‘I sit somewhere in that sort of sweet spot’: Liminal legitimacy in criminal justice practice
April 26th, 2026
We report the English-language article “‘I sit somewhere in that sort of sweet spot’: Liminal legitimacy in criminal justice practice”, written by Andrew Brierley and published in 2026 in Punishment & Society.
Based on 16 interviews with professionals with direct experience of the penal system and individuals involved in mentoring across prison, probation, and community settings, the study examines how trust, credibility, and legitimacy are constructed in criminal justice practice through the work of so-called lived experience professionals. The author introduces the concept of “liminal legitimacy” to describe the in-between position these practitioners occupy between institutional authority and embodied experience of punishment, showing how this positioning enables them to mediate between penal institutions and supervised individuals while generating relational legitimacy within disciplinary structures.
The analysis further highlights how lived experience work is both a resource and a source of precarity: while such professionals contribute to humanising institutional relationships and supporting desistance pathways, they also face organisational tensions, stigma, and fragile status.
The full article can be accessed at the following link.