The world prison population grows annually as the countries of the world lock up more of their citizens. It is suggested that the way a society treats its prisoners can tell us much about its culture. If the prison system is punitive, then that society may be tired of high crime rates, or it can convey whether or not the country respects human rights. Is the prison population made up of a disproportionate number of that country's ethnic minorities? How is the prison population fed, housed and clothed in comparison with the rest of the population? In Prisons and Prison Systems: A Global Encyclopedia it is suggested that many lessons can be learned by examining the world's prison systems, and that scholars and laypersons alike can view race relations, politics, sociology, history, architecture, and other disciplines through the prism of the prison system.
Prisons and Prison Systems is one of those books which could so easily have ended up being plain dull, but author Mitchel P. Roth has included many tantalising little gems, over and above simply going through each country and detailing its prison system. Just as one is trying to digest the facts that Luxembourg reported that in 2004 its two prisons housed 498 inmates in a system capable of handling almost 800 – and that the prison rate is 111 per 100,000 of the national population, representing an increase from 92 per 100,000 in 1998 to 357 per 100,000 in 2001, – the eye moves across the page to discover that Moscow's Lubayanka Prison was originally the site of insurance company offices and that its parquet floors continue to remind observers of this fact. In the 1920s an anarchist who later become secretary for Alexander Solzhenitsyn served a short sentence there and later recounted that during her sentence “waitresses wearing uniforms” delivered food. Lubyanka's last prisoner was U‐2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, downed over the Soviet Union in his spy plane in 1960.
This reviewer has been a little unfair in quoting the rather sparse facts given about the Luxembourg prison system as many other countries are covered in far greater detail. So the entry for Japan occupies some one and three quarter pages in contrast to Luxembourg's six lines and traces the earliest use of incarceration in Japan to the eighth century, when a penal sanction similar to forced labour was used. The history of the Japanese prison system is revealing. In the 1700s, for example, vagrants, transients and those “seeming to lack moral tendencies” were provided with free room and board at the Edo Labour Camp, in what is now Tokyo, and given moral education and vocational training, including funds on their release to set them on the right path to rehabilitation. By 1888 a halfway house system catered for released prisoners, particularly important in a country where former prisoners were often ostracised for the shame that they had brought on their families.
The Encyclopedia is arranged alphabetically, and the cross‐referenced entries give a historical overview of institutions and systems around the world, as well as penal theories, prisoner culture and life, and notable prisoners and personnel. It is always useful for the reader to be aware what is not covered in any reference work, and the author makes it clear that he has not covered Second World War concentration camps, the prison camps of Yugoslavia's civil war, and internment camps in the United States in the 1940s. The rationale behind these exclusions is that they were devoted to single issues and specific individuals, based on race, ethnicity, or religion, and had less to do with the traditional notion of imprisonment as a method of rehabilitation, penitence, or punishment. The Soviet Gulag has been included on the basis that, like other prison systems, it held a wide range of individuals, with no dominant race, religion, or ethnic group represented. Issues such as death row, the death penalty, and executions have also been excluded from the book.
Each entry in the Encyclopedia is concluded with its source or sources. There is an alphabetical list of entries, a topical list of entries that includes prisons from Abu Ghraib to Zuchthaus (a German word for prison – Zucht meaning discipline), a comprehensive bibliography and a good index. There are 14 appendices including such topics as prison museums, famous prisoners, prison argot and slang, writings by prisoners, and writings by prison employees. In many ways the appendices are a bit of mixed bag. Researchers will find the appendix on prison architects and visionaries to be a very useful source, providing information that they may not be able to find so easily elsewhere. However, the 18 items of prison slang from Devil's Island could easily have been included in the Prison Argot and Slang appendix. The appendix Selections from Alcatraz Prison Regulations 1956 seems superfluous to this reviewer, unless some contrasting prisons regulations are included. However, to enlarge the appendices would have called for a further volume – it is always a problem with appendices.
The author makes the point that there is a dearth of reference works on international prisons and prison systems. Prisons and Prison Systems: A Global Encyclopedia is a good contribution to the field, and will be a useful addition for law libraries, criminology researchers, and universities. It has an easy style, clearly printed with a good size type and will also prove popular with general readerships in public libraries. With that I will eat my duck (Prison slang, Stateville Prison, “eat your duck” meaning get on your way)!
