Reviews : Race Relations in Prisons Elaine Genders and Elaine Player Clarendon Press, 1989, £22.50
| Published date | 01 September 1989 |
| Date | 01 September 1989 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/026455058903600305 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
REVIEWS
Comments, contributions and sugges-
tions to Keith Skerman, Probation
Office, 191C Askew Road, London
W12. Tel 01-746 0999
Race Relations in Prisons
apparently without fear or shame.
Thus: ’They remind me of a monkey
Elaine Genders and Elaine Player
colony’; ’They’re arrogant and I don’t
Clarendon Press, 1989, £22.50.
like their body odours’; ’Negroes are
lazy buggers, they like music and leap-
Every self-respecting pressure group ac-
ing and dancing around’; and ’Look at
tivist likes to think that he or she is
us, we fought two World Wars to
served
pre-
by a mole deep in the heart of
vent Britain from becoming a German
the Establishment. Likewise that a
colony and now we’re infested with
stream of
plain brown envelopes slides
West Indians’. Only six out of the near-
across the desk
bearing secrets from the
citadels of
ly 100 prison officers interviewed by
power.
Genders and Players did not volunteer
Of course, for the most part this
is
pejorative characterizations of Black
to delude ourselves, but just occa-
sionally it really does
prisoners: noisy, belligerent, lazy,
come
true. Thus
it
demanding, unintelligent.
was two or three years ago that I
The authors also
received
tr,ace the
a dog-earned copy of the
development of Home Office policy on
report into race relations in prison
which the Home Office had commis-
race, perhaps not sufficiently emphasis-
sioned from the Oxford Centre for
ing that on paper the Prison Depart-
ment’s
Criminological Research. I felt then -
policy is as good, if not better,
than
and I feel now
on
its publication
any in either the public or private
-
that
the
sector. It is the
report is an astonishing achieve-
implementation of that
formal
ment on
the part of the two researchers
policy which presents the pro-
concerned.
blems, especially when the attitude
Genders’ and Player’s study is bas-
towards it of over half the Depart-
ed
ment’s
on interviews, observation and
own
staff is ’wholly...
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