Reconstructing a Women's Prison
The Holloway Redevelopment Project, 1968-88
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:23rd May '96
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
The rebuilding of Holloway prison announced in 1968 was intended to be of enormous significance for the treatment and therapeutic rehabilitation of female inmates. Reconstruction began in 1970 but the new prison was not completed until 1985. By this time penal ideologies had changed, and the Prison Department had revised its conception of female criminality. Thus, what was intended to be a new therapeutic prison became a place of conventional discipline and containment. These developments created serious problems within the prison and led to Holloway being identified as a public and political scandal. Using original documents and extensive interviews, the author traces the genesis and consequences of the decision to rebuild England's major prison for women, and shows how the experience at Holloway reflects shifting attitudes towards female criminals, and the relationships among penal ideology, architecture, control, and behaviour in a penal institution.
Rock's well written book thematizes human agnecy from two different equally fascinating angles ... Narrating his story from the point of view of Holloway's governors, while considering a truly impressive variety of influencing factors ... Rock is able to draw an admirably nuanced picture of the decision making of the reform project in progress ... Rock's book provides an excellent quasi-ethnographic perspective to the literature on bureaucratic decision making and the state. * Andreas Glaser, University of Chicago, American Journal of Sociology March 1999. *
'Paul Rock has produced a Gothic tale of depth and horror worthy of Horace, Walpole, Mary Shelley, even Kafka...In a by now extensive series of ethnographic studies, Paul Rock has explored in meticulous detail the processes of policy making (? evolution) of criminal jusice.' Margaret Shaw in The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 1999
Paul Rock has produced a Gothic tale of depth and horror worthy of Horace Walpole, Mary Shelly, even Kafka./Benjamin Goold/Howard Journal of Criminal Justice/1999
'In this meticulously reserached, highly readable book Paul Rock charts the 20 years that saw the reconstruction of a prison which continues to occupy a central, sometimes mythical, role in the history of English imprisonment.'
'this is a book which will be particularly useful to students of the sociology of organizations and to people who find anything and everything about prisons and their histories endlessly fascinating.'
'Paul Rock is one of the most insightful students of the criminal policy making process...As in his earlier case studies, Paul Rock has an intriguing tale to tell. Drawing mostly upon archives and interviews with key officials a complex array of events are women into a coherent narrative...it is Paul Rock's considerable credit that he has so skillfully pieced together the fascinating detail and the dynamic context of what an early participant referred to as policy making in the normal course of administrative business.'
I found this book fascinatiing, rich in detail, depressing, hopeful, and disturbing in no small measure ... his interviews with over fifty people (including former members of staff of governor grade, prison officers and officials of the Prison Department give the book a liveliness ... it is very much a 'history from within' * Loraine R Gelsthorpe British Journal of Sociology Vol. 50 No. 2 June 1999 *
ISBN: 9780198260950
Dimensions: 224mm x 145mm x 26mm
Weight: 655g
378 pages