Narratives of Imprisonment and Rioting

Abstract

This chapter locates narratives of histories of prison riots in the context of debates about different perspectives on penal strategies, policies and practices. It was noted in passing in Chapter 1 that the development of a great range of alternatives to imprisonment in the criminal justice systems of Western ‘developed’ countries does not reduce the centrality of prison in those societies. Cohen observes in a review of the role of prison in society that ‘in more senses than the obvious one, the prison is the ultimate depository of changes that happen elsewhere’ (Cohen, 1977, p. 217). He attributes to Rothman’s study, ‘which has revolutionized our thinking about the history of institutions’ (Rothman, 1971), the insight ‘not so much that such institutions might — as Goffman and others suggest — share common internal features, but that their roots are to be found in common external social developments and values’ (Cohen, 1977, p. 217). Foucault dramatizes this image of the prison as a disciplining institution, by attempting to illustrate how it reappears in the hospital, the school, the asylum, the workhouse, the military academy and in industry, thus ensuring in all walks of life the docility of the individual (Foucault, 1977).

Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems — but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.

(Rushdie, 1982, p. 165)