Book review: Sensory Penalties: Exploring the Senses in Spaces of Punishment and Social Control
| Published date | 01 July 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/17488958211051506 |
| Date | 01 July 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2023, Vol. 23(3) 511 –516
© The Author(s) 2022
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Book reviews
Herrity K, Schmidt BE and Warr J (eds), Sensory Penalties: Exploring the Senses in Spaces of
Punishment and Social Control, Emerald Publishing: Bingley, 2021; 244 pp.: 978183909, £66.50 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Rod Morgan, University of Bristol (Emeritus), UK
DOI: 10.1177/17488958211051506
This is one of the more difficult book reviews I have ever been asked to write. To explain
why, I have to be personal. As a researcher, inspector and expert court report advisor in
extradition cases I have spent a good part of the last half century visiting prisons, talking
to prisoners and describing prison conditions throughout the world from Australia to the
Americas, from the Far East to South Africa, from the Indian sub-continent to Scandinavia.
Never has it occurred to me to ignore what my tongue, hands, nose and ears, as well as
my eyes, were telling me. How could it? No one who, 20 years ago, visited the main cell
block in Port of Spain, Trinidad’s old colonial prison where, in intense heat and humidity,
up to a dozen prisoners were packed like standing corpses into cells measuring 8 by 10
feet and forced to post, for want of cell sanitation, their faeces through their cell flap to
fall into the central corridor, could fail to notice or forget the stench of sweat, faeces,
urine and exhausted despair. Nor, it seems to me, is it possible to ignore the distress in
the voice of a remand prisoner who has been kept in isolation for months in a well IKEA-
furnished, triple-glazed Swedish remand cell: the silence is oppressively palpable.
These sensory impressions have been shared by fellow researchers and inspectors
with whom I have worked. So my first reaction to a book suggesting that ‘penality has an
inherent sensory component’, as if this constituted a major revelation, jarred. During the
years of ‘slopping out’ and ‘triple-celling’, prison inspectors repeatedly asked their audi-
ences to imagine what it might be like going to a hotel to be told that one had to share
one’s room, with a bucket but no lavatory, 23 hours a day, possibly for months, with two
complete strangers? Was that not an appeal for understanding based on all the senses? Or,
during the years of Prison Officer Association hegemony, did anyone not understand
what the slashed officer’s uniform cap peak and the casual turning back of the jacket
lapel to reveal the National Front badge meant for black prisoners? Or not appreciate the
thoughts of accused or proven sex offenders wondering what the morning would bring
on hearing in the night the shouts of ‘nonce’ and the hammering on pipes from neigh-
bouring cells?
1051506CRJ0010.1177/17488958211051506Criminology & Criminal JusticeBook reviews
book-review2022
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