I have been writing about imprisonment and other penal matters for several decades. Besides teaching, research, and publications, my career has involved the inspection of prisons in the US, UK, and Europe for several governments and for litigation across a range of issues. These are dark places, without a doubt, but seeing the lives that are lived within the walls by staff and prisoners alike has always captured and stimulated my interest and reinforced my belief in the enormous durability and adaptability of the human spirit. I have tried to communicate this in my writing and speaking.
I wrote
Irish Political Prisoners 1848-1922: Theatres of War
James Blake’s book takes us from jail to long-term state imprisonment. In custody for thirteen years over a two-decade period, Blake sent perceptive, frank, witty, and sometimes heartbreaking letters out to friends, chronicling his experiences and reflections.
Victor Serge was too revolutionary for Bolshevik Russia and fled to France in the early part of the twentieth century. His lightly fictionalized account of French penitentiary life will not fail to make an impression–a pitiless and largely dispassionate picture of what was intended to be one of Europe’s most relentless penal experiences.
Startlingly human and unflinchingly honest, this thinly veiled fictionalized firsthand account of talented political writer Victor Serge’s time in prison is an important addition to the canon of prison writing as well as an unfiltered view of humanity in the early 20th century. Rejecting the opportunity to present political propaganda, Serge’s portrayal of imprisonment is instead an insightful and emotionally wrought tale of repression. The depraving brutality that Serge experienced behind bars is at once a mirror of a society at war and a deeply personal question of purpose. Originally published in 1930 and translated from the French by Richard…
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of…
Bar fights are among the more banal of crimes, but when murder results the criminal law justly responds with severity.
Under the pseudonym of "Zeno" the author (Gerald La Marque) gives an account of almost a decade in English prisons as an "ordinary" lifer. There is no self-pity, instead an acknowledgement of the justness of his punishment and a custodial life lived with stoical acceptance.
It is difficult for a man or woman who has in the past dedicated themselves to a movement to offer an account which departs from or goes beyond the organization’s line: too big a slice of the heart and soul has been given away.
In his account of Irish Republican imprisonment–a great deal of it first hand–sometime hunger striker Laurence McKeown does not quite break out of the gravitational field of his politics. Continuing attachment to a cause is however sufficiently balanced by an instinctive independence to distinguish this memoir from the run of the mill party-liners.
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.
Academic books about imprisonment proliferate and some have the irritating characteristic of running before the latest intellectual breezes. This book by Norval Morris is an unquestionable stand-alone and is an honest and engaging read.
Morris was one of a small number of authors in this field who had much practical experience of penal management, who shied away from easy answers, and who always wrote engagingly and with humane values. His output was as considerable as it was distinguished.
It remains relevant and, oddly for such a topic, uplifting.
What should be done with those who come before the courts charged with a politically or conscientiously driven crime? Are they to be subject to the same degrading and stigmatizing punishment as the ordinary criminal? Such otherwise respectable offenders, for example, might include direct action (sometimes violent) campaigners for female suffrage, anti-vice journalists, overzealous imperialists, or religious dissidents.
In such ranks were to be found successive generations of Irish rebels and revolutionists. This book is their prison story as well as an exploration of the effects they had on the broader society and Anglo-Irish and American-Irish relations. It is full of politics, derring-do, atrocities, lies, truths, and characters of all hues, inspiring and depressing. The panorama is bestrewn with numerous uncomfortable reflections.
The Oracle of Spring Garden Road explores the life and singular worldview of “Crazy Eddie,” a brilliant, highly-educated homeless man who panhandles in front of a downtown bank in a coastal town.
Eddie is a local enigma. Who is he? Where did he come from? What brought him to a…
This book is set in Montauk, under looming threat from a warming climate and overdevelopment. Now outsider Clancy, a thirty-six-year-old claims adjuster scarred by his orphan childhood, has inherited an unexpected legacy: the power to decide the fate of Montauk’s last parcel of undeveloped land. Everyone in town has a…
