News
Book Launch - Prisoners’ Bodies
Friday 25 April saw the launch of an important new book - Prisoners’ Bodies: Activism, Health, and the Prisoners’ Rights Movement in Ireland, 1972–1985, by Dr Oisín Wall (School of History and Radical Humanities Laboratory, UCC).
The book launch included presentations from Michael Donnelly who spoke about his experiences in Irish prisons in the 1980s and Dr Elizabeth Kiely, member of the Irish Penal Abolition Network and lecturer in the School of Applied Social Studies, UCC. Dr Donal O Drisceoil, School of History, chaired the event.
Book abstract
In the early 1970s Irish prisons were overcrowded – there were few rehabilitation programs, medical care was limited, psychiatric care was practically nonexistent, and brutality was commonplace. The Irish prisoners unionized, igniting a movement that helped transform the penal system over the next decade and a half, and whose legacy is still visible today. Prisoners’ Bodies is the first book on the history of the prisoner-driven movement that sought to revolutionize the prison system in Ireland between 1972 and 1985. It charts the rise and fall of prisoners’ organizations, their changing social networks, tactics, and splits, and the effect that they had on life inside prison, public policy, and society at large. Most of all, Prisoners’ Bodies seeks to amplify the voices of people who have been systemically and institutionally silenced in the history of modern Irish prisons.
The book is Open Access, thanks to support from the Wellcome Trust, and can be found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK609512/
The paperback is available here: https://www.mqup.ca/prisoners----bodies-products-9780228022954.php?page_id=121802&
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Dr Liz Kiely speaking at the launch
For more on this story contact:
Dr Oisín Wall (OisinWall@ucc.ie)