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Book Review: Book Review

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorIan Porter
Date01 November 2010
Published date01 November 2010
DOI10.1177/1748895810383808
Subject MatterArticles
/tmp/tmp-173nDI2wSSGnbB/input Book Review
Criminology & Criminal Justice
10(4) 421–422
Book Review
© The Author(s) 2010
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1748895810383808
crj.sagepub.com
Helen Codd
In the shadow of prison: Families, imprisonment and
criminal justice, Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2008; 216
pp: 13:9781843922452, £24.99
Reviewed by: Ian Porter, Cardiff University, UK
In February of this year, Pat Carlen roundly criticised elements of critical criminology in
a paper she presented at the Cardiff School of Social Sciences. Much of this branch of
criminological work was denounced as peddling a narrow form of evangelism, displac-
ing considered theory and analysis with questionable and contentious moralising. It is
timely, therefore, to consider Helen Codd’s book which outlines at length an overtly criti-
cal standpoint and also draws extensively on Carlen’s influential publications in ‘women-
wise’ penology.
The title, In the Shadow of Prison, evokes Wordsworth’s lines ‘shades of the prison
house begin to close/upon the growing boy’, and the book makes repeated use of the
metaphor of the broad shadow cast by prisons on lives outside. Codd notes that there is
much work offering a critical perspective on prisons in the UK, yet families, partners and
children who reap acute effects of imprisonment by proxy tend to be marginalised or
overlooked. The ‘little people’s voices’ are generally silent or silenced in the debate.
Codd carries off this theme well and does a commendable job of exploring family ties
during the prison sentence and in subsequent re-entry and resettlement. The book, how-
ever, focuses on more than the emotional harm of secondary pains of imprisonment and
fractured lives. Chapter 4 brings in expertise from law, critically dissecting the legal
framework in relation to rights for prisoners and their families. Chapter 6 details the
multi-agency help (or lack of) available from prison and probation services support
...

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