Shadow and Light: Online Narratives of Relationship Dissolution among Former Partners of Incarcerated Men

Abstract

Abstract Criminological research has explored the challenges that incarceration poses to romantic relationships, but less is known about partners who have abandoned efforts to sustain these relationships. In this article, I explore narratives of relationship dissolution among former partners of incarcerated (or formerly-incarcerated) men. Through inductive analyses of 603 posts across 23 threads on Virtual Support for Prisoners (VSP)—a pseudonymous online prisoner support forum—I describe how VSP members position their former partners as morally inferior men inhabiting dark spaces of despair, while framing themselves as harbingers of light into these spaces. These findings reveal how prisons (and people who are confined within them) influence—and are imagined by—those outside prison.