PRISON JUSTICE SYSTEM NOTES - Are prisons an effective way of ‘doing’ justice and punishment? Court magistrates’ documents could provide insight into court officials’ aims in sending criminals to prisons. This could include reform or marginalising criminals from the public. Prisoners’ rec...
Section 1- A description of the project area or question, including a statement about your reasons
for selecting this topic and a description of your initial thoughts about a specific focus, problem,
angle or issue that you will explore (about 1,000 words).
A description of the major primary sources and forms of evidence you will use in the research
(archival records, published collections of texts, interviews, oral testimonies, and so on), focusing
on questions, possibilities and problems raised by these particular sources and on the approaches
you will take—and other historians have taken—to reading, interpreting and analysing them
(about 1,000 words).
A summary of the key arguments and issues emerging from two of the major works of historical
scholarship included in your planned bibliography and how these demonstrate the potential
contributions of your research project (about 1,000 words).
Are prisons an effective way of ‘doing’ justice and punishment? Court magistrates’ documents could
provide insight into court officials’ aims in sending criminals to prisons. This could include reform or
marginalising criminals from the public. Prisoners’ records from prison riots give prisoners voice,
providing us with insight into prison conditions and activities. During the 1970’s and 1980’s, public
critique against prisons based upon humanitarian grounds almost brought a closure to prisons as a
form of punishment. Instead, prisons became bigger and privatised. Why did this movement not gain
enough momentum and argument to see this through? Newspaper articles track this rise and fall.
Prisons in Britain target 18 to 25year-old African-American males. This, coupled with magistrate and
prisoners’ records, could highlight what crimes and which groups are targeted by prisons and courts.
In choosing this topic, I hope to give voice to those targeted unfairly by prisons and to focus a sharp
lens upon the humanitarian crisis in prisons. Also, I hope to suggest how historians could better
enact change during future opportunities like those of the 1970’s and 1980’s. class issue-
imprisonment targets certain crimes of lower classes, another elite system for dealing w other
classes w diff punishment. Social injustice
Prisons records- writing. Problem- access to personal papers less than 100yo. Debate in 20th about
prisons- voices of prisoners and ex prisoners- writing polemics, memoirs, diaries. and prison reform
societies. Prolyl wouldn’t have access to ppls lives beyond what they share in memoirs diaries. Issue
to address- prion reform, effectiveness. Dimension- crisis in prisons 70s and 80s when theres a
discovery prisons don’t work. Usa prison riots. Riots in uk older prisons eg Britain. Issue partly about
rehabilitation, partly about race- changing composition of prison popu. Inc in blacks. Who they
target. Criminalisation and spread of drug use. Crimalising far wider group whereas other crimes get
other punishment. Drug use explodes for crimalisation. Late 60s thru late 80s debate ab future of
prisons and what the solution. Ends with prisons growing and reaffirmation of prisons. No one
defends them so they keep growing. Could look at the options that were being analysed. Could look
at usa but large comparison. Europe also qstning prisons eg scandanavia, Germany. Restorative
justice movement- 90s- juvenile offenders moving from prisons and diff kind of justice eg
redemption. Experience of injustice- some attempts by ex prisoners to write about prisons. Angela
davies- should be closed. Guilford 4 and Birmingham 6 – unjust incarceration. Prisoners voices there.
Extent to how much they get listened to. Whatre they saying compared to what the
reformed/informed/public ppl say. Why do we end up with a strengthening of prisons?? Interesting
puzzle. Weve had throughout history a number of these episodes for a decade or two of signifant
debate about whether prisons are effective in managing crime, let alone ending it. On this occasion,
, we ended up w a larger, arguably more violent, less effective prison system as the outcome of the
debate. How did that happen? Why didn’t that debate lead to srs alternatives to prisons. In the
dissertation, can say what was being proposed. What was being proposed for youth offenders, the
idea of restorative justice, diff justices for women, how do u ustand the criminalisation of women as
diff from men etc. whole series of debates open up- soft prisons, home detention. But same time-
more horrible max security prisons. Outcome debate- complete failure. Some changes around the
edges eg could say juvenile offenders prisons better now. Than 70s 80s, less brutal but effective?
Court magistrates- who do they think theyre doing justice to? Still see removal as doing justice to the
community. Why do magistrates who are close enough to the problem to know that it doesn’t work
sending ppl to prison, why do they maintain their practical faith in prisons even if they prolyl
privately don’t think they work? Some shows where they talk to ppl who work in local court system –
get a strong sense theres no alternative- theres nothing ppl/the state will pay for that is better than
prisons even if theyre terrible. Or theres a feeling alternatives don’t work even tho they haven’t
been tried/funded prolyl. No evidence prisons do anything to rehab or prevent ppl committing
crime. Bigger qstn- why do we still have them and seem to get more powerful in public/pol
imagination than they should be. Most ppl thrught 60s debates w view it was poss to imagine a
world wo prisons but weve ended up w more. That’s the paradox/puzzle to unpack. Why didn’t the
debate work? Was it the timing, that altntives unfeasible, etc. trace the debate in newspapers,
academic lit. who was arguing against closing prisons? Prison riots/ disaster inquiries- prisoners
given a voice.
Strangeways Prison Riot Manchester 1990
Bibliography from BBIH
Stephen wade, tyranny and the lash: prisoners and punishments in british history 1000-1950
Stephen wade, famous prisoners of wormwood scrubs (male London prison) 1900-2010
Ian o’donnell, prisoners, solitude and time, covers 1750-2000
Contents:- 1. Historical Perspectives ; 2. Reconsidering the Effects of Silence and Separation ; 3. The (Certain)
Pains and (Uncertain) Pleasures of Solitude ; 4. Pathological Loneliness ; 5. The Apotheosis of Solitary
Confinement ; 6. Making the SHU Fit (for Purpose) ; 7. Lockdown, Infamy, and Inhuman Relations ; 8. Time
Passes, Inescapably ; 9. Critical Fractions: Life Lived and Life Left ; 10. Taming Time and Reframing Isolation ;
11. Withstanding Time's Abrasion
Julie gottlied, jonathan vance (ed) encyclopedia of prisoners of war and internment (holloway
prison- for women and young offenders) 1900-2000
Florence tamagne, building up broken lives: reshaping femininity and the rehabilitation of offenders
in britain’s first non-security prison for women 1946-54
Nigel g fielding and jane l fielding, resistance and adaptation to criminal identity: using secondary
analysis to evaluate crime and deviance, covers 1960-1972. Durham prison- highest suicide rates for
English prisons
Edward marston, prison: five hundred years of life behind bars, covers 1500-2000
Stephen shaw, fifty year stretch: prisons and imprisonment 1980-2030
Howard D.L., The English prisons: their past and their future, covers 1550-1960
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