Louise Brangan, The Politics of Punishment: A comparative study of imprisonment and political culture
| Published date | 01 October 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221112169 |
| Author | John Todd Kvam |
| Date | 01 October 2023 |
Throughout the book, the implicit question is ‘how should society respond to women
who cause the deaths of their foetuses or newborns?’Milne provides some suggestions,
for example, the removal of concealment of birth from the statute books and the decrim-
inalisation of abortion. Untouched upon in the text, yet raised in my mind, was how
should acts carried out by a pregnant woman, which result in the death of her foetus
or newborn, be punished –if at all? Such a knotty question extends beyond socio-legal
thought and is imbued with bioethical overtones pertaining to the moral status and per-
sonhood of the foetus and newborn.
In short, whilst the book’s subject area may appear niche, it is situated within a much
broader and timely discussion on women’s reproductive rights. It contributes to a socio-
logical understanding of ‘good’mother ideals and how these social norms impact real
women’s lives. Ultimately, this is a feminist text and Milne is clearly advocating for
improved social structures and better judicial understanding regarding crisis pregnancies.
However, as she concedes, a general reordering of patriarchal society is not going to
happen any time soon. Until then, Milne’s text serves to illuminate a dark corner of
society in which tragedy, sexism, vulnerability and criminalisation collide.
Gemma McKenzie
King’s College London
Louise Brangan, The Politics of Punishment: A comparative study of
imprisonment and political culture, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021:
206pp., ISBN 9780367900724 £120 (hbk)
The Politics of Punishment examines how prisons policy develops over time in specific
political and cultural contexts; and how scholars should examine and theorise such devel-
opments. The book conducts a ‘deep comparison’, in that the author takes two case coun-
tries (Ireland and Scotland) and provides a rich and detailed empirical account of how
prisons policy, instantiated in what Brangan terms imprisonment regimes, interacts
with Irish and Scottish political culture and wider events from 1970 until the late 1990s.
The book begins with a short introduction that makes a strong case for both the overall
approach and the selection of Scotland and Ireland as both penal outliers and as cases that
escape the “punitive/exceptional dichotomy”.
The second chapter sets out the author’s thinking on comparing penal cultures. The
two key pillars of Brangan’s framework are the concepts of imprisonment regimes and
political culture. The concept of imprisonment regime is intended to enable analysis of
how prison regimes compare across jurisdictions. Brangan sets out six dimensions of
imprisonment regimes, arguing that it is important to see them in terms of: (1) beginning
at the moment of imprisonment, (2) prison regimes (i.e. different types of prison), (3) cir-
culation (i.e. people move in, out and around the prison system), (4) prisoner classifica-
tion, (5) rehabilitation and reform, and (6) responses to changing prison numbers. This
Book reviews 1165
To continue reading
Request your trial