In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries imprisoned black women faced wrenching forms of gendered racial terror and heinous structures of economic exploitation. Subjugated as convict ...laborers and forced to serve additional time as domestic workers before they were allowed their freedom, black women faced a pitiless system of violence, terror, and debasement. Drawing upon black feminist criticism and a diverse array of archival materials, Sarah Haley uncovers imprisoned women's brutalization in local, county, and state convict labor systems, while also illuminating the prisoners' acts of resistance and sabotage, challenging ideologies of racial capitalism and patriarchy and offering alternative conceptions of social and political life.A landmark history of black women's imprisonment in the South, this book recovers stories of the captivity and punishment of black women to demonstrate how the system of incarceration was crucial to organizing the logics of gender and race, and constructing Jim Crow modernity.
Despite being one of the most avowedly secular nations in the world, Japan may have more prison chaplains per inmate than any other country, the majority of whom are Buddhist priests. In this ...groundbreaking study of prison religion in East Asia, Adam Lyons introduces a form of chaplaincy rooted in the Buddhist concept of doctrinal admonition rather than Euro-American notions of spiritual care.Based on archival research, fieldwork inside prisons, and interviews with chaplains, Karma and Punishment reveals another dimension of Buddhist modernism that developed as Japan’s religious organizations carved out a niche as defenders of society by fighting crime. Between 1868 and 2020, generations of clergy have been appointed to bring religious instruction to bear on a range of offenders, from illegal Christian heretics to Marxist political dissidents, war criminals, and death row inmates. The case of the prison chaplaincy shows that despite constitutional commitments to freedom of religion and separation of religion from state, statism remains an enduring feature of mainstream Japanese religious life in the contemporary era.
Stalin's Gulag at war Bell, Wilson T
Stalin's Gulag at war,
2018., 2018, 2018-12-21
eBook
"Stalin's Gulag at War places the Gulag within the story of the regional wartime mobilization of Western Siberia during the Second World War. Far from Moscow, Western Siberia was a key area for ...evacuated factories and for production in support of the war effort. Wilson T. Bell explores a diverse array of issues, including mass death, informal practices such as black markets, and the responses of prisoners and personnel to the war. The region's camps were never prioritized, and faced a constant struggle to mobilize for the war. Prisoners in these camps, however, engaged in such activities as sewing Red Army uniforms, manufacturing artillery shells, and constructing and working in major defense factories. The myriad responses of prisoners and personnel to the war reveal the Gulag as a complex system, but one that was closely tied to the local, regional, and national war effort, to the point where prisoners and non-prisoners frequently interacted. At non-priority camps, moreover, the area's many forced labour camps and colonies saw catastrophic death rates, often far exceeding official Gulag averages. Ultimately, prisoners played a tangible role in Soviet victory, but the cost was incredibly high, both in terms of the health and lives of the prisoners themselves, and in terms of Stalin's commitment to total, often violent, mobilization to achieve the goals of the Soviet state."--
Researchers have not yet devoted sufficient attention to the effect of prison architecture on inmate misconduct. Using data from the population of male prisoners in Texas, the authors explored the ...association between two prison architectural design types (as determined by satellite imagery) and inmate misconduct. The results from multilevel statistical analyses suggest that architectural design is associated with nonviolent misconduct but not violent misconduct. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed.
The article explored overcrowding in Ghana prisons and sought to understand its impact on the health and well-being of persons in custody and prison officers. Qualitative data from 38 participants ...who were serving terms or working in three prison facilities in Ghana revealed three themes, including (a) fear over the spread of communicable diseases, (b) limited access to basic resources, and (c) psychological and emotional burden, attributing them to overcrowding in the prisons. We discussed the findings from human rights and prison and public security perspectives and concluded that addressing overcrowding in prisons would ensure a healthy prison environment, which may have implications for the well-being and human rights of persons in custody, as well as public safety and the health of prison officers and the community. To achieve a healthy prison, policies should target prison depopulation and commitment from stakeholders to implement local and international prison rules and conventions.
Founded in 1101 by Robert d’Arbrissel, Fontevraud Abbey developed considerably in the Middle Ages and in the modern age. Converted into a central prison in 1804, the site underwent important ...transformations to adapt the premises for this new function. Following the closure of the central prison in 1963, a major program of works started which intended to restore the places to their past glory, the whole place having become a cultural site. In this dynamic of erasure, furniture and objects related to the prison were in their great majority destroyed or scattered. The progressive recognition of the importance of keeping traces of the long period of prison occupancy of the site however enabled to put in a safe place some 200 objects, often very modest but which bear important witness to the passage of hundreds of prisoners and guards within the walls of Fontevraud Abbey. The DRAC (Regional Department of Cultural Affairs) of the Pays de la Loire Region has carried out the procedure for historic monument protection, thereby granting this collection a heritage status worthy of its interest.
This article explores how prison staff in Australia view their work and how their work is viewed by others, by applying a theoretical framework of ‘dirty work’. ‘Dirty work’ is a social construction ...that refers to tasks that are ‘physically, socially or morally tainted’ (
Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999;
Hughes, 1958) and this article will apply this concept to prison staff in Australia for the first time. The discussion is based on qualitative research in seven different Australian prisons, ranging from high to low security. The article illustrates how staff responds to working in a ‘dirty’ profession by reframing, refocusing, and recalibrating their daily work tasks; how the staff uniform can be utilised as a status shield and protector from taint; and how the stigma of ‘dirtiness’ tends to foster strong occupational and workgroup cultures which in turn makes cultural change of a profession difficult. The consequences of the dirty work stigma for staff and prisoners are discussed, with a focus on informal interactions, case work and dynamic security.
Prison health, prisoner safety and imprisonment rates matter: intrinsically and for health and safety outside. Existing prison regulation apparatuses (e.g. OPCAT) are extensive and hold unrealized ...potential to shape imprisonment. However, criminologists have not yet engaged much with this potential. In this article, I reconceptualize prison regulation by exploring the work of a broad range of multisectoral regulators who operate across stakeholder groups. I illustrate that voluntary organizations and families bereaved by prison suicide act as regulators, although their substantive actions have been erased from official narratives. Mobilizing (threats of) litigation, these actors have responsibilized the state and brought qualitative changes across the prison estate.
La destruction programmée en 2018 des bâtiments historiques de la prison des Baumettes initie pour le Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (Mucem), début 2019, l’enquête ...« Graffitis et créations carcérales ». Reprenant la question de la prison et de l’enfermement, l’enquête se déploie en deux volets : d’une part, la constitution d’une documentation photographique en partenariat avec le service de l’Inventaire général du Patrimoine PACA qui prend pour objet la prison en tant que telle (ses bâtiments et son architecture, ses graffitis) et d’autre part, une collecte d’éléments affichés dans les cellules, d’objets créés ou détournés par les détenus et relatifs à leur vie quotidienne.L’enquête se matérialise par plus de deux mille photographies réalisées par le service de l’Inventaire général du Patrimoine PACA, un versement aux archives de cent quarante documents collectés dans les cellules et les coursives, quarante-deux items inscrits à l’inventaire du musée et provenant soit des cellules laissées à l’abandon au moment du transfert des détenus vers le nouveau site Baumettes 2, soit de saisies de l’administration pénitentiaire.
The planned demolition of the historic buildings of the Baumettes prison in 2018 has prompted the “musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée”, the Museum of Europe and Mediterranean civilisations (Mucem) to launch the "Graffitis et créations carcérales", "Graffiti and prison creation" investigation in early 2019. Taking up the question of prisons and confinement, the survey has two parts: on the one hand, the compilation of photographic documentation in partnership with the “Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel PACA”, PACA region’s General inventory of heritage, which takes as its subject the prison as such (its buildings and architecture, its graffiti) and, on the other, a collection of items displayed in the cells, objects created by the inmates and relating to their daily life.The survey took the form of more than two thousand photographs taken by the “Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel PACA”, PACA region’s General inventory of heritage, one hundred and forty documents collected in the cells and corridors, and forty-two items listed in the museum's inventory, either from cells left abandoned when prisoners were transferred to the new Baumettes 2 site, or from items seized by the prison administration.
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