Volunteering in prison : an ethnographic research of volunteers at Stichting Vrij and how they give shape to notions of ‘doing good’

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OLUNTEERING IN PRISON

An ethnographic research of volunteers at Stichting Vrij and how they give shape t o notions of ‘doing good’

Name: Lieneke Glas

E-mail: lienekeglas2@hotmail.com Student number: 10777202

Assignment: Master thesis

Supervisor: Dr. Peter van Rooden Second readers: Dr. Yatun Sastramidjaja

Dr. Anja Hiddinga Partner organization: Stichting Vrij

Program: MSc Cultural and Social Anthropology (Applied Track) Department: Graduate School of Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam

Date: 12-06-2019

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“It would be a form of self-delusion to think that we do not speak from a moral orientation which we take to be right” – Charles Taylor (1989, p. 99)

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Plagiarism Declaration

"I have read and understood the University of Amsterdam plagiarism policy

[http://student.uva.nl/mcsa/az/item/plagiarism-and-fraud.html]. I declare that this assignment is entirely my own work, all sources have been properly acknowledged, and that I have not previously submitted this work, or any version of it, for assessment in any other paper."

Lieneke Glas 12-06-2019

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Acknowledgements

Here, I would like to thank some people who bore with me in my ups and downs during this thesis project. I would like to thank my friends for enduring my stress episodes when I thought I would never finish this thesis and that it would never be (good) enough. My family has also been very supportive, and I want to thank my parents for letting me be their guest at weekends at home – relieving my from daily chores so that I could write my thesis in peace.

Furthermore, I want to thank my supervisor for thinking with me and enriching me with relevant theories I did not know existed. My fellow students also deserve thanks, as well as the teachers, for the many tips and tricks I have received, and the mental support available. Finally, I want to thank the staff members and the informants at Stichting Vrij for providing me with (inside) information and trusting me with their stories. All these people have in some way contributed to this thesis, and I owe them a lot of thanks.

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Abstract

The topic for this master thesis research project is volunteering and ‘doing good’. The focus is on the narrated drives of volunteers, and what their volunteering work means for ‘doing good’1_and their perceptions thereof. Within anthropology, this research can be placed within the debate of the ‘anthropology of the good’ and within the context of neoliberalism and morality. In a

neoliberal climate, the government provides less social support to its citizens. Often, this leads to initiatives from the civil society. Next to that, (young) people can be interested in volunteering in times of precarity, by wanting to build a solid CV and by coming off as productive. The

volunteers construct narratives about their drives for this volunteering work using moral language, what makes it morally relevant. The research project took place in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in collaboration with the organization Stichting Vrij. By engaging with this organization through participation, observation, and by speaking with some of the volunteers themselves, the ideas and ideals are that volunteers have about the world and ‘doing good’ came forward. This research pleads for more nuance within anthropological debates about moral engagement and neoliberalism. It shows that volunteers do neither engage in this work because they feel a social or economic pressure to, nor because they only want to help ‘the other’. The volunteers do this work primarily for themselves, because they acknowledge the necessity of it and because it makes them feel ‘good’, even though they are reluctant to refer to it as such. This latter point is an suggestion for further research.

Keywords: morality, anthropology of the good, meaning-making, volunteering, neoliberalism, narrativity

1_{The words ‘good’ and ‘doing good’ are put in quotation marks, because what is good for one person,} does not have to be for another.

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Introduction

The call for a new story: about volunteering and ‘doing good’

According to George Monbiot, ecologist, writer and columnist for The Guardian, we have to look for a new story of society: “We are creatures of narrative, we interpret the world through narratives. And if someone tells us a compelling story, we listen” (VPRO 2018). This need for a new story comes from the increase in individualisation, or ‘atomization’ as Monbiot calls it, ‘the separation from each other’ (VPRO 2018). Monbiot states that neoliberalism is the root of these problems, and that among others, compassion might be the solution to them. In this master thesis, I want to tell a new story, about compassion, or more specifically: ‘doing good’ and

voluntarism in a neoliberal climate, illustrated by the work of the volunteers at Stichting Vrij. This story starts with an introduction of voluntarism and the Dutch context.

Almost half of the Dutch citizens above the age of 15 have been active as a volunteer in 2017, at least for one time (Arends & Schmeets 2018: 3). This percentage has been stable

between 2012 and 2017, according to CBS (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek). Men and woman equally participate as volunteers, although the areas in which they volunteer vary. Blahová (2015: 344) describes that the definitions of voluntarism are somewhat vague, but that most definitions suggest that voluntarism is ‘from one’s own will, without receiving a reward for it, and it is supposed to benefit others’. On a broad scale, voluntarism is often seen as wanting to do

something ‘good’ by helping others. However, what is it to do ‘good’ (Blahová 2015; Pols 2018)? People with contradictory beliefs can both think that what they want or envision is ‘good’, or is there something as a ‘common good’, which supposes more universalist tendencies (Kang 2006)? Is voluntarism then an example of ‘doing good’? There is also a lot of critique pointed towards volunteering work, for example as written by Dominelli (2016) and Rogers (2017), so what makes people think that what they do is ‘good’? These are all questions that are of importance with regard to this research, which is inspired by the article about ‘the anthropology of the good’, written by Robbins (2013). I choose to study ‘doing good’ using the example of voluntarism in a Dutch context. To make it concrete and applicable, the research project is conducted in

collaboration with Stichting Vrij, located in Amsterdam.

Stichting Vrij is an organization that provides ‘Voluntary Assistance to Prisoners and Former Prisoners’. To be able to finance its activities, the foundation receives subsidy from the Ministry of Justice. Furthermore, the organization is acknowledged as an ANBI2_{‘institution’,}

2_{‘ANBI’ stands for ‘Algemeen Nut Beogende Instellingen’, or ‘institutions that are committed to} the public good for at least 90%’:

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9 meaning that it receives tax benefits because it provides services to the ‘public good’. However, most of the work is done by volunteers. The visiting of prisoners by volunteers is something that has already happened for a long time by different organizations that, often because of religious and humanitarian reasons, were concerned about the fate of convicts. For reasons of

manageability, the government decided to take over these activities, giving birth to the Probation Services as a typical professional organization. Around the 1970s the Probation Services wanted to engage volunteers in their work again. They decided to do a television broadcast in which volunteers were called to visit detainees. In Amsterdam, 70 people showed interest in this work, and five of them were selected to set up an organization. At that point in time, the Probation Services withdrew and in 1976 Stichting Vrij was established. The foundation started with about fifty volunteers, in 2018 there were sixty volunteers, but the board members aspire to grow as an organization.

Stichting Vrij has two main objectives, namely: 1) to represent the interests of those who are or have been in contact with the Ministry of Justice in any way, and 2) to initiate and

participate in processes in society that aim at improving the provision of assistance to, and the position of, (former) detainees. To achieve this, prisoners are visited by volunteers, and practical help is offered with regard to housing, finance, work, study and the provision of information. Next to that, the foundation wants to maintain and to improve the legal position of prisoners, by bringing about a change in mentality within society. For example, the organization provides extensive information to combat prejudice and detects injustices to – if needed – take action against abuse in penal institutions. To achieve this, the foundation keeps in touch with the municipality of Amsterdam and other related organizations like SurAnt. However, one board member of Stichting Vrij told me the organization has suffered budget cuts, which makes it more difficult to continue to exist independently, even though that is what they prefer. This shows that it is important to take into account the political context in which the volunteering takes place.

This research is about Stichting Vrij and the kind of work the volunteers of the

foundation do, which is primarily the visiting of prisoners. Firstly, relevant theoretical debates will be drawn upon in this introduction. Secondly, the societal and academic relevance of this

research project will be discussed. Finally, the methods used for this research are described, as well as their implications.

https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontentnl/belastingdienst/zakelijk/bijzondere_re gelingen/goede_doelen/algemeen_nut_beogende_instellingen/wat_is_een_anbi (last visited 11/04/2019)

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An account of relevant theoretical debates

An anthropology of ‘the good’?

This research is about the idea of ‘doing good’. Robbins (2013) describes that anthropology has had a focus on ‘the other’ until approximately the 1980s. He argues that the suffering subject became the new topic, focusing on the universalism of suffering instead of the particularity of the ‘other’. Robbins (2013: 447) states that some key characteristics of anthropology were ‘lost’ in this translation from particularism to universalism. An ‘anthropology of the good’ can, therefore, focus on (the particular) practices of care, hope and empathy (Robbins 2013: 458). The goal is not to replace the focus on the suffering slot, but rather to complement it in the idea that other ways of living are possible.

However, this concept of an anthropology of the good is contested, especially in the way it should be researched. Al-mohammad (in Venkatesan 2015: 445) states that ‘there is no such thing as the good’ as something reified that is ‘out there’. To Al-mohammad, ‘lived’ ethics comes from our own understanding and the worlds we live in, as opposed to an ‘external’ good to which people can choose to conform or not. It is the expression and the experience of these ‘lived’ ethics this research will build on. The focus, then, is on narratives and practices of ‘doing good’ as examples of ideas about morality and ethics.

Next to Robbins (2013), Ortner (2016) also describes what she calls ‘anthropologies of the good’. These anthropologies of the good focus on researching happiness, a ‘good life’, morality and ethics. They are a reaction against the anthropology of the suffering, or, as Ortner (2016) calls it, ‘dark anthropologies’. This focus comes from a more activist perspective, for example from the ‘anthropologies of resistance’. It is possible that the volunteer’s striving for ‘doing good’ also comes from ‘dark (neoliberal) times’ in which they are aspiring to make a difference. Therefore, this research focuses on how volunteers of Stichting Vrij give meaning to their acts of volunteering and in what ways they place them in the Dutch political context.

Neoliberalism and drives for volunteering

This research is placeable in the broader context of the Dutch society and volunteering work. The case of volunteering and ‘doing good’ is especially interesting in the light of neoliberalism and the idea of the ‘participation society’. Neoliberalism as a concept is increasingly present within the discipline of anthropology (Ganti 2014). Ganti (2014) makes the distinction between neoliberalism as an ideology and neoliberalism as certain regulations with regard to policies and politics. Ortner (2016) writes that the neoliberal context can be seen both as an economic system and as an ‘governmental formation’. Neoliberalism is thus not solely an economic system: it is an

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11 ‘index’ of political-economic systems that carries out a certain ideology in which

self-development, individuality and freedom are important concepts. Acts of volunteering can become a ‘commodity’ in this context: a currency in the neoliberal logic of self-enhancement.

Furthermore, as public services become privatized and the welfare state retrenches, more local initiatives may come into play. Orta (2013, in Ganti 2014: 95), for instance, describes that decentralization because of neoliberalism can be ‘more empowering at a local level’. This can encourage people to volunteer and even lead to a ‘culture of voluntarism’, states Ganti (2014). For example, Muehlebach (2013), describes a ‘highly moralized form of citizenship as social services become more and more privatized’ (Ganti 2014: 96). The concept of neoliberalism can therefore provide a political framework for this research project on voluntarism and wanting to do ‘good’, but it also represents ideological ideas about morality.

In the literature there seem to be two extremes in which volunteering can arise, because of neoliberalism, like Ganti, (2014) and Muehlebach (2013) state, or decline – due to a decline in a shared or ‘common’ morality because of ‘crumbling’ institutions such as religion or the family (Bauman 2000; Hemment 2012; Spires 2018). However, these two ‘extremes’ do not necessarily exclude each other; in ‘Third Way’ neoliberalism, there is no contradiction between these concepts (Vrasti & Montsion 2014: 337–338). The authors describe that the practice of voluntarism is not new, but that the ambiguity between volunteering as a selfless act and volunteering as a ‘disciplinary task’ (in what it accomplishes), is (Vrasti & Montsion 2014: 338).

It is exactly this ambiguity this research builds upon. How do volunteers at Stichting Vrij construct narratives of ‘doing good’ and volunteering, and what does the neoliberal climate mean for voluntarism? Do people only volunteer because they want to help others, and if so, why does that person need help, ordo volunteers want to improve themselves by being there for others? Is volunteering part of a semi-hedonistic project of wanting to build an excellent CV, or is it a completely selfless activity, totally focused on the ‘other’ – as Bauman (1993) proposes? By researching how volunteers construct narratives about their motivations for doing volunteering work, and how their ‘lived’ ethics are expressed in this work, these questions will hopefully be answered.

‘Doing good’, voluntarism and the prison context

It is important to regard the specific context of this topic in which voluntarism for Stichting Vrij is brought about. Kort-Butler and Malone (2015: 509) describe the prison as an unique setting that bears a ‘social mystique’, in which prisoners are ‘subject to negative stereotypes’. They state that someone who is willingly to enter such an environment ‘has to confront and overcome’ the

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12 negative ideas about prison and prisoners. It is interesting to find out how volunteers that

presumably want to ‘do something good’ experience this setting in which people are convicted for having ‘done bad’, and what drives them to do this work. In addition, Kort-Butler and Malone (2015) write that volunteers are often talked about, and that less is known about their personal experiences.

To find out about the volunteer’s personal experiences and views, the focus is on ‘lived’ ethics: norms carried out within practices, comparable to the concept of empirical ethics from Pols (2017). With a focus on how people do good, during interviews and participant observation, I wanted to find out in what ways the volunteers think ‘doing good’ is brought about. Volunteers are also asked about their (moral) narrated drives with regard to the work they do. A combination of these two subjects, empirical ethics that focuses on practices, and morality which entails ideas and narratives about ‘doing good’, is used in order to research ‘doing good’ among volunteers working with (ex)prisoners. Next to the prison context in which most of the volunteers’ work is carried out, the political context is equally important, especially in a time when the state provides less social services under a neoliberal policy. The research question is then as follows: “How do

volunteers at Stichting Vrij give shape to notions of ‘doing good’ in a context of neoliberalism?”

The thesis is divided in three chapters. In the first chapter, Stichting Vrij as an open space for ex-detainees and volunteers is introduced. Thereby, the work of the volunteers I spoke with is described, and the first sub question is answered: “How do volunteers at Stichting Vrij give meaning to their acts of volunteering with convicts?” The second chapter is about the morality of volunteering work and what drives the volunteers to do this work, despite the challenges

described in the first chapter, answering the second sub-question: “How do volunteers at Stichting Vrij construct (moral) narratives about their drives for volunteering at Stichting Vrij?” The last chapter ties the specific type of volunteering work and the narratives of the volunteers together in a context of neoliberalism and participation, answering the third sub question: “How do the volunteers’ experiences of volunteering inform their (neoliberal) societal contribution?” The most important topics in this thesis are the experiences and meaning-making processes of the volunteers, their narratives about drives, the morality of this work, and the broader societal context.

Relevance

This research is of societal relevance in the context of the Dutch governmental climate. With the VVD (a liberal party) being the biggest party in the Netherlands, several changes have been made during the past years. Collective ‘goods’ such as insurance, the health sector and social services

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13 have been increasingly privatized. These developments can be seen as characteristics of neoliberal ideologies (Ganti 2014). The main idea is that the state pulls back on several fronts, encouraging citizens and companies to take over the vacant tasks. Theory suggests that because of this, volunteering work can increase, but it is also possible that volunteering becomes less, because people are busy with their own lives, with taking care of friends and family as a mantelzorger3_{, or} self-enhancement on other fronts (Hemment 2012; Ganti 2014; Muehlebach 2013; Bauman 2000; Spires 2018).

While some people rely more on the civil society and volunteering work of other people to care for them because the state withdraws from providing certain social services, volunteering work is not for everyone; not everyone can afford to engage in free labour. It is interesting and of public relevance to research how volunteers experience this duality between a higher need for volunteering work when time for volunteering work seems to become more limited.

In addition, Spires (2018: 205) writes that ‘recent ethnographic research on contemporary volunteering in the United States challenges us to look more closely at the subjective experiences of volunteers’. Kort-Butler and Malone (2015: 509) also emphasize this importance: ‘volunteers are often talked about but are seldom talked to’. In this research to volunteers from Stichting Vrij, a lot of data is gained by communicating and participating (as far as possible) with volunteers and staff members. It is about how they experience and narrate their work, and what this can say about their notions of ‘doing good’.

Thereby, a lot of research focuses on volunteers with a religious background (Kort-Butler & Malone 2015). In Amsterdam, more organizations such as Stichting Vrij are present (for example Exodus), but Stichting Vrij distinguishes itself by not working from specific religious motives (although this may be the case for an individual volunteer). This research thus

contributes to a broader understanding of volunteering work that does not explicitly come from religious affiliations.

Next to that, Vila-Henninger (2017: 168) writes that there is some missing literature about “the intersection of norms of self-interest and norms of social solidarity”. This research to

volunteers at Stichting Vrij aims to provide some insights into this intersection of

self-enhancement and social solidarity, sometimes referred to as ‘good citizenship’. By researching the interests, drives and experiences of volunteers at Stichting Vrij, ‘doing good’ is examined as a moral act, as well as ‘good behaviour’ as part of a social script of solidarity. The way in which volunteers construct narratives about their volunteering work, can tell something about this.

3_{This is a Dutch word for care takers, but characterizes itself by specifically taking care of someone close} to you, often this is a friend or a family member.

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14 Finally, the case of volunteering with (ex)prisoners is a specific form of volunteering. Kort-Butler and Malone (2015) describe that prisoners are often othered and that many people see prisons as dangerous places. Stichting Vrij aspires to tackle these prejudices in society.

Volunteers visiting incarcerated people already choose to step over these judgements. In addition, volunteering for an judicially concerned organization means having to deal with a lot of

administration. This is even more the case for the foundation itself. This research, therefore, takes place at a microlevel, concerning the acts, experiences and narratives of volunteers

themselves, but also at a meso level, considering the structures of organizations and institutions that deal with volunteers. The macro level is present with regard to policies from the government and the neoliberal environment that organizations from the civil society have to adjust to.

In conclusion, this research to volunteers working for Stichting Vrij can be placed within the Dutch neoliberal context, which makes it societally and academically relevant, but the research is also used to find out about the volunteers’ ideas about volunteering and ‘doing good’ (in working with people who have presumably ‘done bad’), what contributes to scientific debates around this topic within Anthropology.

Methodological implications and ethical considerations

In order to answer the research question, an ethnographic fieldwork project of three months was conducted in collaboration with Stichting Vrij. During the fieldwork period, ethnographic

research methods were used, such as many hours of participant observation (by becoming a volunteer myself and by working with the organization), countless informal conversations and thirteen semi structured interviews with volunteers, interns and board members. Participating within an organization and engaging with volunteers is especially useful in the case of applied research, because it allows the researcher to experience things him- or herself within the organization (Van Willigen 2002). In November 2018, I had my first meeting with the two coordinators of the foundation, who would later become my key informants, gatekeepers and sponsors. Although the official fieldwork period was from January 2019 till March 2019, I have been a volunteer for the organization for a longer period of time.

I have interviewed thirteen people in a semi-structured way, meaning that I had a list of questions at hand to remind myself of important topics, but allowing some space for other (related) topics as well. I chose this research method so that the most important concepts, such as drives, neoliberalism and ‘doing good’ were free for interpretation by the volunteers themselves. Cortazzi (2016: 384) writes that ‘narrativity is seen as one of the fundamental ways in which humans organize their understanding of the world’. It is a way of making sense of experiences and sharing those experiences with an audience. However, as a researcher, it is important to keep

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15 in mind that people are aware of being interviewed, and that they might have pre-determined narratives about certain topics (Gubrium et al. 2012). The interviews are transcribed and coded, and grounded theory is used in terms of data analysis4_.

Even though interviews provided me a lot of interesting information, (participant) observations were carried out even more. I spent time at the office, joined meetings with the staff, helped the two coordinators with all sorts of issues, went with an intern to house visits, and volunteered by visiting a prisoner at Judicial Complex Zaanstad multiple times. The observations were about the environment, the atmosphere, the people present, their actions, and their

reactions to questions or other (unexpected) situations. The office of Stichting Vrij is open to everyone, so often ex-convicts come in to arrange things or to just chat with a cup of coffee. To find out about the foundation’s vision on ‘doing good’, I have read and corrected some of their documents, such as the annual year reports (from 2017 and 2018), housing contracts, and flyers and other informational papers. From the way of writing, and how the coordinators talked about their vision when correcting some sentences with them, I could observe some notions of morality, what is ‘good’ to do, and what is not. These, and other findings not relevant to the research question, are used for recommendations for the organization; the thesis is primarily about the volunteers5_.

There are also limitations to this research. I have only interviewed thirteen, and spoken with about twenty, of the sixty volunteers that work for Stichting Vrij. This is because the two coordinators sent an invitation for doing interviews with me by mail to twenty volunteers they had selected on the basis of availability, willingness to do an interview and interesting stories they could tell. However, after about seven interviews with volunteers saturation already took place on several themes. Next to that, most volunteers I spoke with were above the age of sixty, although I have also talked to some in their twenties, but this distribution is representative of the whole group of volunteers6_.

Furthermore, doing social research always involves ethical considerations. This is no less the case for applied anthropology. Essential within ethics is the ‘potential and manifested impact on the people involved’ (Bryman 2012; Van Willigen 2002: 47). This research could not exist without the help of my informants, and they have to be treated accordingly. In order to preserve their privacy their names are fictious, and other possible (personal) traces are excluded. This is

4_{This is further described in the attachments.}

5_{The recommendations can be found in the separate file ‘Thesis summary and recommendations’ for} Stichting Vrij.

6_{In the attachments, an overview can be found about the most important informants, compared with the} broader volunteer population at Stichting Vrij.

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16 especially important because the volunteers work with incarcerated people, for whom both privacy and safety is of main importance.

Informants were interviewed at a place where they felt comfortable. Often this was at the office of Stichting Vrij, in a café or at their home. The topic of voluntarism was a topic people easily talked about, but personal experiences and characteristics of prisoners or volunteers could be sensitive topics, to which more attention is paid in reporting and storing the results. It is also important to recognize that the volunteers I interviewed are not to be homogenized as a group, because they are unique individuals. They do, however, share their contribution of working as a volunteer.

Finally, my positionality as a researcher is of importance for ethical considerations. I introduced myself to the volunteers through a flyer and at a meeting for volunteers at the Stichting. The volunteers knew I was a researcher, as well as a volunteer, and hopefully they saw that I was interested in this topic as an individual that wants to write about voluntarism and broader processes, instead of seeing me as a researcher that just wants to exploit the volunteers to gain information. Before the interviews, I let the informants sign an consent form and gave them a copy. During conversations, I joined my informants in their own reflections, by thinking with them, instead of only about them.

Subsequently, it is important to be aware of the fact that ‘the choice of the tools and concepts to frame the object of research is always normative, and therefore re-scribes it’ (Pols 2014: 84). The theories I think are relevant, the concepts I highlight and the questions I construct, are all part of what I regard as meaningful. Within this research, I have tried to keep biases and other normative notions as limited as possible, and if present, I hope to have addressed them accordingly.

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Chapter 1 Being a volunteer for Stichting Vrij

An organized mess

“I just want to be happy!” While I was at the office for a meeting I had with the coordinators of

Stichting Vrij, I heard somewhat desperate noises coming out of the room next to us (where the hallway is located, later I learned that this space – including a desk and access to a telephone – was mostly used by ex-convicts who were released from prison and needed help with housing and finance issues):

“I cannot look forward in my life, I do not make it to that point… I am so busy in my head. (…) So many people talk to me, it does not make sense to listen to all of them. (…) I just want to be happy.”

Although I was really curious to what was going on, I respected this man’s privacy and stayed in the other room. Still, I tried to listen to what he said, because I really wanted to understand what this man was feeling and what he was talking about. When I walked out of the office, I passed him, and I saw that the man had a big suitcase with him. He was calling on the phone, and I understood that he had just been released from prison, but that he did not have a place to go to. He was tired of ‘all those people who talk a lot, but do not do anything’: “It is useless to keep

talking”, he said. I looked around, but no one at the office seemed impressed with what happened

or what this man was saying. This led me to assume that incidents like this are quite ordinary within Stichting Vrij. It also showed very clearly that life after prison is not only freedom and happiness; on the contrary, a lot of prisoners that come to Stichting Vrij face some difficulties they cannot solve alone. Coming out of prison is one thing, but to re-establish a (new) life outside the walls of confinement is something else. Stichting Vrij and STEK aspire to support (ex)

convicts in troubles they face. In this chapter, the focus is on introducing what Stichting Vrij does, what the volunteering work for Stichting Vrij actually entails, how the volunteers

experience it and how they give meaning to their acts of volunteering. These aspects contribute to an answers to the first sub question of this thesis: “How do volunteers at Stichting Vrij give meaning to their acts of volunteering with (ex)convicts?”

To be able to answer this question, I have talked to the volunteers about their experiences of their volunteering work for Stichting Vrij and how they give shape to that, focusing on

empirical ethics as described by Pols (2014; 2017). Empirical ethics is the study of ‘normativity or values in practice’ (Pols 2017: 2, emphasis added). According to Pols (2017), normativity does not

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18 arise after a weighing out of principles before or after carrying out a task, but exists within the practices of actors. Normativity, in this case, arises within the acts of volunteers at Stichting Vrij: the visiting of prisoners. ‘Doing good’ is a normative concept and reflections of values and ethics are present in practices, as will be shown in this chapter, as well as in narrativities, what will be discussed in the next chapter.

Stichting Vrij is located in De Pijp, Amsterdam, almost across the Albert Cuyp market. To enter the front door, people have to walk down a few stairs that lead to the ‘basement’ section of a terraced house. The office of Stichting Vrij is relatively small, but they have tried to make the most out of the space available. When entering the office, there is a small hallway with a table and three chairs, that leads towards the ‘kitchen’. There is a fridge, a microwave, a broken oven and a kitchen counter. The hallway also leads to the meeting room, the biggest room of all. A big glass table is surrounded by as many chairs as

possible, thus leaving the room to sit quite limited. On the other side of the room, there are two computers: this is the working place of the interns. Across from these computers are filing cabinets with all paper dossiers. I was amazed by all this

paperwork, and although it makes the place seem a little bit messy, it is also in some way organized – the coordinators often know what to find exactly where. In the meeting room, posters and schedules are everywhere: posters of related organizations and

foundations and schedules of house visits

and contract durations of ex-convicts (see picture). Next to the computers, there is another small room. This is the ‘official’ office of STEK, and Ludo (coordinator) works here most of the time. Job interviews for new volunteers are also held here, so the place is not only used for STEK-related tasks7_.

Although the office may not seem office-like in terms of business or ‘real’ offices, it does emit a certain cosiness and homeliness. Lizette, a volunteer, stated the following:

7_{‘STEK’ roughly translates to ‘Foundation for a Temporary Own Room’. Stichting STEK supports} former prisoners in finding a room of their own. Stichting Vrij and STEK are related to each other. The interns carry out tasks for both foundations and the foundations share the same building. However, they do have different board members and separate annual year reports.

Picture 1: A part of the office of Stichting Vrij, the room in the back is the office of STEK. Own photo.

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“It is just a bit… a bit messy, but I find that very pleasant. (…) You are always welcome, and yeah, there is a very good atmosphere.”

This feeling of ‘being welcome’ is of high importance to the two most present coordinators as well. It has already occurred a number of times that I had an appointment with one of the two coordinators, but that this appointment was interrupted by an ex-convict coming in. I was always asked whether it was okay if our appointment would be a bit later, because the coordinators – both of them – wanted to devote their time and attention to the ex-convict that just came in. Sometimes, these convicts had urgent issues they had to deal with, but often enough they just wanted to drink some coffee and chat with the coordinators. “Those are just mafia practices of the

authorities, and they even do it by law”, ex-prisoners often talked about ‘the system’ (meaning the

government) and ‘bad regulations’. The ex-convicts faced difficulties with housing, finding a job and thereby finding a certain stability in life they so desperately need. Not seldom, they blamed the ‘authorities’ for this. During the fieldwork period, I joined an intern in house visits for STEK, to check if everything was going well with the ex-convicts living in the houses from the

foundation. In the conversations with these renters, it also became apparent that these ex-prisoners felt let down by organizations designed to help them – like the municipality and the probation services (‘reclassering’ in Dutch).

In contrast, the ex-prisoners praised Stichting Vrij for their presence and their help: “No

one helps me, except for you guys”, said one renter of STEK. Despite their anger towards other

organizations, they seemed grateful for the service Stichting STEK provides. The volunteers of Stichting Vrij specifically come into play when the convicted ones are actually (still) in jail, they pay the prisoners visits and sometimes help them with (financial) tasks. This research focuses on this ‘phase’: prison visits are central in the work of a volunteer. However, in order to gain a coherent understanding of Stichting Vrij and its activities, it is important to know about the other described aspects of the foundation and Stichting STEk as well.

The foundation was initially founded only for people from Amsterdam. Right now, Stichting Vrij would like to gain more volunteers from all over the Netherlands, because there are no prisons in Amsterdam anymore8_{. Signing up as a volunteer is easy, this can happen via mail or} by calling the office. Stichting Vrij has an application procedure, because working with convicts can be challenging. The organization does not want people to go into prison uninformed and

8_{From the year 2013 and on, the Dutch government decided to close thirty prisons because of budgets} cuts. Amsterdam Havenstraat was closed in 2014, Amsterdam Over-Amstel (alias Bijlmerbajes) was closed in 2016. Source:

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20 unprepared. For the sake of context and a better understanding of the meaning-making processes of volunteers, it is important to know what steps a volunteer has to take in order to be able to do their work of visiting prisoners.

First, an potential volunteer has a ‘job interview’, in which the volunteer has to explain why he or she wants to do this specific kind of volunteering work. The coordinators lead the conversation, and finally propose a case or dilemma the volunteer has to ‘solve’. By this, the coordinators want to find out if someone is suitable for this work. However, I have never heard of an applicant that was not ‘hired’. Second, the accepted applicant has to request a ‘Verklaring

Omtrent Gedrag’9_{(hereafter, VOG) at the municipality. A VOG shows that someone has no} criminal record and is suitable to work with people in a more vulnerable environment. The VOG procedure is required by law, but it is in conflict with the ideology of Stichting Vrij of countering prejudices. About this, more is written later in the thesis. Third, the applicant has to submit the VOG to the coordinators, and the volunteer to be receives a card from Stichting Vrij. This card, together with a signed letter from the organization, gives the volunteer entrance to prisons. Officially, a volunteer has to be a member of Stichting Vrij for three months before he or she is allowed to visit people in prison. This is because volunteers have to become familiar with the work Stichting Vrij does by for example carrying out simple tasks, like arranging clothes for a prisoner, and because the organization does not want to send completely unfamiliar volunteers to visits. Still, volunteers cannot be totally prepared for their first visit in prison. Even when I knew the organization really well, by having been a research intern for 2 months already, my first visit in prison was nerve wrecking to me.

The first visit

At the train station of Zaandam, I was waiting for the bus that would take me to the Judicial Complex Zaanstad, which is the closest prison to Amsterdam since the Bijlmerbajes and

Havenstraat were closed. The transfer time should be around ten minutes, but my bus still was not there after fifteen minutes and I started to worry. I was already nervous for my first prison visit, and I did not want to come in late. A staff worker had warned me on the phone (when I called to make an appointment) that I should be fifteen minutes early – to have enough time for the mandatory security check. I looked around and made sure I was

9_{This translates to a ‘Certificate of Good Conduct’. In Dutch language, it is often referred to as a ‘VOG’.}

Picture 2: The backside of Judicial Complex Zaanstad. Own photo.

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21

waiting for my bus at the right spot, and a few minutes later a little grey van stopped there. I asked the driver – who seemed a little grumpy by not saying ‘hi’ to me and by not smiling – if he went to the prison and his answer was affirmative. In the van, I found out that this bus line was dependent on voluntary drivers. During the bus ride, I was the only one in the van, and I checked on my phone if the route was right, because we went all the way through little small roads that sometimes were almost impassable because they were very sandy. There was no bus stop at the prison (in fact, there was, but I did not know back then), so I had to walk about ten minutes to the building.

The prison is located in an industrial estate area, which makes it appear rather desolate and I did not encounter many people on my way there. It was very windy that day, and the grey sky did not make me feel really cheerful either. Arrived at the entry of the prison, I had to choose between two entrances: one for the personnel, and one for the visitors. Every door in prison is locked and the only way to enter is to push the intercom button and wait for someone to open. My heart raced as the first door was being opened – the ‘visitors’ door. I did not know what was being expected from me. “Madam, can I help you?” I suddenly heard through an intercom, I was the only one there, so he could only be talking to me. I checked in at a counter, and I was immediately disciplined by this staff member: “Ma’am, do you want to say that immediately in the future?”, apparently, I had to introduce myself as a volunteer of Stichting Vrij directly by saying my name. I felt bad for being called out by my behaviour, even though I really could not have known that I had to introduce myself in that way.

After checking my ID, and putting my belongings in a locker, I had to walk to the security gate. Just like at the counter, personnel was sitting behind glass bars and talked through an intercom to the visitors. This made me feel like a research object – which I was, to a certain extent. Of course, the security gate beeped when I walked through. I had to take off my shoes, and to walk sideways through another gate, with my arms wide open. I felt even more like a research object. Luckily, all was well this time and I was able to start my journey through the prison building, towards my visit.

This vignette shows that a prison is not only a space of social exclusion of prisoners from the outside world, as Kort-Butler and Malone (2015) refer to, but also a physical one by prisons being located far away from residential areas and therefore being hard to reach by public transport. In addition, during conversations with volunteers, it became clear that many of them experienced the same kind of nervousness during their first visit in prison. This was because they did not know what to expect, and because the prison setting was new to almost all of them.

Although the volunteers are screened before they start visiting convicts, to make sure that they are allowed to work with prisoners, they do not seem to be fully prepared for their first visit. Thereby, volunteers do not know who they are going to visit. Except for their first name, they do not know anything about the prisoner. Next to the negative attitudes that exist towards prison

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22 and prisoners, as described by Kort-Butler and Malone (2015), I argue that the situation of

visiting an unknown person in an oftentimes unfamiliar place can also be highly challenging for the volunteers. During my first prison visit, I experienced this too, as I wrote the following in my fieldwork diary: “I think my nervousness was rooted in my ignorance, I did not know what to expect, what the

social rules were in a prison and what kind of person would sit in front of me in a small room.” Even Caroline,

a volunteer of Stichting Vrij who has already done a lot of volunteering work (in prison) before Stichting Vrij, admitted that she would like more information about who she is going to visit.

It also occurred that volunteers were not able to enter a prison, for example because their entrance card was expired. This happened to Wayne and Hector. It is the question whether this is the responsibility of the volunteer or the organization. It is also possible that a prisoner is not available for a visit, for example because he or she has been transferred to another location. Sometimes, prisoners themselves cancel the appointment, because they do not feel like talking. This happened to Hector:

“One time, I walked to the counter and signed myself up. I was told: ‘Sir, your visit is cancelled, he is not in de mood, he is in bed’. You are 3,5 hours on the road and then you hear something like that… I do not mind at all, because you are doing something good. And that is what I do it for. (…) And at a given moment, you learn from it too. How people can get into the ‘penarie’10_{at some point in life. It makes you think.”}

It would be reasonable that this volunteer would become angry for driving 3,5 hours for practically nothing. Hector was indeed disappointed, but he did not whine about it. He told me that he understood that something like that could happen, but that he would have liked a phone call when this was the case, so that he did not have to drive for nothing again. It surprised me that instead of irritation, Hector showed a great deal empathy for the prisoner in this case:

“Look, I do not just look at myself. I understand that those people – that at some point they run up against the wall, because of aggression and their circumstances, that they really do not feel like doing anything. Somehow, I can understand that.”

These quotes and the small vignette show that even before the actual visit, volunteers can already experience challenges and uncertainties. It is not always passed through that a prisoner has been transferred, because of safety policies from prison. This can lead to a disappointment for the volunteer, who might have travelled for practically nothing. Still, Hector shows that, although he

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23 did not like to find out that his visit could not proceed that time, he understood that things like this can happen with the kind of group he is working with. Thereby, Hector refers to his acts of volunteering as ‘doing something good’, even though his activities are not always rewarded, for instance, by driving there for nothing. What does it mean to ‘do something good’, then? The first sub question is as follows: “How do the volunteers of Stichting Vrij give meaning to their acts and experiences of volunteering with convicts?”

Experiences of visits by the volunteers

Apart from the first tensive prison visits and failed appointments, it is interesting to look at what a prison visit looks like, how the volunteers did experience their visits in general, and how volunteers give meaning to these visits. During conversations and formal interviews, volunteers talked a lot about their experiences during visits in prison and what impressed them. I asked them what they thought was the most beautiful in their volunteering work, and I asked them what the challenges were during those visits. By this, I hoped to gain understanding of their meaning-making of doing this work, based on their experiences. What does it mean to them to do this work as a volunteer? What aspects do they highlight? For example, an aspect informants came up with themselves, is what they have learned from the visits – and from the prisoners. For this reason, these stories are included as well. They show that the volunteers do not only ‘give’ something, namely, their time and attention, but also receive something in return and consider that as important enough to tell me. Reciprocity appeared to be an important concept in this volunteering work.

Most volunteers visit prisoners one on one, in a small room, reserved for ‘ambtelijk'11 visits. Prisoners like this over the larger visiting rooms (for non-privileged visits, like family), because it allows them to talk freely about sensitive topics, such as traumas or the delicts. Thereby, these privileged visits are part of meaning-making mechanisms, because volunteers, in this case, share the same status as lawyers and probation services. However, the fact that a volunteer is in a small room with a convict, was initially not an comforting thought to all of the informants:

11_{‘Ambtelijk’ roughly translates to ‘official’ visits, which are privileged visits for lawyers, probation services} and non-judicial organizations (such as Stichting Vrij). Source: https://www.dji.nl/locaties/penitentiaire-inrichtingen/justitieel-complex-zaanstad/index.aspx (last visited 19/04/2019).

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24 I: “What did you like about volunteering?”

Linda: “Well… it was nice that everyone I visited was very open. And also, I thought it was surprising that I

never felt unsafe. So I have never had a moment that I was sitting there and thought: “Oh help, this is not going well”. I was a bit worried about that beforehand.”

I: “You say ‘surprising’, you thought that you would [feel unsafe]…?”

Linda: “Yes. Because the two of you are in a room without supervision. And yes, there is an emergency button in

that room, but yeah… it may be that he suddenly decides to grab you by the throat, and then you can press that button – if you can reach it, but people have to run to you also… And I have heard quite a few stories like that when I was doing an internship, that something like that can happen, quite often. So I thought “let’s see”.”

Here, Linda addressed something that is at the very core of this of volunteering work: to be alone in a room with a convicted person. I experienced the fragility of this situation also, be it in a totally different way, illustrated by the following short vignette of my first visit in prison, at Judicial Complex Zaanstad:

We did have an ‘okay’ conversation, I would say, keeping in mind that this was the first conversation with him, and the first conversation with a convict in prison I had ever had. I pressed the intercom button that said ‘detainee’, assuming that I would be able to chat to a staff member to explain that we were finished talking and that someone could come to open the door for us (separately, of course). When I did that, the detainee was visibly shocked, as he jumped out of his chair and stood as close as he possible could to the prisoners’ door of the room. I asked him calmly what on earth he was doing, I, again, was shocked by his reaction. Did I do something wrong? “Do you know what kind of button you pushed?” He asked me. “Yes”, I told him. I had already rationalized that the red button probably was for emergencies, and that the two intercoms (one for the visitor and one for the detainee) were for regular communication. Luckily, I was right, because a voice came through the intercom: “Yes?” “We are finished”, I said. “Okay, someone will come your way”, was the answer, and that was it. Still, the convict kept close to the door. He seemed to want to prove that he did not do anything wrong. To be honest, I did not really understand the issue, until he shortly explained that he would get into a lot of trouble had I pressed the ‘wrong’ (emergency) button. At that moment, I realized the power relations that were at stake. For me, it would not be an issue if I accidently pressed the wrong button, but the convict was most likely the one to suffer from my possibly inconsiderate action. He is actually 1-0 behind in advance. At least, in his beliefs he was.

The prisoner-visitor setting is a hierarchical and fragile one. It seems that the prisoner is most of the times looked at with distrust and attention, because they have done something wrong in the past and they might do something bad again. On the contrary, the visitor, the volunteer, is a ‘free’

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25 person from the outside world, who chooses to come here in his or her free time, for free. These power relations are essential in this specific kind of volunteering work. Thereby, it is central in this volunteering work that volunteers from ‘outside’ bring something from the ‘outside’ to the ‘inside’, especially in terms of later social reintegration of the prisoners into society. The

philosophy of Stichting Vrij is that when prisoners come into contact with some aspects of the ‘outside’ world by the volunteers that visit them, they will face less difficulties later on in the transition to ‘free’ citizenship. At first, I thought that this was just a wonderful ideology of the organization, until I found out that the prisoner I visited was indeed longing for contact with the ‘outside’ world: he asked me what it was like outside, what kind of trends were going on, and what the hype about social media was. By this, I found out that contact with the ‘outside’ world

was important to the prisoner, apart from a lot of other things. Surprisingly, this contact was also

exactly what the volunteers thought of as ‘most beautiful’ in their volunteering work.

Social contact

All of the informants were asked what they thought was the most beautiful in doing this

volunteering work for Stichting Vrij. Almost all of them said that the contact with the prisoners was the most important during their work, and what made it the most beautiful. Still, ‘contact’ is a rather abstract concept. I asked Lizette, who has been a volunteer for seven years, about this:

I: “And what exactly is it within the contact? Because yeah, you can have a conversation with everyone, but there is

something more behind this, I think.”

Lizette: “Well, there is a huge desire for contact. A man like that, usually a man, sometimes a woman, he is just

there, sometimes he has no visitors at all. So yeah… that great desire – you can feel that. The fact that you are there… in a good place. It is not like ‘I have to go there again’… It becomes a real exchange. (…) Not everyone is as grateful, but at least the exchange is present. And the interaction. Of course, because I am older, I am

sometimes seen as a mother figure. You [interviewer] are young, so you are seen in a different way, which makes the interaction of course also very different.”

Lizette addressed three important things here. The first one is that there appears to be a certain longing for contact, which was already suggested by theory, describing it as a ‘human-to-human encounter’ (Kort-Butler & Malone 2015; Schuhmann, Kuis & Goossensen 2018). Prisoners are to a certain extent excluded from society, and sometimes also from their family or friends because of what they have done. This is where volunteers come in, which brings us to the second point: the volunteers of Stichting Vrij often feel that they are in the ‘right’ place by giving the prisoner

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26 attention or offering ‘a listening ear’, thereby meeting the need for contact of the prisoner. They feel like they can mean something to the other, even by just being there: “Some people do not want to

talk, and that is also fine”, Caroline said. Thirdly, Lizette, in this example, drew on her positionality

as being a ‘mother figure’ in this contact with the prisoner. Positionality is a very important aspect in the visiting of prisoners. Lizette talked about a more ‘positive’ position; that of a caring

mother. In contrast, Caroline explained that she went to visits with no makeup on and wearing wide clothes, because she did not want that the men she talks to find her attractive physically. There are thus both sides to this characteristic in the contact with a prisoners as a volunteer, even though the contact is commonly regarded as the most beautiful. The importance of the contact with convicts is highlighted in the fact almost all volunteers mentioned it at one point during a conversation with me, even without me asking about it. Research has been done to the impact of this contact on the prisoner, especially in terms of rehabilitation, but not much focus has been paid on how the volunteers experience this contact (Schuhmann, Kuis & Goossensen 2018; Tewksbury & Dabney 2004).

Within this contact, some volunteers, like Caroline, Lisa and Lewis, sought to motivate the prisoner to better his or her life, while other volunteers, such as Pedro and Leo were

convinced that the visit in itself was the sole purpose of the activity and that no more was needed or expected than ‘just chatting’. Contrastingly, John, for example, even went to court to support a convict. John was very committed to helping this person where he could, because he believed him to be treated unjust by the judicial system. This was also the case with Wayne, an older volunteer: “With the help of lawyers, I even helped freeing someone who was sitting there unjustified”. The intensity of the contact between the visitor and the prisoner is therefore highly personal and shows the diversity in how volunteers engage in, and give meaning to, their volunteering work. It shows the ways in which the volunteers do ‘good’ in practice, by, for example, not only visiting the prisoners, but also by thinking with them about judicial stuff and or motivating them. What makes the contact so special, even though it may seem not that extraordinary, is probably what Lewis described:

Lewis: “(…) And what I liked is that he allows himself the freedom to tell things to me, because yeah… you do

tell something about yourself. And I think that is beautiful, that personal contact. I like that.

I: “And yeah, what exactly about that contact [do you like]?”

Lewis: “Well… that it is as real as possible, without making it more beautiful than it is, just direct – direct

contact, without one of the two having the idea that something has to be realized or something.”

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27 Lewis: “Yeah, without expectations, without judgement. Look, of course we all have prejudices, but we have to try

to throw them away. You know, grant yourself and the other person freedom within what you are doing.”

In the contact, the exchange and the interaction between the two parties are of key importance. The prisoner not only has someone to talk to, but can feel more ‘free’ as well, because most of the contact they have is with professionals with whom they do not always discuss personal issues (Kort-Butler & Malone 2015). A volunteer thus also functions as a confidant. The visitor12_{, in} turn, feels that he or she is in the right place by being there for another person, be it ‘just

listening’ or actively engaging in a conversation. The volunteers are aware of the fact that a lot of people in society can be very negative about prison(er)s, and they want to show the convict that there are also people – like them – that try to look ‘further’. Still, the volunteers too run into difficult situations engaging in this kind of volunteering work. How do they deal with that? How do they give meaning to those experiences, next to the more positive ones?

Encountering challenges: “The guards were scared”

On a cold and winterly Wednesday evening, I was at Caroline’s place. Inside, it was cosy, warm and we were drinking tea and talking about her volunteering experiences. Caroline has a long history of volunteering work. Before coming to Stichting Vrij, she volunteered for a similar organization in Utrecht. When the foundation had to close, she was looking for a new club to join. For Stichting Vrij, it did not matter that she wanted to visit people in Nieuwegein (close to Utrecht), because the organization also receives visit requests for over there. Caroline told me her volunteering experiences in a very vivid way, and it was easy to imagine what it would have been like. Caroline explained to me that she never passed on something that was told to her in trust, except for one time:

“He was a psychiatric person, and he wanted to take the whole institution hostage. “I am Hitler”, he said, and he came in his underwear. The guards were scared, they did not say “go back and get dressed”. I was like ‘of course this has to happen to me’. I have encountered very special people, but this was the most outstanding one. He said: “I have plans”: he would tie everyone to the table and do all kinds of things with them. I thought: ‘Yeah, this can be banter, but when I look at his eyes, and when I look at his posture…’, I thought that he was not in the right place there. So I told the staff there, that he should go somewhere that is designed for this kind of people, and they were happy with that. But that was the only time [I passed something on]”.

This short vignette is an illustration of some bizarre situations volunteers can find themselves in. It also shows the reality of dealing with people who have been through a lot, and who sometimes

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28 suffer from (undiagnosed) psychiatric illness(es). Volunteers have to navigate themselves within this space of uncertainty and nonpredictable social behaviour. Hector also drew on the fact that the guards did not say anything in another situation he experienced. This can lead to an increased feeling of unsafety. Another time, Caroline was thought of to be a visitor for sexual pleasure. When she found out about these expectations of the prisoner, she left immediately. Of course, most prison visits go well, and such particularities do not happen often. It is possible that because Caroline, of all informants, probably has to most experience visiting prisoners as a volunteer, she is also more likely to encounter bizarre situations at one point. However, although volunteers of Stichting Vrij do have to go through a screening process, they are not specifically trained for this; they have to rely on their common sense, past experiences or life experience.

The fact that all volunteers I spoke with still engaged in their volunteering work, despite having encountered several difficulties, shows that the positives probably outweigh the negatives. The volunteers, however, emphasized the importance of clear personal boundaries. Referencing to the example of Hector earlier in this chapter, volunteers seem willing to understand

‘alternative’ behaviour, providing that (new) clear agreements are made. It has also occurred that volunteers did not want to visit a specific prisoner again, but this was often because there was no ‘click’ or connection between the volunteer and the prisoner, seldom because something

extraordinary had happened. Despite the challenges and possible difficulties, volunteers

underscored that they learned a lot from this volunteering work and that they received something in return instead of just investing their time and energy.

Enrichment: “It broadens your horizon”

Two kinds of ‘lessons’ for the volunteers can be separated: things the volunteer learns from the prisoner, for example about their past, their crimes committed, their life courses or other

experiences, and things the volunteer learns about himself, for instance changes of perceptions of prisoners. The latter ‘lesson’ is also important for the applied part of this research. The two coordinators of Stichting Vrij want to know how the volunteers see prisoners and whether this changes, because the organization aims to end the stigma or prejudices towards prisoners.

The volunteer learns from the prisoner how it is possible that someone ends up doing ‘wrong’ things and thereby ending up in prison. Although some prisoners play innocent, most prisoners seemed wanting to explain what drove them to do certain things. This does not make the volunteers agree with the crimes a prisoners had committed, but it does plead for

understanding. To this, more attention will be paid in chapter two, which emphasizes the moral aspects of this research.

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29 An interview question was whether the perception of prisoners among these volunteers had changed. For some volunteers, roughly half of the informants, this was not the case: “I have

always seen them as human beings”, was the most common answer. This answer holds the assumption

that most people do not see prisoners as human beings. Volunteers, thereby, distinguish themselves from these specific judgements. For the other half of the informants, their perceptions did change in some way. These informants emphasized the fact that they did not have a clear picture in mind of the prisoners beforehand, and that by visiting them, this picture was formed. For example by Leo, this was the case:

“I think I have built up a vision… And that I, at first, did not have one, so to say. Maybe, because right now… how do you say that, in rap songs they [criminals] are glorified, and you might think ‘oh yeah, criminals, that is tough’, but in fact, those people are not tough at all. They are just desperate at a given moment. So yes, how I look at it might have changed. (…) We even had a resident here [from STEK], he still comes by every now and then, I found him on Instagram and he had like 300.000 followers or something, and beautiful clothes and everything… But yeah, he was a former resident and now he is homeless. So yes, it can differ a lot from reality.”

Next to Leo, Wayne also emphasized his learning process in doing this volunteering work: “You

learn about all the terrible feelings that they have”. Hector stated that engaging in this work ‘broadened

his horizon’. In short, volunteers enter an – for them mostly – unknown world, and learn about ‘the other’ (the prisoner) and him- or herself. They receive a small insight of the reality of the prison institution. This learning process is also a way of meaning-making of the volunteers, next to the importance of the social contact the volunteer the prisoner can offer.

In conclusion

In terms of meaning-making processes, it could be argued that volunteers visit prisoners that are longing for contact, without expectations. The detainees, in turn, feel seen and heard, what makes the volunteers feel that they do something ‘good’. They feel like they matter, and the prisoner can have this feeling as well. Kort-Butler and Malone (2015) describe that volunteers are important for bringing the ‘outside’ ‘in’, something that Stichting Vrij also emphasizes. The volunteers try to provide the prisoner of a judgement-free conversation. However, volunteers face challenges in visiting prisoners. Sometimes, prisoners are transferred and this is not communicated well within the institution, or volunteers do not have an clear idea of who they are going to visit, which can lead to uncertainty and tension. Still, despite possible challenges, the volunteers learn from this work: as well about the prisoner as about themselves. They gain understanding for the situation

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30 the prisoner is in, and they learn about their own perceptions or judgements towards convicts. This is in line with the ideology of Stichting Vrij: they aspire to bring about a change in mentality, regarding prisoners, within society, by combatting prejudices and providing extensive information about resocialisation processes and how the volunteers of Stichting Vrij contribute to that.

Finally, the volunteers repeatedly visit prisoners, even though prison are not always easy to reach and prisoners are not always happy to talk. This is interesting in terms of morality. What makes that the volunteers keep doing this volunteering work, and how do they narrate that? What experiences contribute to their drives for doing this work? What does this say about morality and doing something ‘good’?

Volunteering in prison : an ethnographic research of volunteers at Stichting Vrij and how they give shape to notions of ‘doing good’

V

OLUNTEERING IN PRISON

Plagiarism Declaration

Acknowledgements

Abstract

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Being a volunteer for Stichting Vrij