'A Perfect Storm'

This ethnography of an English adult male prison explores a polycrisis of violence, self-harm, overcrowding and the COVID-19 pandemic. Using Bourdieu’s field theory, it uniquely highlights the complex interplay of policy, people and practices to reveal how prisons exacerbate social inequality.

The book uncovers paradoxes between prison’s stated aims of safety, security and (re)habilitation and their adverse realities, including the harms to prisoners’ reintegration upon release. The prison operates as a “perfect storm” of mutually reinforcing conditions that reproduce harmful outcomes. The book contends that the real crisis isn't that prisons fail, it’s that we continue to believe they're meant to succeed.