In Alan Silitoes’ short story “The loneliness of the long-distance runner”, the main character Smith is sentenced to a young offender’s institution. Smith takes up running while in prison as a way of escaping his situation – both physically and emotionally. But can running also help those released from prison change their lives?
Professor Thomas Ugelvik is currently heading a project studying healthcare service delivery in Norwegian prisons and the impact prisons has on health. As part of the study, he has interviewed current and former prisoners about how taking up running has influenced their lives.
With the PRISONHEALTH project, Ugelvik has headed a team which aims to find out whether welfare state health care services reach prisoners. They also want to identify possible challenges and obstacles to healthcare service delivery in prison and how to avoid them in practice.
– We want to examine the long-term effects of prison healthcare delivery from the perspective of individual prisoners as well as that of general society, including effects on health-related outcomes such as living conditions, criminal activity and post-release mortality tells Ugelvik.
What running has to offer
– So why did you decide to look at running when studying health in relation to prisons?
– The reason is that tending to one’s health is also among the key factors and drivers for an individual to stop a life from crime, or what in the field of criminology is referred to as desistance from crime. When studying desistance, we are interested in the factors that may lead to life changes in the form of a decrease or cessation of offending. In my interviews with people who had served prison sentences, they talk about how they want to stay healthy and get into shape, increase wellbeing and happiness, better themselves and create a sense of discipline and improvement and become part of a community of runners. This is the kind of motivational factors shared by runners everywhere, which should come as no surprise really, says Ugelvik, because former offenders are regular people too, but I also wanted to look more closely at what running has to offer this group in particular.
Running long-distance to create a predictable life
Ugelvik found out that to many of the research participants, long-distance running was a way to create structure in their lives. When you get into it, running takes up a lot of your week, creating a predictable structure. Staying busy, staying healthy, filling “empty time” – to several of the participants, running seems to take the place of other, less constructive, activities. It helps them create what feels like a normal lifestyle, which they see as a big advantage. As one of the interviewees told Ugelvik:
– A predictable life, that’s one of the most important things, if you’ve lived a life with drugs and spent time in prison, getting out to something that’s predictable, that’s what running gives me, a sense of predictability.
It was also a way of building self-worth and confidence in their ability to stick to a plan and stay the distance, despite obstacles and setbacks. As one of Ugelvik’s informant’s put it:
– Sometimes when I’m hurting and want to quit a race, I just think stay strong, don’t quit now. You have done that so many times in the past, not today.
Running long-distance to deal with pain
Not only did running and preparing for races create a structure, but the interviewees used their experiences from a previous life of drug use and crime as motivation to become better runners.
– One time I ran … a six hours race I entered just three days before, and that is proof when I make up my mind, my head just decides. Yes, it was painful, I wanted to quit for like an hour and a half …then I thought OK, you have been in pain before, a lot more pain. Think about when your stepdad used to knock you around. Think about how painful that was. You can do this and then you just get into this groove, and you can just continue running.
– So in a sense, they are using their troubled pasts as a pain management technique to become better runners, and, at the same time, they are using running to become more successful desisters, says Ugelvik.
The desistance of the long-distance runner
In Silitoes short story, the prisoner decides to lose a major race as a personal and political protest against the prison administrators and their use of running as a form of rehabilitation. By refusing to win, although he could have easily done so, also becomes a way to be free, while running was just as much about escaping class background as prison.
– You have in your earlier research been pre-occupied with how prisoners try to feel free and get a sense of autonomy while being in confinement. Considering your research on long-distance running and health in prison – do you think there are some dilemmas when prison offer sport or fitness as rehabilitation?
– Well, long-distance running isn’t for everyone, and I wouldn’t want the prison to make it mandatory. I think a large part of the success in the cases we’ve seen is that the participants choose to take up running, and that it feels like their own project, a bubble of autonomy in a world where autonomy is severely restricted.