Prisons, Punishment and the Pursuit of Security

Deborah Drake is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the Open University, UK.

"It is a research monograph that will undoubtedly make an enduring contribution to prison scholarship and which one could whole-heartedly recommend to students, anticipating that it will challenge and inspire them. Drake's great achievement is in shining light on the very 'deepest' end of the penal estate at a time when security has risen to a level of prominence that eclipses every other consideration, including what it means to be human." - British Journal of Criminology "Prisons, Punishment and the Pursuit of Security is a remarkable achievement. Confidently embracing an eclectic mix of the most exciting and influential scholarship of recent years, it is also a bold, brave and affecting empirical study [...] With this study of all five men's maximum-security prisons in England, Deborah Drake has given us a beautifully written, impressively detailed and authoritative yet immensely readable book, which will undoubtedly make an enduring contribution to prison scholarship. Prisons, Punishment and the Pursuit of Security should reassure all those who have expressed concerns about the health of prison ethnography that reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. This book already feels like a 'classic'." - Yvonne Jewkes, University of Leicester, UK "This is an important contribution to critical criminology, prison ethnography, and the senselessness associated with pursuing security without care" - LSE Review of Books "This important book draws on in-depth ethnographic research carried out at all five long-term maximum security prisons in England to problematize prison as a means for society to pursue the elusive goal of security. By giving a voice to prisoners, it represents a significant contribution to the critical criminological literature, challenging the dominant security discourse which dehumanizes offenders, treating them as risks to be managed rather than as fully human, complex people capable of reconciliation". - Punishment and Society "Drake's book presents a historically-situated, theoretically-informed, policy-relevant and empirically-grounded critical analysis of prisons in general and maximum-security prisons in particular. It makes an important and welcome contribution to a burgeoning research literature that combines to critique the corrosive and counter-productive practices of imprisonment during a period of penal excess. - Critical Social Policy

• Demythologising the Prison and its Uses The Growing Hegemony of Imprisonment Establishing Long-Term, Maximum-Security Imprisonment in England A State of Security in Maxmimum-Security Prisons Long-Term, Maximum-Security Punishment Constituting Security in the Penal and Social Realms Duplicity, Violent Crime of Criminal 'Justice' and the Problem with Punishment Making the Unthinkable Thinkable