Book review: Sensory Penalities: Exploring the Senses in Spaces of Punishment and Social Control
| Published date | 01 July 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/17488958221134336 |
| Date | 01 July 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
514 Criminology & Criminal Justice 23(3)
Herrity K, Schmidt B and Warr J (eds), Sensory Penalities: Exploring the Senses in Spaces of
Punishment and Social Control. Emerald Publishing: London, 2021; 244 pp.: 9781839097270,
£70.00 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Jo Phoenix, University of Reading, UK
DOI: 10.1177/17488958221134336
Sensory Penalities is an interesting, intellectually enriching but troubling read. With
more than 14 chapters, it is not possible to present all the arguments of each chapter and
so this review focuses its attention on its main aim – to develop a sensory penality.
The range of topics covered is almost overwhelming. Several focus on prison,
understandably given the fact that many of the contributors are known for their work
in prison studies. The specific topics range from the soundscapes within prison to sen-
sory overload and underload, prison reform, aesthetics, and the sense of being trapped.
There is no one single country – the contributors discuss prisons from all over the
world and from some unexpected places such as Southern Ethiopia, Dominican
Republic, Tunisia and Nicaragua. I learned a lot about the similarities and differences
between prisons in fundamentally different regimes from these chapters. Other chap-
ters provide interesting reflections about other ‘spaces’ of criminal justice: probation
and music, bail hostels and Swedish court rooms. This is all by way of suggesting that
one pleasing aspect of the book is precisely the sheer range of topics covered. This is
a book unlike many others. It is not presenting a new topic: it is presenting a new sub-
field of criminology with an attendant new methodology for investigation. To put it
bluntly, sensory penalities is not a topic. What is being proposed here is something a
researcher ‘does’.
Across all these carceral worlds (i.e. locations of punishment in terms of geographic
location, prison or community sanctions and the depth and richness of social experi-
ence), the reader is introduced to the methodology of sensory penalities and specifically
how each of the authors understood what it is that they were doing when they were
exploring sensory penality. Herrity makes a fabulous case for a soundscape (i.e. the
actual sounds and rhythms of the prison) and then, having made that case, shows how the
concept can be deployed differently between prison and pub. Along the way, she also
shows the reader how we can ‘hear’ not just the existence of prison order but its mainte-
nance, or its disruption. Warr interrogates a short vignette that provides a breathless
rendition of being stuck in a cell during a fire (as it happens *not* in a prison). He then
works from each of the plot moments (the walls suddenly seeming oh so very real or the
dawning realisation of being alone and powerless, to the sheer fear of being trapped and
about to die) out to prisons, asking how this relates to what is already known about the
experience of incarceration. Collison Scott and McNeill’s chapter takes a different direc-
tion. They reflect on a project they undertook on probation supervision and make the
case that music (in this instance) has the potential to evoke context in a way that little else
does and to create, for the reader / listener, a sense of ‘solidarity’ with supervisees.
Of the four methodology chapters, it was Stanley’s chapter on touch in the context of
death and dying in prison that stopped me in my tracks. I returned to this chapter several
times because it seemed to sum up something tremendously important, human, authentic
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