

Project dates:

From	To
16 April 2017	15 December 2021

Date published:

14 Apr 2022 14:43

Last modified:

14 Apr 2022 14:44

Coverage and Methodology

Collection period:

Date from:	Date to:
3 July 2017	30 September 2019

Geographical area:

Scotland

Country:

United Kingdom

Spatial unit:

No Spatial Unit

Data collection method:

Brief semi-structured interviews were undertaken with all participants on the final day of 2-3 day songwriting workshops (known as Vox Sessions). These interviews typically lasted 15-30 minutes and allowed participants to reflect and feed back upon their experiences and on what they have learned in the process.

The participants included people serving prison sentences of various lengths, people living in the community after release from prison (including some subject to post-release supervision licenses), people working in prisons and criminal justice social workers, other people working in the justice system or related fields of practice, family of people in or after prison, and people who had been direct or indirect victims of crime.

We worked with four prisons (an open prison, a young offenders institution holding young men and young women [which also held some adult women], a large local prison in a major city, and a smaller local prison serving a more rural area), and in two community settings (the large city in which the large local prison was based, and the town in which the local rural prison was based). We recruited participants both through the prisons and partner organisations and, on some occasions, by performing gigs in the prisons ahead of the workshops. All participants took part on a voluntary basis.

Observation unit:

Individual, Group

Kind of data:

Text

Type of data:

Qualitative and mixed methods data

Resource language:

English

Access and Administration

Data sourcing, processing and preparation:

We undertook brief, semi-structured interviews with participants in the songwriting workshops in order to better understand both how they experienced the workshops and how they understood reintegration after state punishment. Most of these were individual interviews, but on some occasions small groups of participants were interviewed together.

Rights owners:

Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
McNeill Fergus	University of Glasgow	https://orcid.org/ 0000-0003-3547-6482
Collinson Scott Jo	University of the West of Scotland	https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-5317-0375
Crockett Thomas Phil	University of Glasgow	https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8960-098X
Escobar Oliver	University of Edinburgh	https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-6628-9359
Urie Alison	Vox Liminis	https://orcid.org/ 0000-0003-1992-4302

Contact:

Name	Email	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
McNeill, Fergus	Fergus.McNeill@glasgow.ac.uk	University of Glasgow	https://orcid.org/ 0000-0003-3547-6482

Notes on access:

The Data Collection is available for download to users registered with the UK Data Service. All requests are subject to the permission of the data owner or his/her nominee. Please email the contact person for this data collection to request permission to access the data, explaining your reason for wanting access to the data, then contact our Access Helpdesk.

Publisher:

UK Data Service

Last modified:

14 Apr 2022 14:44