Human Rights and Incarceration: Critical Explorations E. Stanley (Ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (2018) 311pp. £89.99hb ISBN 9783319953984
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12321 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
The Howard Journal Vol58 No 2. June 2019 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12321
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 260–267
Book Reviews
Human Rights and Incarceration: Critical Explorations E. Stanley (Ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan (2018) 311pp. £89.99hb ISBN 9783319953984
The role of human rights in the context of incarceration is considered in this collection,
with contributions focusing on Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. While many lawyers
have remained enthusiastic regarding the power of rights to improve the status and
conditions of prisoners and detainees, some criminologists have been more sceptical of
their value in neo-liberal states. This ambivalence is reflected in this collection which
demonstrates both the value of rights, but also the failure of rights-based campaigns to
achieve structural change.
The treatment of adult and child refugees in immigration detention in Australia,
and the limits of human rights, are considered by Grewcock, who sees such detention
as inherently abusive and emphasises the importance of co-operation between detainees
and outside groups in challenging detention. The incarceration of adults with cognitive
disabilities in Australia is considered by Baldry, while Lynch considers alternatives to
imprisonment for serious offending by children and young persons in New Zealand.
Blagg and Anthony review the treatment of Indigenous children in the Northern Ter-
ritory of Australia and analyse imprisonment as a site of colonial subordination and
resistance. Stanley and Mihaere address the issue of the over-representation of M¯
aori in
New Zealand’s prisons and include discussion of the ritualism of human rights, whereby
states hide behind the preparation of reports for the UN and receive recommendations,
but fail to pursue them. Carlton and Russell examine anti-carceral feminist campaigns
undertaken in the 1980s to improve the conditions of women prisoners in Victoria. They
are critical of the liberal rights framework which, they argue, can entrench imprisonment
and legitimise women’s imprisonment and stress that ‘a rights compliant prison is still
a prison’ (p.200). They acknowledge that subsequent anti-carceral feminist campaigns
have had some positive effects, but argue that the problem remains for activists, how to
challenge the structural conditions which underpin women’s criminalisation and impris-
onment. Closer to home, the position of children deprived of their liberty in the UK is
considered by Haydon, while Scraton examines the breaches of human rights in pris-
ons in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement. The experience of women
in Scottish prisons is considered by Malloch, while Scott discusses the social, civil, and
physical death of prisoners in the UK. The collection ends with MacIntosh’s discussion
of Indigenous rights, poetry and incarceration.
This collection covers a range of groups and jurisdictions. However,a common theme
is the problem of relying on rights discourse to achieve meaningful reform and the
question of whether engaging in prisoners’ rights campaigns reinforces the permanence
of the prison as an institution. Several of the papers are written from an abolitionist
perspective, so the work will be of interest to those wishing to explore the potential
for abolitionist strategies while supporting humanitarian campaigns in these diverse
contexts. Even if rights-based reforms ameliorate the pains of imprisonment, they do
not address the structural conditions of marginalisation and criminalisation. As Baldry
notes: ‘addressing individual circumstances and rights one at a time and when a person is
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