Andrew Coyle, Helen Fair, Jessica Jacobson and Roy Walmsley, Imprisonment worldwide: The current situation and an alternative future
| Author | Jeyong Jung |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865817744938 |
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Review
Andrew Coyle, Helen Fair, Jessica Jacobson and Roy Walmsley, Imprisonment worldwide: The current
situation and an alternative future. Bristol, England: Policy Press, 2016; 112 pp. ISBN 9781447331759,
£7.99 pb
Reviewed by: Jeyong Jung, Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth, England
Although the growth of incarceration over the past decades has been discussed around
the world, most research on this subject has been conducted in the US. This is mainly
because the nation’s prison population outnumbers that of other developed countries.
Coyle et al. close this gap in the literature by investigating the topic at a global level. The
authors take an ambitious approach by assessing 223 nations around the world based on
the World Prison Brief of the Institute for Criminal Policy Research. Considering the
difficulty of analysing complex international data, publishing a book of this scope is an
accomplishment as well as a valuable addition to current knowledge.
In nine chapters, divided into three sections, Imprisonment Worldwide: The Current
Situation and an Alternative Future addresses three questions:
.Section I: What is the current global trend of imprisonment?
.Section II: What is the suitable framework for prison management?
.Section III: What kind of sociopolitical approaches are essential in dealing with
incarceration-related issues?
Drawing on worldwide imprisonment statistics, Section I provides readers with a
global overview of prison populations. As suggested in the book, the total prison popu-
lation around the world increased between 2000 and 2015 by about 19.5%. The increase
corresponds to the argument made by David Garland, ‘‘It (i.e. imprisonment) ceases to
be the incarceration of individual offenders and becomes the systematic imprisonment of
whole groups of the population’’ (2001, p. 2). Notable presentations in Section I include
comparisons of prison populations not only by nation and continent but also by pris-
oners’ status (i.e. remand prisoners) and demographic characteristics (i.e. gender and
foreign prisoners). Such detailed analyses offer readers a clear picture of a global trend of
imprisonment. However, the section’s examination of the factors or reasons behind these
population changes is cursory. In the concluding part of the section, the authors do point
out some of the socioeconomic and political factors which influence prison populations,
but a more in-depth discussion would have been beneficial. Simply put, the first section is
descriptive rather than analytical.
Despite the limitation described earlier, the purpose of this work is clear. It is to
influence and change the approach taken by current institutions at a global scale. This
intention is revealed in Section II. In Chapter 6, the authors present applicable guidelines
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
2017, Vol. 2017, Vol. 51(3) 471–472
!The Author(s) 2017
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