An Irish criminologist’s book on “pain, resistance and purpose” behind bars has won a major prize in the United States.
Prison Life: Pain, Resistance and Purpose by Professor Ian O’Donnell of UCD Sutherland School of Law is the 2023 winner of the Outstanding Book Award, the top literature prize given by the American Society of Criminology’s Division of International Criminology.
Published by New York University Press, it explores how people in prison organise their lives, drawing on case studies from Africa, Europe, and the US.
It offers a fresh appreciation of how order is maintained, how power is exercised, how days are spent, and how meaning is found in a variety of environments that have different approaches to the same function, i.e. incarceration.
The research is based on an unusually diverse range of sources including photographs, drawings, court cases, official reports, memoirs, and site visits.
One case study in the book is life on the wings controlled by the IRA in Northern Ireland’s H Blocks, where men who saw the actions that led to their incarceration as politically motivated moved as one, in perpetual defiance of the authorities.
Professor O’Donnell said: “The research for Prison Life took me to parts of the world I had never visited before and caused me to reflect on issues that I had not previously considered.
“It was an exciting and fulfilling project and I am thrilled that it has won the Division of International Criminology’s 2023 Outstanding Book Award.”
Professor O’Donnell will collect the award at a special luncheon in Philadelphia in November.
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