Between Support and Distrust: Interpersonal Relationships Among Inmates at the Panevėžys Prison

Abstract

This article examines interpersonal relationships among incarcerated women in Panevėžys Prison, paying particular attention to how support, intimacy, distrust, and informal power relations intertwine in the everyday social reality of the prison. The study is based on a qualitative approach: one week of ethnographic observation and informal conversations at Panevėžys Prison, complemented by 27 semi-structured interviews with imprisoned women and prison staff. The empirical analysis reveals three intersecting axes of everyday relationships. First, distrust functions not as an individual strategy but as a collective norm, best captured by the principle “the walls have ears”: personal information is continuously perceived as a potential object of exchange and pressure. Second, the distribution of informal power in Panevėžys Prison is structured not by a classical subcultural hierarchy, but by situational resources – primarily money, the capacity to manipulate, and social “backing” – through which both service exchanges and practices of rejection are negotiated. Third, the forms of support and intimacy – singular bonds of trust, romantic relationships, and the patronage of younger women by older ones – are not pure but continuously intertwined with the logic of economic exchange and informal control. The article argues that support and distrust are not opposing or mutually exclusive forms of relationship. On the contrary, they often coexist within the same bond: a close relationship can provide emotional safety while simultaneously becoming a source of dependence, control, or vulnerability. Such a structure of relationships allows Panevėžys Prison to be understood as a social space in which enforced collectivism, individualized survival strategies, and practices of economic manipulation shape a distinctive everyday reality of women’s imprisonment.