Gender and Punishment in Ireland

‘Beautifully written and comprehensively researched, this book is a vital addition to historical and criminological work on women, murder and punishment. Extending the literature on women who kill, Black goes beyond a focus on gender representation alone to examine the complex dynamics that influenced conviction, sentencing and punishment of women accused of murder in Ireland in the decades after independence. Distinct from existing research on women accused of murder, she traces their experiences of punishment, including what happened to women reprieved from the death penalty. A particularly fascinating aspect of Gender and punishment in Ireland is Black's analysis of the use of religious detention in Ireland's “shadow system of penalty” as a disposal, which further develops feminist penology on gender and mixed economies of punishment. As such, this book is highly recommended for its combination of rigorous empirical research and fresh conceptual insight.’
Professor Lizzie Seal, University of Sussex

'Black has provided an extensive and close reading of court records, including trial record books, case files, the state books for the Central Criminal Court, relevant files from the Department of the Taoiseach and newspaper accounts of trials. The book is a major intervention into studies of crime and criminality in post-Independence Ireland and forms the basis for comparative work with other countries. It is informative, well structured, well written and conceptually sophisticated.'
Maria Luddy, University of Warwick, Women's History Review

This book contributes to an international literature on histories and practices of capital punishment. It also adds to a growing literature presenting the history of Irish criminal justice as a distinct object of study. And Black’s book makes a significant contribution here. One of the questions Black sets out in the introduction is whether the theoretical literature on state responses to women who kill can be universalized. While this book’s argument fundamentally requires Irish women’s experiences to be taken on their own terms, in setting out exactly
how these experiences were unique, it also makes major contributions to the relevant literature well beyond Ireland.'
Kay Crosby, Newcastle University, The Journal of Legal History