Book Review: On the outside: From lengthy imprisonment to lasting freedom

• Author: M. Liem,J. M. Elbers
• Date: 01 September 2015
• Published date: 01 September 2015
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567715576998
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Book Reviews
International Criminal Justice Review
2015, Vol. 25(3) 281-292
Book Reviews
ª 2015 Georgia State University
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Munn, M., & Bruckert, C. (2013).
On the outside: From lengthy imprisonment to lasting freedom. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
240 pp., CND$95 (hardcover), ISBN 987-0-7748-2537-5.
Reviewed by: J. M. Elbers and M. Liem, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Leiden University, the
Netherlands
DOI: 10.1177/1057567715576998
In On the outside, Melissa Munn and Chris Bruckert give a unique insight in the lives of 20 former
long-term prisoners, among which 16 life-sentenced men, who were released or paroled from Cana-
dian prison at least 5 years ago and have remained charge-free ever since. The authors generated the
sample by snowballing, starting with men they knew personally. Through semistructured interviews,
the authors aim at truthfully recounting their successes in resettlement. In doing so, they hope to
present a counternarrative to the predominant one wherein ‘‘the dangerous ex-convict’’ (p. 3) can
continue to commit offenses by lack of a more punitive criminal justice system. Munn and Bruckert
vividly argue that predominant and other folklore-based narratives have been used by the Canadian
government to ‘‘invent a social problem for political currency’’ (p. 5) and has wrongly influenced
reforms of the system over the last decades. With this book, they seek to create a new narrative
by sharing stories of men who did not recidivate, and who—for the most part—held jobs and owned
their own homes. This book appears timely, as the Harper government has increasingly developed a
tough-on-crime attitude and matching penal code based on such rhetoric. The implications of Munn
and Bruckert’s critical analysis are not limited to Canadian policy but may well be extended to other
parts of the Anglo-Saxon world where tough-on-crime policies have mushroomed.
The book consists...