Abstract
David Scott and Helen Codd, Controversial Issues in Prisons, Open University Press: Maidenhead, 2010; 226 pp.: 10 0335223036, £22.99 (pbk)
Controversial Issues in Prisons is a comprehensible text that takes the reader through eight specific penal controversies in England and Wales. Its accessibility lies partly in the fact that it focuses on the prisoner population rather than on the ‘system’, with each chapter containing illustrative boxed case studies which break up the text and make the volume especially student friendly. In addition, authors David Scott and Helen Codd have adopted a neat structure that gives each chapter a common framework: how have people conceptualized this penal controversy? What do the official data tell us? What is its historical context? What are the contemporary policies? Are they legitimate and, if not, what are the alternatives? The eight controversies are bookended by an initial chapter titled ‘Thinking about controversial issues in prison’, and a final chapter on ‘Abolitionism’, both of which contain unequivocal announcements of the authors’ political, ideological and intellectual leanings.
Despite the political undercurrents, the controversies are painted with fairly broad brushstrokes and essentially Scott and Codd offer overviews of their topics. Throughout most of the book, their criticisms of the toxic environments they describe are largely voiced through the work of others, notably Carlen, Sim, Goldson and Medlicott, which does not undermine their stance but does create a slight sense of distance between authors and subject matter at times. Evident through the whole volume is the inextricable link between prison and poverty and in the final chapter the narrative becomes more personal, polemical and impassioned. Here the authors speak of incarcerating children as ‘institutionalized abuse’ (p. 163) and describe a penal system ‘in crisis, riven with deep divisions, unnecessary suffering and waste of life’ (p. 163). Their partial solution is a policy of deliberate exclusion from prison of vulnerable people; a strategy of ‘selective abolitionism’ that targets women, children, prisoners with mental illnesses, foreign nationals and detained immigrants. However, they remind us that the failure of the prison service to deal adequately and humanely with these groups and others reflects society’s failings. Social exclusion tends to be repeated over entire life courses and in the wider economic, social and political context, they say, the Capitalist State has ‘blood on its hands’ (p. 106).
The visceral and emotive language adopted in the final chapter both serves as a ‘call to arms’ and underlines the difficulty that scholars and reform groups face when highlighting the problems, degradations and injustices inherent in imprisonment. The accusation can always be levied that we are simply tinkering at the edges and doing nothing to challenge fundamentally the institution of the prison itself. Indeed Scott and Codd go so far as to berate liberal penal reform organizations for being co-opted into maintaining the existing penal apparatus (p. 168) and while they could not be accused of this themselves, there is surely an unresolvable tension between writing academic books and seeking to upend the status quo.
Of course, the critical, abolitionist stance taken by the authors also precludes them from highlighting much that is positive or progressive within the penal system; for example, about successful individual prison communities, pioneering penal ‘experiments’ or about enlightened governors trying to change the system from within. It is as if to illuminate pockets of good practice, however small, would undermine their overarching message, which is that prisons are ‘places of sadness and terror, harm and injustice, secrecy and oppression’ (p. 170). I was also somewhat surprised by the fact that, given the potential scope of ‘controversial issues in prisons’, this is a relatively slim volume and the chapters are quite short. Inevitably the choice of eight controversies raises questions about selectivity and omission. Indefinite detention, chronic overcrowding, issues of privacy and surveillance, poor education provision, inadequate training, pointless, exploitative or injurious prison labour, food lacking in nutritional value, the dominance of psychology and psychologists in prisons, the unsuitability of confinement for disabled and elderly prisoners and the problems that arise from poor architecture, misguided design and intrusive technology are among the many subjects that I would deem controversial, but which are mentioned only in passing, if at all. Perhaps a second edition beckons – More Controversial Issues in Prisons?
Another minor quibble is that the pleasing symmetry promised by the chapters’ uniform structure is unsatisfyingly executed in some respects; for instance, the ‘historical context’ of some controversies is traced back to the mid-18th century, while others are contextualized no further back than the 1970s. The authors also iterate some fairly well-rehearsed arguments albeit succinctly and elegantly, and revisit many familiar cases. On the other hand, a particularly impressive feature of this book is that Scott and Codd make excellent use of numerous HM Prison Service documents, Inspectors’ reports and individual prisons’ staff manuals and prisoner guides. These sources give the book a strong practical/practitioner, as well as scholarly, flavour and add nuance to their discussions of the problems and issues arising from incarcerating people with mental illnesses, women, children and young people, prisoners from black or minority ethnic groups and foreign nationals and people who commit offences that society is particularly unforgiving towards. The authors’ access to such documentation assists them in tackling subjects that are often elided in other textbooks, including racism, suicide and vulnerable prisoners. For example, Chapter 7 on ‘The treatment of people who sexually offend’ includes excerpts from HMP Frankland’s in-house Sex Offender Treatment Programme (SOTP) staff handbook, which provide disturbing examples of offenders’ justifications for their actions and the effects of abuse on victims but also underlines the limitations of dominant psycho-medical models of rehabilitation. Another innovative and welcome feature of the book is that Scott and Codd refer to the campaigning work of numerous prison NGOs and charities throughout every chapter.
This book is, then, an elegantly written and well-researched introduction to some of the most pressing issues facing the prison service and society. Students will welcome Scott and Codd’s clear and lucid approach and Controversial Issues in Prisons will be a valuable teaching resource on undergraduate modules in prisons and penology.