At the Intersection of Prisons, Masculinities and Violence: Patterns of Masculinities Within Correctional Service Settings in Lesotho

Prison and its modern antecedent, correctional services, is a spatial but also a gendered category. Not only does it accommodate people who, as inmates, are associated with various forms of crime, but incidentally the majority of these people are men. Correctional service or prison officers, who are mostly men, constitute another important component of prison as an institution. Deriving from its nature as a militaristic and classical institutions, a correctional institution has always been predominantly masculine in nature, culture, behaviour and orientation. The violent, aggressive, emotionally insouciant and sexually virile masculine identities outside prison—that find their way into prison—coupled with the deprivations of the prison experience all connive to turn prison into a locus for the reproduction and propagation of violent masculine forms of behaviour. Different geographical, political, economic and cultural contexts have contributed to giving the relationship between correctional institutions on one side and hegemonic and violent masculinities on the other slightly different configurations though. It is these different contexts that promise possibilities for the emergence of alternative forms of masculinities. In light of the above, this chapter, using both the desktop and structured interviews and read through the lens of social construction, seeks to explore/investigate ways in which violence and masculinities intersect within the framework of correctional institutions and how the latter together with contextual variables conspire to reproduce new forms of destructive masculinities in Lesotho corrections institutions. It further acknowledges that, even within prisons settings there exist a diversity of masculinities some of which have propensity for anti-hegemonic and transformative masculinities. Such masculinities are identified and developed in ways that benefit both men and women on all sides of masculinity discourse continuum.