Narrative and the construction of truth in a prison-based treatment program for sexual offenders

This article examines the conflict that ensues over the meaning of truth in a treatment program for imprisoned sexual offenders. Based on ethnographic research in a prison hospital, extensive interview and observational data are employed to demonstrate the pervasiveness of truth discourse in both treatment and everyday living on the unit. Through the application of a narrative analytic framework, it is argued that the inherent incompatibility between autobiography and disclosure — or narrative and paradigmatic modes of thought, to use Bruner s (1986, 1991) terms — explains how and why inmates struggle to accept the re-emplotment of their life stories demanded by treatment staff.