A Symposium to Mark the Publication, by New York University Press, of Ian O’Donnell's Prison Life: Pain, Resistance, and Purpose

• Author: Rosemary Gido,Derek S. Jeffreys,Cormac Behan,Kimmett Edgar,Bethany E. Schmidt,Gorazd Mesko,Mary K. Stohr,Ashley T. Rubin
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00328855231154500
• Published date: 01 March 2023
• Date: 01 March 2023

A Symposium to Mark

the Publication, by

New York University

Press, of Ian O’Donnell’s

Prison Life: Pain,

Resistance, and Purpose

Rosemary Gido

1

,DerekS.Jeffreys

2

,

Cormac Behan

3

,KimmettEdgar

4

,

Bethany E. Schmidt

5

,

Gorazd Mesko

6

,MaryK.Stohr

7

,

and Ashley T. Rubin

8

Abstract

Recognizing the major scholarly contributions to criminology by the noted

Irish criminologist, Ian O’Donnell, The Prison Journal invited seven contempo-

rary corrections and punishment scholars to offer insights into O’Donnell’s

new book, Prison Life: Pain, Resistance, and Purpose. Offering contextually rich

descriptions of prisoner life, the text features four case study prisons—H

Blocks, Northern Ireland; Eastham Unit, Texas; Isir Bet, Ethiopia; and

ADX Florence, Colorado, in pivotal time periods and through an individual’s

1

Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the PA Prison Society, Philadelphia, PA, USA

2

University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, WI, USA

3

Technological University Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

4

Prison Reform Trust, London, UK

5

Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK

6

University of Maribor, Ljubljana, Slovenia

7

Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA

8

University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Rosemary Gido, Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the PA Prison Society, 230 S Broad St.,

Suite 605, Philadelphia, PA 19102, USA.

Email: rosemarygido@gmail.com

Article

The Prison Journal

2023, Vol. 103(2) 159–176

© 2023 SAGE Publications

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00328855231154500

journals.sagepub.com/home/tpj

custodial career in each institution. The symposium discussants focus on

O’Donnell’s conceptual framework—the degree of prison integration, system

and staff regulation, and legitimacy—and how these reflect the key interac-

tions between punishment and society across time and culture.

Keywords

Prison Life:Pain, Resistance, and Purpose, Ian O’Donnell, prisoner life,

regulation, integration, legitimacy

The Sociology of Punishment

David Garland, the well-known sociologist and observer of punishment

scholarship trends, recently offered a comprehensive assessment of both the

theoretical advances and problems in the development of the sociological

study of punishment (Garland, 2022). Arguing that the last 40 years have

been most significant in the migration of scholars into the field, he emphasizes

the importance of classical thinkers; in particular, Durkheim, Rusche and

Kirchheimer, Foucault, and Elias, in shaping the 1970s and 1980s ground-

breaking theoretical work of academics like Stan Cohen. With America’s

advancing mass incarceration trend and exceptionalism in global imprison-

ment rates through 2010, Garland notes the movement in sociology of punish-

ment scholarship from conceptualization and theory to a greater interest in

understanding this policy and how to reverse it. Over the past decade, with

scholarly growth in the field fueled by quantification, middle-range theory

development, and a shift away from functionalism’s generalizations,

Garland declares the discipline is advancing—and needs to continue along

this path—toward more localized, specific internal accounts and new theori-

zations coming from rich comparative studies, internationally, nationally, and

regionally (Beckett & Beach, 2021; Lynch, 2009).

The Prison Journal is therefore privileged to “host”this symposium on Ian

O’Donnell’s important new book, Prison Life: Pain, Resistance, and

Purpose. Clearly a catalyst for energizing sociology of punishment scholar-

ship, O’Donnell’s work echoes Garland’s and other scholars’call for novel

frameworks and concepts across prison cultural and political regimes—

away from Anglocentric assumptions and to the study of punishment in the

Global South (Sozzo, 2022)—and toward contrasting prisoners’experiences

of freedom (Mjaland et al., 2021).

O’Donnell has been based at University College Dublin for almost a

quarter century, having previously been Director of the Irish Penal Reform

Trust and a Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University. He has made

160 The Prison Journal 103(2)