Imprisoning Resistance

1. Auflage 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9751967-5-5
Verlag: Federation Press

Buch, Englisch, 284 Seiten, Format (B × H): 135 mm x 211 mm, Gewicht: 400 g

29 October 2007 marks twenty years since the death of five prisoners in a riot and fire in the infamous Jika Jika High-Security Unit. This book resurrects these events and invites us to learn urgent lessons in our current age of supermax and privatised prisons, detention of asylum seekers and the controversial use of indefinite detention under the banner of a 'war on terror'. Imprisoning Resistance provides an experiential account of life and death in the controversial Pentridge Prison Jika Jika High-Security Unit in Victoria during the 1980s. One of Australia's first hi-tech supermax prisons, Jika Jika was designed to house and manage the system's 'worst of the worst' prisoners. Several years of deaths in custody, multiple escapes, assaults, murders, prisoner campaigns and protests, hunger strikes and allegations of prison staff brutality escalated in 1987 to a dramatic protest fire that resulted in the deaths of five prisoners. The prison was closed and a series of inquiries were commissioned. Bree Carlton revisits this uncomfortable past and reconstructs events leading up to and surrounding the fire and deaths, while critically analysing official responses to the discreditable episodes, crises and deaths that plagued Jika Jika.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Carlton, Bree

Weitere Mitwirkende

Scraton, Phil

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Kriminalsoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents Foreword by Phil Scraton Prologue: 29 October 1987, Jika Jika High-Security Unit, HM Pentridge Prison, Coburg, Victoria, Australia Introduction Modern high-security in Australia Imprisoning resistance: the politics of modern high-security Disciplinary power, resistance and high-security Cultures of violence and high-security Official discourse and official responses to disorder, death and institutional crisis Part I Power and resistance 1 Polarisation, power and prisoner resistance in Australian maximum-security during the explosive 1970s 2 Managing a resistance proff panopticon: the official beginnings of the Jika Jika High-Security Unit 3 Contextualising resistance: prisoner accounts of power and survival in the 'pressure-can' 4 'Rebelling against the dictorial regime in Jika': acts of prisoner transgression and resistance Part II Concealing crisis 5 Descent into crisis: the deaths of John Williams and Sean Dowie 6 Exonerating institutional liability: official responses to the death of Sean Dowie 7 Imprisoning crises: official responses to the Jika fire as strategies of damage control and concealment Epilogue Bibliography Index