As a result of penal reforms initiated in the 2010s, Finnish prisons are increasingly framed as “learning environments for a life without crime.” But what kind of learning does imprisonment actually involve?
In this ethnographic study, Liila Holmberg examines how prison rehabilitation operates as affective self-work. Drawing on fieldwork in a women’s community rehabilitation unit, the study explores how prisoners are expected to work on themselves by engaging with their emotions in interaction with others, and how this process shapes subjectivation within a rehabilitative prison context.
The research shows, first, how the targets and aims of self-work are defined in affective terms, focusing on the prisoner’s relationship to their own emotions. Second, it analyses how self-work is enacted through affective practices, such as shared emotional expression and embodied engagement in group settings. Third, it examines how affective self-work is socially regulated and rendered normatively obligatory through peer interaction and institutional frameworks.
Taken together, the study demonstrates that rehabilitation is organised around structured engagement with emotions: affective self-work becomes not only the means through which change is pursued, but also the basis on which it is evaluated and governed.
Related publications:
Holmberg, L., & Niemi, A.-M. (2024). ”Röökilläkin kaikki ensin itkee ja sit alkaa naurattaa kun kaikki vaan parkuu!” : Itsen työstämisen affektiiviset käytännöt naisvankilan yhteisökuntoutusosastolla . Aikuiskasvatus, 44(3), 182–195. https://doi.org/10.33336/aik.143824
Holmberg, L. (2022). Learning to be (crime-)free: Subjectification within a Finnish prison rehabilitation wing for women. Nordisk Tidsskrift for Kriminalvidenskab 109(1), 215–220. https://tidsskrift.dk/NTfK/article/view/130308
Holmberg, L. & Saari, A. (2021). Itsehallinta vankiloiden kuntouttavassa ohjelmatyössä. In Brunila, K., Harni, E., Saari, A. & Ylöstalo, H. (eds.) Terapeuttinen valta: Onnellisuuden ja hyvinvoinnin jännitteitä 2000-luvun Suomessa. Tampere: Vastapaino, 171–191.
POISED 
