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.
1. INTRODUCTION:
THEORISING VIOLENCE IN CARCERAL CONTEXTS
Jude McCulloch and Phil Scraton
Part One: Contemporary Historical Contexts
2. BEATING POLITICAL PRISONERS: THE H BLOCKS
Laurence McKeown, Coiste, Belfast
3. ENTOMBING RESISTANCE: INSTITUTIONAL POWER AND POLARISATION IN THE JIKA JIKA HIGH-SECURITY UNIT
Bree Carlton, Monash University
4. PROTESTS AND ‘RIOTS’ IN THE VIOLENT INSTITUTION
Phil Scraton
Part Two: Current Issues
5. CHILD INCARCERATION: THE POLITICS OF PUNISHMENT AND THE PRACTICE OF ABUSE
Barry Goldson, University of Liverpool
6. INCARCERATION AND STRIP SEARCHING AS SEXUAL VIOLENCE
Amanda George and Jude McCulloch
Deakin University and Monash University
7. DEGRADATION, HARM AND SURVIVAL IN A WOMAN’S PRISON
Phil Scraton and Linda Moore, Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission
8. BEYOND ‘VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN’: RETHINKING GENDER VIOLENCE AND THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.
Cassandra Shaylor
9. STATE VIOLENCE, INCARCERATION AND THE REFUGEE
Sharon Pickering , Monash University and Jude McCulloch
10. THE IMPRISONMENT AND CUSTODY DEATHS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
Chris Cunneen, University of Sydney
11. AN ECONOMY OF CRUELTY: PRISONER ACCOUNTS OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIOLENCE OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN PRISON
Diana Medlicott, University of Buckingham
12. A REIGN OF PENAL TERROR: U.S. STATECRAFT AND THE TECHNOLOGY OF PUNISHMENT AND CAPTURE
Dylan Rodríguez, Assistant Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
Biography
Phil Scraton is Professor of Criminology in the Institute of Criminology and criminal Justice, Queen’s University, Belfast. His research and publications include deaths in custody, prison protests, state authoritarianism and criminalization and children’s rights. His most recent books are Hillsborough: The Truth (Mainstream), Beyond September 11(Pluto) and Power, Conflict and Criminalisation (Routledge)
Jude McCulloch is Associate Professor in Criminology at Monash University, Australia. Her research interrogates institutionalised state violence. She has published extensively on deaths in custody, police violence, police shootings and paramilitary policing. Her recent work focuses on state crime in the 'war on terror'. She is the author of Blue Army: Paramilitary Policing in Australia (Melbourne University Press).
"A powerful and scholarly analysis of the modern penal context which locates the horrors of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Base firmly within a long western tradition of penal violence. Essential reading." - Professor Penny Green, Director, Law School Research Centre, University of Westminster
