Long haul remorse : the continuous performance of repentance throughout prison sentences

This chapter explores, from prisoners' perspectives, the ways in which remorse is dealt with throughout people's prison sentences. Scholarship to date acknowledges that the demonstration of remorse is a performative requirement at sentencing; less understood and acknowledged are the equally complex requirements of the acceptable performance of remorse, repentance and rehabilitation during the sentence itself. Because a key purpose of imprisonment is that the prisoner emerges 'reformed', and because 'being sorry' is an important criterion for parole release, it is crucial to consider how expectations to show remorse work upon a prisoner throughout his period in prison. It might be said that on the one hand there are shorter-term forms of remorse presentations during police questioning and at sentencing hearings (presentations which, we argue, embody their own temporal/performative complexity); on the other, there is the longer-term manifestation of remorse during the 'long haul' of serving one's sentence and completing parole. It is this 'long haul' dimension with which our chapter is concerned.