Table of Contents

Foreword: on stemming the tide Thomas Mathiesen; 1. Why prison? Posing the question David Scott; 2. Prisons and social structure in late-capitalist societies Alessandro De Giorgi; 3. The prison paradox in neoliberal Britain Emma Bell; 4. Crafting the neoliberal state: workfare, prisonfare, and social insecurity Loïc Wacquant; 5. Pleasure, punishment and the professional middle class Magnus Hörnqvist; 6. Penal spectatorship and the culture of punishment Michelle Brown; 7. Prison and the public sphere: toward a democratic theory of penal order Vanessa Barker; 8. The iron cage of prison studies Mark Brown; 9. The prison and national identity: citizenship, punishment and the sovereign state Emma Kaufman and Mary Bosworth; 10. Punishing the detritus and the damned: penal and semi-penal institutions in Liverpool Vickie Cooper and Joe Sim; 11. Why prison? Incarceration and the great recession Keally McBride; 12. Ghosts of the past, present, and future of penal reform in the United States Marie Gottschalk; 13. Schooling the carceral state: challenging the school to prison pipeline Erica Meiners; 14. Why no prisons? Julia Oparah; 15. Unequalled in pain David Scott.

Promotional Information

This book brings together some of the world's leading writers to engage with the most profound question in penology: why prison?

About the Author

David Scott is Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the School of Education and Social Science, University of Central Lancashire.

Reviews

'Finally, David Scott's edited collection Why Prison? will have the most relevance to prison practitioners and will also have the broadest appeal. It offers an impressive array of leading scholars dissecting the emergence of global hyper-incarceration and strategies for change.' Jamie Bennett, Prison Service Journal

'This collection of exceptional scholarship reflects a critical juncture in penal reform that moves the discourse beyond that of mass incarceration. The contributing authors and their research on the inefficacy of incarceration make a compelling case for penal reform. A truly innovative, thought-provoking and engaging text, Why Prison? unearths seldom-considered lines of enquiry rather than merely following the well-worn paths that have been previously pursued by penological scholars. In sum, editor Scott and colleagues have done a superb job of providing readers with a profound opportunity to participate in a creative and comprehensive conversation about one of the essential social questions of our time: 'why prison?'' H. Bennett Wilcox III, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice