BRIT. J. CRIMINOL.

  (2013) 53, 705–717

Book ReviewS

The Arts of Imprisonment: Control, Resistance and Empowerment. By Leonidas

k. Cheliotis, ed. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012, 322pp. £65.00 hb)

There has been a growing emphasis on aesthetics within criminology (e.g. Young 2005;
Millie 2008; Carrabine 2012). The Arts of Imprisonment: Control, Resistance and Empowerment
adds to this ‘aesthetic criminology’ by drawing our attention to relationships between
the arts and prison, including ‘the visual, design, performing, media, musical and lit-
erary genres ... [as] an alternative lens through which to understand state-sanctioned
punishment and its place in public consciousness’ (p. 1). Themes covered include pris-
oner arts as resistance, prisoner literature and prisons in literature, prison architecture
and prison music (from singing in nineteenth-century Greek prisons to Hip Hop). The
book contains 17 chapters from 20 authors.
Cheliotis’s introductory chapter is primarily a criticism of arts-in-prison programmes.
By drawing on Bourdieu (1984), Cheliotis claims that arts-in-prison programmes risk
judging prisoners’ artistic work as inferior. However, prisoner art is seen as ‘a “good
story” that appeals to the middle-class segment of the population. It is the middle
classes, after all, who systematically consecrate the love of art’ (p. 12).
Yvonne Jewkes provides a thought-provoking consideration of the meaning of prison
architecture. Jewkes quotes a prison architect instructed to incorporate ‘bleakness’ into
his plans which she describes as the designing out of aesthetics. It could also be seen as
the designing in of a particularly brutal aesthetic, one that numbs the senses or, worse,
moves ‘beyond the disenchanting into the confrontational’ (p.  30). Jewkes describes
this as a ‘coercive use of architecture to instil total psychic and bodily control over
prisoners’ (p. 31). It is prison architecture as anaesthetic. According to Tuan (1993: 1),
anaesthetic describes a ‘lack of feeling’ or ‘the condition of living death’—a descrip-
tion that would be pertinent for many prisons. Jewkes explores what she calls penal
aesthetics and anaesthetics, the symbolic qualities of prisons from the ‘vast, vaulted,
chillingly austere exterior architecture’ to the ‘darkness of the coffin-like cells’ within
(p. 34). Others have written on this before; however, Jewkes goes further by consider-
ing how prison design can be rethought and examples of more enlightened design are
provided.
There follow four chapters on prison in literature and the visual arts. According
to Eamonn Carrabine, ‘for the vast majority, state punishment is only made visi-
ble through mediated representations’ (p.  47). Carrabine traces the influence of
the eighteenth-century prison in Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Fielding’s Tom Jones and
Hogarth’s A Rakes Progress. In A Rakes Progress, our attention is drawn to Bedlam and
‘the presence of well-dressed ladies enjoying the spectacle’, probably having paid to
be there. Carrabine asks ‘why they find the abject misery entertaining. An uncom-
fortable question posed to all of us who watch images of suffering’ (p. 54). Carrabine
stays with the eighteenth century by considering the work of Bentham, Beccaria and
Howard. We are taken through to the nineteenth century via the realism of Dickens

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 Book ReviewS

and Goya and the impressionism of van Gogh, most famously in his The Round
of Prisoners (a painting later used for the Penguin edition of Foucault’s Discipline
and Punish (1977)). Carrabine’s historical tour continues via Kafka through to The
Shawshank Redemption. Vincenzo Ruggiero starts his contribution provocatively by
stating: ‘Prisons are scandalous, but they make people dream’ (p.  73). Chekhov’s
famous assertion is reiterated, that the ‘history of society … is the history of how
we incarcerate our fellow creatures’; but Ruggiero claims that ‘the prison cell is also
the space of dream and poetry, of meditation and religious fervour’ (p.  73). His
focus is French literature in the works of Victor Hugo and Octave Mirbeau, both
‘unambiguously critical of prison institutions’ (p. 77). For Hugo, prison is ‘humanity
in pain’ (p. 77). In line with Durkheim, for Mirbeau, prisons are not for offenders,
‘but are means for boosting the common moral order, the conscience collective’ (p. 84,
emphasis in original). Ruggiero’s claim is that such fiction ‘can provide the imagina-
tion that many scholars, in criminology, find sadly wanting’ (p. 85). That said—and
in line with Bourdieu—much of the literature and visual art thus far examined are
those favoured by self-appointed arbiters of taste: the middle classes—which made
me wonder, what of more popular contemporary literature and visual media? True,
Dickens, Dafoe and Hugo have some popular appeal, but less so perhaps Kafka,
Goya and Mirbeau? Chapter 4 by Thomas Fahy continues the book’s literary focus
by considering Tennessee Williams’s Not about Nightingales, a play written in 1938
about a hunger strike and prison revolt, but unperformed until 1998. In Chapter 5,
Michelle Brown looks at the art of documentary films on prison. The main focus
is Frederick Wiseman’s (1967) Titicut Follies, a film of the degrading treatment of
patients/inmates at the Bridgewater State Hospital: ‘Across scenes, during classifica-
tion and daily hygiene procedures, the film unblinkingly depicts the movement of
naked bodies through the cold institutional wings and cells of Bridgewater’ (p. 105).
Brown compares this to contemporary prison documentaries such as HBO’s Ghosts
of Abu Ghraid. Difficulties of representation are highlighted, although Brown con-
cludes ‘it is crucial to push the parameters ... to allow no space for comfortable view-
ing when regarding pain’ (p. 115).
Moving briefly away from literature and the visual arts, André Douglas Pond
Cummings provides a very short chapter on the relationship between Hip Hop and
criminal justice. I  am not sure the chapter says much that is new, but it is interest-
ing nonetheless. The contribution from W. B. Carnochan takes us to the work Egon
Schiele, an Austrian artist who was imprisoned for 24 days in the early twentieth cen-
tury for ‘public immorality … stemming from his drawings of children in the nude’
(p. 135). His prison watercolours are described as an ‘interchange between the fact of
confinement … and the memory of freedom’ (p. 137)—the memory of freedom sug-
gested by using the same colour orange as he had done in his nudes. Reconciliation is
suggested by ‘For art and my loved ones I will gladly endure to the end’. For Carnochan, ‘If
the metaphorical force of confinement lies behind our engagement with the prison, so
does a belief in narratives of redemption and self-reconciliation, such as Schiele’s draw-
ings appear to represent’ (p. 146).
Stathis Gauntlett’s focus is nineteenth- and twentieth-century Greek prisons, bou-
zouki manufacture and Rebetika songs. According to Gauntlett, ‘At various times in the
twentieth century, singing was officially prohibited in Greek prisons’, but ‘regulation

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was mainly observed in the breach’ (p. 150). For Gauntlett, art in prison is more often
protest or ‘appeals to a mother-figure’ (p. 158), rather than self-reconciliation.
The following three chapters focus on prison writing. Robert Johnson’s focus is pris-
oner poetry, whether prisoners are confined because of their writing or discover poetry
whilst in prison. For Johnson, ‘Writing, like art in general, offers prisoners a kind of
freedom’ (p. 186). Mike Nellis considers prisoner autobiography, from Oscar Wilde’s
(1898) The Ballad of Reading Gael through to the contemporary market for ‘true crime’.
These memoirs ‘are mostly an aggressive and exuberant literature of no regrets, uncon-
cerned with inward psychological transformation. Image is all’ (p. 200). Such literature
would not fit with Bourdieu’s idea of ‘highbrow’ taste. Yet, Nellis asserts that ‘prisoners
do still write for therapeutic, redemptive, and reformist reasons’ (p.  204)—the kind
of ‘“good story” that appeals to the middle-class’ (p. 12). In her chapter, Sarah Colvin
more specifically looks at the writings of Red Army Faction prisoners in 1970s West
Germany, focusing on issues of solitude and group identity.
Chapters 13–17 consider arts-in-prison programmes. In Chapter 13, Rachel Marie-
Crane Williams notes the frustrations and rewards of teaching art in prison, while,
in Chapter  14, David Gussak, an art therapist, looks at the place of art therapy with
its focus on process and ‘arts-in-corrections’ more interested in the finished product.
In their contribution, Alexandra Cox and Loraine Gelsthorpe draw on an evaluation
of a Music in Prisons programme. The authors recall Jack Straw’s 2009 statement that
prisons are ‘not for fun’ (p. 257). Yet, Cox and Gelsthorpe argue ‘the importance of
these creative schemes can be found in their observable impact on individuals’ ability
to thrive, to relate to others, and on their sense of self-respect or dignity’ (pp. 257–8).
The problem for evaluators is that ‘this benefit is not always quantifiable’ (p. 258). Léon
Digard and Alison Liebling also focus on music in prison, this time on an evaluation
of a project utilizing Indonesian Gamelan music. Participation was seen to contribute
to self-reflection, empowerment, communication and group self-regulation—the ‘moti-
vation for the development of a respectful and focused group environment’ (p. 284).
Furthermore, participants were required ‘to take small steps towards making them-
selves vulnerable in front of the group’ (p. 286). The final contribution is a short com-
ment on theatre in prison by Aylwyn Walsh.
What is apparent throughout the book is that relationships between the arts and
imprisonment are extremely varied. The book is an interesting read and benefits
from having contributions from a range of disciplines. Yet, the breadth of topics cov-
ered means the volume could have been split into two or even three books. A little
reordering of chapters and a greater editorial steer would have made for a more
satisfactory read. Furthermore, like many edited collections, the contributions are
of varying quality. However, there is more than enough to make this a worthwhile
purchase for those interested in the intersection between arts and prison or between
aesthetics and criminology; but, at £65—like so much academic literature only avail-
able in hardback—it is prohibitively expensive. This is a shame, as there is a lot that
is good in this book.
Andrew Millie
Department of Law and Criminology, Edge Hill University doi: 10.1093/bjc/azt020
Andrew.millie@edgehill.ac.uk
Advance Access publication 22 April 2013

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References
Bourdieu, P. (1984), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, translated by R.
Nee. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Carrabine, E. (2012), ‘Just Images: Aesthetics, Ethics and Visual Criminology’, British
Journal of Criminology, 52: 463–89.
Foucault, M. (1977), Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin.
Millie, A. (2008), ‘Anti-Social Behaviour, Behavioural Expectations and an Urban
Aesthetic’, British Journal of Criminology, 48: 379–94.
Tuan, Y.-F. (1993), Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature, and Culture. Washington,
DC: Island Press.
Young, A. (2005), Judging the Image: Art, Value, Law. London: Routledge.

Doing Harder Time? The Experiences of an Ageing Male Prison Population in

England and Wales. By Natalie Mann (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012, 141pp. £50.00)

As Natalie Mann explains in the opening pages of Doing Harder Time?, the prison popu-
lation in England and Wales is getting greyer. In recent years, there has been a ‘slow but
very steady’ rise in the number of older men entering prison (p. 1), while sentence infla-
tion, especially for certain kinds of offences, means that we are likely to see a greater
proportion of prisoners reach the later stages of their lives. Based on interviews with 40
male prisoners aged 55 or over, and ten prison officers, in three relatively low-security
establishments in the England and Wales prison system, Mann seeks to describe and the-
orize their experiences in what is an accessible and well-structured empirical account.
Much of the book supports a prevailing view that ageing prisoners present unique
problems to those who manage them, particularly with regard to their healthcare
needs and the difficulties that they face adapting to regimes designed for men who
are younger, fitter and altogether more boisterous. Mann succeeds in evoking the par-
ticular frustrations that ageing prisoners experience as a result of the noise and physi-
cal design of the prison environment, the nature of education and training provision,
and the sheer difficulties of accessing appropriate and humane medical attention. As
she demonstrates within each chapter, older prisoners are both distinct from their
younger peers, and are by no means homogenous as a group, so that the tendency for
the Prison Service to treat prisoners according to a unitary formula is bound to fail
almost all older prisoners to some degree, and some to a great degree. The heterogene-
ity of Mann’s interview group is expressed partly through her devotion of a dedicated
chapter to child sex offenders, who she found to be less timid and more confident than
she expected. Bonded by their stigma, and a feeling that ‘the whole world is against us’
(p. 78), these prisoners—held together in vulnerable prisoners’ units—formed a strong
sense of community and camaraderie, while inverting the normal terms of the prisoner
hierarchy by regarding themselves as less morally reprehensible than the drug dealers
and armed robbers who despise them.
In a number of respects, Mann’s findings echo those of Crawley and Sparks (2005;
2006), and she is generous in recognizing the analytic value of their concepts of ‘insti-
tutional thoughtlessness’ and the ‘hidden injuries’ of age. Mann also draws on, and
adapts, their observation that ageing prisoners draw on negative life experiences in
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