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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.
'This critical, powerful, and important book — from someone who played a key role within the Ministry of Justice and the Prison Service — brings a social justice perspective to bear on "the perfect storm" of the prison crisis. As O’Mara concludes, this is a storm that sweeps people away, and it is a storm that can never break until and unless we disabuse ourselves of the misconception that imprisonment is a solution. Instead, we must recognise it as a problem — or rather a series of interconnected problems — of in/security, in/justice, and ill/health. As O'Mara concludes, a future-focused justice system must invest not in punishment and control but in prevention, equity, and opportunity.' Fergus McNeill, University of Glasgow
'"A Perfect Storm" is a deft and penetrating diagnosis of contemporary imprisonment. Skilfully interweaving theoretical insight with evocative ethnographic description, Oscar O’Mara offers a powerful investigation of how prisons are not simply in crisis, but are the crisis. The book is destined to become a classic of prison studies, renewing and reviving this rich tradition of scholarship. Beautifully written and superbly conceived, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the book is a must read for anyone interested in penal justice. It is an urgent call for a rethinking of fundamental questions: who prisons are for, what they are intended to achieve, and are they fit for purpose?' Eamonn Carrabine, University of Essex
1. The Elephants in the Penal Corner
2. The Living Symphony
3. A Crisis of Imagination
4. Bowing to Caesar: The Paradox of Safety
5. ‘Arte et Labore’: The Paradox of Security
6. Unmasking the Pandemic Response in Prison: The Paradox of Health
Conclusion: The Storm That Never Breaks