This paper explores the working realities of forensic psychologists who work in prisons as it relates to the issues of time, temporality, and chronoception. Here I make the distinction between the passage and recording of change (time), the positionality that one holds in relation to time (temporality), and the experience of time/change (chronoception). The paper will focus on three particular areas of practice: First is concerned with how forensic psychologists experience time in their day-to-day working lives. The second relates to how time and temporality as sensorially rich and potentially dynamic concepts exist in the static and flattened official reports that psychologists write. Lastly, I explore the complex issues of temporality that exists in the interviews conducted by the psychologists with prisoners, where they occupy a shared present but are discussing both historical matters and issues that exist in some unknowable future.

Imprisonment is often considered a temporal punishment. Time becomes the central facet of a sentence. Those inside are ‘doing time’ whilst trying to ‘kill time’. Any number of prison studies, autobiographies, and commentaries have noted and explored this issue. However, what happens when we extend this temporal gaze upon wider aspects of the prison experience, or even to the prison itself? This panel seeks to explore differing elements of time as it relates to our institutions of incarceration. From the capture of time within narrative forms, to the dizzying and conflicting flow of time, to the continuing legacies of historical stony edifices of punishment, to the sensoria of professional practice we seek to disrupt, challenge, and expand the way we consider time and temporality in penology and the sociology of punishment.

The Victorians executed the most extensive prison-building programme in British history, and this penal legacy continues to shape the contemporary UK prison system. 32 prisons with Victorian-era accommodation remain in operation in England and Wales, comprising around one-quarter of total prison places. The principles of Victorian prison design continue to influence modern penal architecture, and these iconic institutions shape modern public perceptions of carcerality. This paper examines the underexplored issue of the continuing operation of these prisons, drawing on the ESRC research project 'The Persistence of the Victorian Prison'. We discuss the afterlives of these buildings; how they carry the traces of past inhabitation; and examine the ways in which these traces are experienced, captured, preserved, or erased by more recent occupants.

This talk is taken from a chapter of a recent publication, based on a year spent at HMP Midtown exploring the significance of the soundscape. Toop characterises sound as "the temporal sense": "What comes together through sound is emergent and passing time - a sense of duration, the field of memory, a fullness of space that lies beyond touch and out of sight, hidden from vision" (2010: xv). Duane's reflection - "one thing I am acutely aware of are 'normal' outside noises. I love to hear them. it reminds me that life goes on outside these walls" - indicates an awareness of time passing in other places, occupied by loved ones as well as other, possible selves. Time, then, is perhaps not linear for those inside, but experienced in multiplicities, sound evoking memory, imagination, hope and regret for loves and lives lost. This temporal dissonance is instructive for what it suggests about how sound can inform our accounts of prison life, prompting us to consider what the implications are, of foregrounding sound for how we understand the experience of prison time.