The Violence of Incarceration

Conceived in the immediate aftermath of the humiliations and killings of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq, of the suicides and hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay and of the disappearances of detainees through extraordinary rendition, this book explores the connections between these shameful events and the inhumanity and degradation of domestic prisons within the 'allied' states, including the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK and Ireland.
The central theme is that the revelations of extreme brutality perpetrated by allied soldiers represent the inevitable end-product of domestic incarceration predicated on the use of extreme violence including lethal force. Exposing as fiction the claim to the political moral high ground made by western liberal democracies is critical because such claims animate and legitimate global actions such as the 'war on terror' and the indefinite detention of tens of thousands of people by the United States which accompanies it. The myth of moral virtue works to hide, silence, minimize and deny the brutal continuing history of violence and incarceration both within western countries and undertaken on behalf of western states beyond their national borders.

Phil Scraton is Professor of Criminology in the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, School of Law, Queen’s University, Belfast. His latest books are Power, Conflict and Criminalisation, Hillsborough: The Truth (3rd edition) and The Incarceration of Women

Jude McCulloch is Professor of Criminology in the School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Her latest book is Counter-terrorism: Community, Cohesion and Security.

1. The Violence of Incarceration: An Introduction Jude McCulloch and Phil Scraton 2. An Afternoon in September 1983 Laurence McKeown 3. Entombing Resistance: Institutional Power and Polarisation in the Jika Jika High-Security Unit Bree Carlton 4. Protests and ‘Riots’ in the Violent Institution Phil Scraton 5. Child Incarceration: Institutional Abuse, the Violent State and the Politics of Impunity Barry Goldson 6. Naked Power: Strip-Searching in Women’s Prisons Jude McCulloch and Amanda George 7. The Imprisonment of Women and Girls in the North of Ireland: A ‘Continuum of Violence’ Linda Moore and Phil Scraton 8. Neither Kind Nor Gentle: The Perils of ‘Gender Responsive Justice' Cassandra Shaylor 9. The US Military Prison: The Normalcy of Exceptional Brutality Avery F. Gordon 10. A Reign of Penal Terror: US Global Statecraft and the Technology of Punishment and Capture Dylan Rodríguez 11. Indigenous Incarceration: The Violence of Colonial Law and Justice Chris Cunneen 12. The Violence of Refugee Incarceration Jude McCulloch and Sharon Pickering 13. Preventing Torture and Casual Cruelty in Prisons through Independent Monitoring Diana Medlicott