Re-Imagining Imprisonment in Europe: Effects, Failures and the Future - Tapa blanda

The number of people being committed to prison across Europe continues to increase (disproportionately to the growth in overall population) year by year. It appears too that an increasingly punitive approach to penal policy is being adopted throughout Europe by parties coming from both the left and right of the political spectrum. While there has been an increase in domestic, European and UN prison oversight structures and corresponding pressures to reform prison policy and practice, conditions of imprisonment and the incidence of breaches in standards continue to be a matter of serious concern in many European countries. This book stems from an international conference hosted by the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice. The papers analyse some of the key features of imprisonment throughout Europe today, including the political, social and economic forces shaping prison policy and practice, and to imagine what future imprisonment might look like - in terms of prison policy, prison population size and prison conditions - by generating a new narrative of how imprisonment might be framed within a new vision and set of values.

Eoin Carroll is the Social Policy Research Officer at the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice. Kevin Warner was a founding member of the European Prison Education Association. He retired from the Irish Department of Justice in 2009 and is now engaged in writing and research, much of it focused on the Irish prison system.