Missing data and socio-political death: The sociological imagination beyond the crime

Abstract

This chapter takes a sociological and auto/biographical approach to describe and explain the very beginnings of a challenging research process. Yet substantively this chapter discusses and reflects upon missing data and at its core, silencing the silenced. Here missing data equates to the socio-political death of marginalised and oppressed people. That is, marginalised and oppressed people, (e.g. prisoners and their families, intellectually and physically disabled people, those on the autism spectrum, people with mental health conditions), are silenced due to researchers having limited access to them, a disabling condition, participant scepticism about 'powerful' others, personal biographical trauma and institutional practices, such as governing and punitive research excellence frameworks, restrictive ethical procedures and a disdain for creative methods. Essentially people go missing, 'communities' and groups die a slow socio-political death and institutions such as legal structures and procedures, schools and universities stay alive, albeit like machines all producing 'cheerful' robots. I propose however, via a sociological imagination, we enable 'speaking' auto/biographically, draw out creativity and utilise literature, the Arts and comedy, then perhaps we might rouse resistance and socio-political living for oppressed and marginalised people, and sociologists and criminologists committed to social justice (Mills, 1959).