Why Prison?
About this book
Prison studies has experienced a period of great creativity in recent years, and this collection draws together some of the field's most exciting and innovative contemporary critical writers in order to engage directly with one of the most profound questions in penology - why prison? In addressing this question, the authors connect contemporary penological thought with an enquiry that has received the attention of some of the greatest thinkers on punishment in the past. Through critical exploration of the theories, policies and practices of imprisonment, the authors analyse why prison persists and why prisoner populations are rapidly rising in many countries. Collectively, the chapters provide not only a sophisticated diagnosis and critique of global hyper-incarceration but also suggest principles and strategies that could be adopted to radically reduce our reliance upon imprisonment.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Contributors
- Table of Cases
- Foreword
- 1. Why prison? Posing the question
- Part I. Penal discipline
- 2. Prisons and social structures in late-capitalist societies*
- 3. The prison paradox in neoliberal Britain
- 4. Crafting the neoliberal state: workfare, prisonfare and social insecurity*
- Part II. Public participation
- 5. Pleasure, punishment and the professional middle class
- 6. Penal spectatorship and the culture of punishment
- 7. Prison and the public sphere: toward a democratic theory of penal order*
- Part III. State detention
- 8. The iron cage of prison studies
- 9. The prison and national identity: citizenship, punishment and the sovereign state*
- 10. Punishing the detritus and the damned: penal and semi-penal institutions in Liverpool and the North West
- Part IV. Penal reform
- 11. Why prison? Incarceration and the Great Recession
- 12. The Politics of The Carceral State: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
- Part V. Abolitionist alternatives
- 13. Schooling the carceral state: challenging the school-to-prison pipeline
- 14. Why no prisons?
- 15. Unequalled in pain
- Bibliography
- Index