Book review: The Good Prison Officer – Inside Perspectives
| Published date | 01 March 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02645505241230770 |
| Author | Michael O’Leary |
| Date | 01 March 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Book review |
Book review
The Good Prison Officer –Inside Perspectives
Edited by: Andi Brierley
Routledge 2023, pp. 158; £27.99; pbk
ISBN 9781032394404
Reviewed by: Michael O’Leary, Cork Prison, Ireland.
I came across this book on the completion of a criminology module with University
College Cork (UCC) and their Inside-Out programme. The programme involves
outside students entering places of incarceration to share a class with students
from inside the establishment. One of the programme facilitators from the UCC
Inside-Out programme gave me this book and I am so glad they did. I am currently
in a state of incarceration and I have to say The Good Prison Officer has been one of
the most profound reads of my life. It is written from such a unique perspective and its
content really resonates with anybody who has experienced one of these establish-
ments, both prison officers and the people that they are charged with looking after
on a daily basis. There were times while I was reading it where I felt that it had been
written based on what my own eyes had seen. The book contains contributions from
seven individuals who have experienced life on the inside and it is their sharing of
their lived experience of life on the inside but also of the pathway which led them
there.
The foreword for the book is a great little piece by Shadd Maruna, Professor of
Criminology and advocate for prisoners’voices. The seven contributors are Andi
Brierley, Kevin Neary, Max Dennehy, Kierra Myles, Daniel Whyte, Devon Ferns
and James Docherty. Each has written a chapter from the unique perspective of
someone who has experienced life in prison, care homes or secure units of some
sort but has gone on to change their lives for the better and are all currently involved
with the justice system in some way or other.
The book delivers its unique perspective in an unbiased fashion. There is no us
against them from any of the contributors. Instead, we see a perspective from
each of them that is balanced towards both prisoner and prison officer and it also
Book review The Journal of Communit
y
and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
2024, Vol. 71(1) 108–110
© The Author(s) 2024
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DOI: 10.1177/02645505241230770
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