Prisoners’ Bodies investigates the history of the Irish ordinary prisoners’ movement and how it was shaped by public discourse, highlighting the lived experiences of individual people in prison.
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- Montreal, CA
Table of Contents
- Prisoners’ Bodies: Activism, Health, and the Prisoners’ Rights Movement in Ireland, 1972-1985 1
- Cover 1
- Half Title Page 3
- Series Page 4
- Title Page 5
- Copyright 6
- Dedication 7
- Contents 9
- Figures 11
- Acknowledgements 13
- Content Note 17
- Abbreviations 19
- Introduction: The Prisoner’s Two Bodies 23
- Themes: Three Red Threads 24
- What Is Communication? 26
- Prison Discipline: Communicating without Words 27
- Legitimate Voices: Encoding Trustworthiness 31
- Asymmetric Communication 33
- Retrieving Voices: The Challenges of Asymmetric Communication 35
- The Literature on Irish Prison History 39
- Structure 42
- The Politics of Names 45
- Absent Bodies: A Note to the Reader 47
- Expanding the Prison System 49
- Reform 54
- Political Prisoners and The Troubles in the Republic of Ireland 60
- ‘School for Revolution:’ The Attica Prison Rebellion and Irish Public Discourse 63
- Conclusion 66
- 1 ‘Join Your Prisoners’ Union!’: A Microhistory of Daniel Redmond and the Prisoners’ Union, 1972–77 67
- Introduction 67
- Becoming a ‘Hard Man’ (1964–72) 68
- ‘I Am Not Political, Far from It’: Daniel Redmond and the Prisoners’ Union (1972–73) 70
- Hunger Strikes and the Prisoner’s Union in the Curragh (1975) 78
- A New Prisoners’ Union in Mountjoy (1977) 80
- Daniel Redmond: Coda 82
- Conclusion 83
- 2 ‘A Voice for Prisoners’: The Prisoners’ Rights Organisation, 1973–76 85
- Introduction 85
- What Did the PRO Do? 88
- Who Were the PRO? 98
- A Passive Voice? 106
- Conclusion 110
- 3 ‘A Project against Authority’: A Microhistory of Karl Crawley’s Disruptive Autonomy 111
- Introduction 111
- The PRO’s Campaign for Karl Crawley 112
- Karl Crawley’s Early Life 114
- ‘My Right to Resist’ 117
- ‘The Punishment Centre, Irish Style’ 122
- Conclusion 127
- 4 ‘The Beginning of the End’: Protest, Rioting, and Revenge, 1979–86 129
- Introduction 129
- The Prison Officers’ Association 132
- Prisoner Protest after the PU: Mountjoy, 1979 134
- Prisoners’ Revenge Squad, 1979–86 139
- Prisoners’ Bodies and Antibodies: The 1986 Arbour Hill Riot 145
- Conclusion 148
- 5 ‘It Is Doubtful If There Is a Single Prisoner or Ex-prisoner Here’: The PRO’s Sociological Turn, 1977–86 150
- Introduction 150
- The Old Guard: McCartan, de Búrca, and Walsh 151
- Respectability: Surveys and the MacBride Commission 155
- ‘The Toilet Assumption:’ The MacBride Commission Report (1980) 162
- Partial Success: The Death Penalty (1981) and the Curragh (1981–83) Campaigns 165
- Conclusion: The ‘Crime Wave’, Prison Expansion, and the Decline of the PRO 171
- 6 ‘What We Thought We Had Achieved’: Whitaker, Reform, and the Legacy of the Prisoners’ Rights Movement 175
- Introduction 175
- The Establishment of the Whitaker Inquiry 177
- The Reception of the Whitaker Report 180
- The Implementation of the Whitaker Report 182
- The Legacy of the Prisoners’ Rights Movement 189
- Conclusion 192
- Epilogue: Communicating Bodies 194
- Constructing Articulate Bodies 194
- A Haunting Absence: Kevin and Paul Kenna 197
- Notes 201
- Bibliography 229
- Index 253
