Ashley T Rubin, The Deviant Prison: Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary and The Origins of America’s Modern Penal System, 1829–1913
| Author | Daniel LaChance |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745211034554 |
| Published date | 01 October 2022 |
| Date | 01 October 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
those who had their children with them, their behavior was affected to become less
violent, mentally and physically healthier than others also keeping them from using or
dealing drugs in order to maintain parental relationship and protect their children.
Through observation of mother-child interactions both inside and outside, Rahimipour
Anaraki reveals that the repressive power exercised in prison also affects children of
incarcerated mothers. Regulations and disciplines to structure inmate’s life in prison
were applied to children as well, including the bedtimes, mealtimes, television rules
and rules about what could be done in one’s cell. Children had no play area, they had
to stay on the unit with their mothers. Interviews with women in prison are moving, espe-
cially mothers who are on death row and had to give up their children either to their fam-
ilies or to caregivers.
The book reveals that patterns in the control of prisoners both before and after the
revolution have persistently relied on the body. Policies such as methadone maintenance
treatment and the presence of children keep the bodies and spirits of the prisoners
controllable and dependable. But usually there are no rehabilitation programs or support-
ing educational programs, or they are too poorly equipped and unsuitable to heal the
delinquent past of the prisoners or remedy the problems of poverty. Although these pris-
oners (contrary to political prisoners) are not tortured, the pain they suffer is no less
significant.
The author argues, and well demonstrates, that prison reflects society. Prisoners are
differentiated according to their wealth, power, social capital, gender, sexuality and are
not treated equally. For example, violent criminals, especially drug traffickers, are
kings of prison with their palaces inside the prison. They are respected by other prisoners
and even recruit their novice young men as petty servants. Homosexuality is stigmatized
in prison like in society, but the stigma of female homosexuality is even more acute.
Prison in Iran. A Known Unknown is a welcome and rare attempt to study ‘ordinary’
prisons and prisoners in Iran. Through her investigations, observations and interviews
Rahimipour Anaraki has successfully depicted the sufferings of prisoners, especially
women’s and children’s, as a reflection of a society in which social inequalities are para-
mount and where prison’sraison d’être is not to educate but to punish, not to integrate but
to exclude.
Azadeh Kian
Université de Paris, France
Ashley T Rubin, The Deviant Prison: Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary
and The Origins of America’s Modern Penal System, 1829–1913, Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2021; 320 pp. ISBN: 9781108484947,
$59.99 (hbk)
Scholars of punishment have long noted how central social status is to defining punish-
ment, explaining its functions, and charting how it changes over time in a given society.
752 Punishment & Society 24(4)
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