Prisoners’ Bodies

Activism, Health, and the Prisoners’ Rights Movement in Ireland, 1972–1985

Oisín Wall

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2024
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9780228023418
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: Social Sciences

In the early 1970s Irish prisons were overcrowded – there were few rehabilitation programs, medical care was limited, psychiatric care was practically nonexistent, and brutality was commonplace. The Irish prisoners unionized, igniting a movement that helped transform the penal system over the next decade and a half, and whose legacy is still visible today.

Prisoners’ Bodies is the first book on the history of the prisoner-driven movement that sought to revolutionize the prison system in Ireland between 1972 and 1985. Oisín Wall charts the rise and fall of prisoners’ organizations, their changing social networks, tactics, and splits, and the effect that they had on life inside prison, public policy, and society at large. Considering the public discourse around prisons and prisoners during this period, Wall investigates how it shaped and was shaped by the movement. Finally, the book examines the experiences of more than twenty individuals in prison, setting their activism within the context of their lives and their politics. Their stories are reconstructed through oral histories, court records, press reports, prisoners’ publications, and archival material.

Prisoners’ Bodies seeks to amplify the voices of people who have been systemically and institutionally silenced in the history of modern Irish prisons.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Series Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Content Note
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: The Prisoner’s Two Bodies
• 1 ‘Join Your Prisoners’ Union!’: A Microhistory of Daniel Redmond and the Prisoners’ Union, 1972–77
• 2 ‘A Voice for Prisoners’: The Prisoners’ Rights Organisation, 1973–76
• 3 ‘A Project against Authority’: A Microhistory of Karl Crawley’s Disruptive Autonomy
• 4 ‘The Beginning of the End’: Protest, Rioting, and Revenge, 1979–86
• 5 ‘It Is Doubtful If There Is a Single Prisoner or Ex-prisoner Here’: The PRO’s Sociological Turn, 1977–86
• 6 ‘What We Thought We Had Achieved’: Whitaker, Reform, and the Legacy of the Prisoners’ Rights Movement
• Epilogue: Communicating Bodies
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index