Penology & punishment

Founded in cultural, textual, and ethnographic analysis, this distinctive and engaging book proposes an imaginative criminology, focusing on how spaces of transgression, control or confinement are lived, portrayed and imagined.

Prison suicides reached a record high in 2016 in England and Wales. Provides the first detailed case study of the investigations that follow prison suicides with findings relevant at a global level.

This insightful book identifies the risks posed by prison lockdowns to minority ethnic prisoners, foreign national prisoners and prisoners from Traveller and Roma communities who are disproportionately represented in prisons across the UK and the Republic of Ireland.

Focusing on one of the most interesting developments in UK prisons over the past 10 years, this book examines the early history of the Prison Radio Association and the formation of the first national radio station for prisoners. It shows how a relatively small-scale media activism came to be an intrinsic part of prison culture.

This significant study reveals how participation is supported in the courts and tribunals of England and Wales. Including reflections on changes to the justice system as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it details the socio-structural, environmental, procedural, cultural and personal factors which constrain it.

We live in a pre-crime society where technological strategies and techniques are employed to achieve hyper-securitization. Exploring theories, technologies and institutional practices, this pioneering book explains how the pre-crime society operates in the ‘ultramodern’ age and proposes new directions in crime control policy.

Based on unprecedented empirical research, this book assesses how institutional legacy and external intervention have shaped the structural conditions of corruption in the Afghan police force and state. Filling a major gap in the literature, this is an invaluable contribution to the literature and to anti-corruption policy in developing states.

The first authoritative volume to look back on the last 50 years of The Open University providing higher education to those in prison, this unique book gives voice to ex-prisoners whose lives have been transformed by the education they received, offering vivid personal testimonies, reflective vignettes and academic analysis of education in prison.

The ultimate expression of power is the ability to act beyond the confines of law. Illuminating the condition of ‘panoramic power’, this book offers new thinking on damaging structures of power and privilege – and the political activities needed to achieve intervention and change.

The soundscape of prison life is that of constant clangs, bangs and jangles. What is the significance of this cacophonous din to those who live and work with it? This book is the story of a year spent with a UK prison community, bringing its social world vividly to life through aural ethnography.

This original study of the lives of prisoners’ families adds a feminist perspective on the understanding of carceral geography. She relates the testimonies of families as they navigate new challenges, and measures the impact of imprisonment on their emotions, relationships, identities and experiences of spaces, both inside and outside prison.

This book is a unique ethnographic study of a racially exclusive Malay Muslim gang, Omega, which has its roots in Singapore’s prisons. In demonstrating that gang involvement can be an adaptive strategy for marginalized groups, this book promotes a more inclusive and restorative justice model for people with repeat convictions.