This project examines how prisoners’ experiences of agency, state power, and legitimacy expressed
through creative methods can contribute to critical debates about secure, effective, and trusted
democratic institutions. Drawing on Convict Criminology, it argues that prisoners’ creative expression
provides unique insights into the lived realities of incarceration. Through a series of arts-based
workshops in men’s, women’s, and youth prisons in England, participants will produce creative works
that articulate their experiences of state power and its role in carceral spaces. The analysis will identify emergent themes across these creative outputs and explore whether these understandings differ by prison context or demographic factors. By centring creativity and lived experience, this research challenges dominant knowledge-production practices in criminology and offers an alternative approach to exploring the legitimacy of imprisonment. Ultimately, the project aims to inform prison policy and practice by exploring the insights of prisoners and their reaction to incarceration, especially regarding agency, state power, and legitimacy. It further aims to inform academic debates on epistemological and methodological approaches to prison research.