In bleak and uncertain times, good stories are crucial. Good stories motivate people to meet current challenges and endure difficult conditions. They endow challenges and conditions with meaning. Victor Frankl (1984) describes ‘the human capacity to creatively turn life's negative aspects into something positive or constructive’ (p 139). Frankl's own suffering and loss during the Holocaust anchor his argument that ‘what matters is to make the best of any given situation’ (Frankl, 1984). His psychotherapeutic programme, logotherapy, was designed to help clients find meaning whatever their circumstances.

The mostly older people in prison whom Gina Benedict interviewed at the Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women made positive meaning of their circumstances. They told stories of lending support. Specifically, they described helping, now and in future, younger generations – fellow women in prison, family members outside of the prison, and hypothetical others. These stories were about care and better lives. Gina understood these stories as reflecting an impulse toward generativity, or ‘the concern in establishing and guiding the next generation’, which Erikson (1963/1950) deemed an ‘essential’ stage of human development (p 267).

This redemptive line of thinking – finding the good in the bad – could be dangerous. It could encourage going along with injustice, akin to Merton's (1938) ritualism. It might even put a positive slant on ill-treatment and suffering, both in the past and present, including that which the individual herself caused. Consequently, it could discourage resistance and accountability. It is hard to reconcile these possibilities with critical, abolitionist criminology.

Notwithstanding such cautions, however, I would insist that the good stories people who are incarcerated tell, matter for justice. First, to be able to anticipate better things from a subjugated position suggests that subjugation is not complete. Second, to be able to do good things as a designated criminal counters the characterization of ‘criminals’ as selfish and corrupt. Finally, to construct a decent identity when evidence of past indecency abounds, may yet provoke lasting personal change (O’Connor, 2000).

To concern ourselves with the good stories that people in prison tell is to centre them as actors, however much their agency is constrained.