Irish Political Prisoners presents a detailed and gripping overview of political imprisonment from 1920-1962. Seán McConville examines the years from the formation of the Northern Ireland state to the release of the last border campaign prisoners in 1962. Drawing extensively and, in many cases, uniquely on archives and special collections in the three jurisdictions, and interviews with survivors from the period, McConville demonstrates how punishment came to embody and shape the nationalist consciousness. Irish Political Prisoners 1920-1962 commences with the legacy of the Anglo Irish and Irish Civil Wars - militancy, division and bitterness. The book travels from the embedding of Northern Ireland’s security agenda in the 1920’s, and the IRA’s search for a role in the 1930’s (including the 1939 bombing campaign against Britain) to the decisive use of internment during the war and the border campaign years. This volume will be an essential resource for students of Irish history and is a major contribution to the study of imprisonment. .

This is a comprehensive, detailed and humane account of the thousands who came into custody during the years of the Northern Ireland conflict and how they lived out the months, years and decades in Irish and English maximum security prisons. Erupting in 1969, the Northern Ireland troubles continued with terrible intensity until 1998. The most enduring civil conflict in Western Europe since the Second World War cost almost 4,000 lives, inflicted a vast toll of injuries and wrought much destruction. Based on extensive archival research and numerous interviews, this book covers the jurisdictions of Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and England, providing an account of riots, escapes, strip and dirty protests and hunger strikes. It paints a picture of coming to terms with sentences, some of which lasted for two decades and more. Republicans and loyalists, male and female prisoners, officials and staff, families, supporters, clergy and politicians all played a part – and all were changed. The narrative includes some of the most remarkable events in prison history anywhere – mass breakouts, organised cell-fouling and prolonged nakedness, and hunger striking to the death; there are also accounts of the prisoners’ very effective parallel command structure. The book shows how Anglo-Irish and intra-Irish relations were profoundly affected and how the prisoners’ involvement and consent were critical to the Good Friday Agreement that ended the long war. The final part of a trilogy dealing with Irish political prisoners from 1848 to 2000 by renowned expert Seán McConville, this is an essential resource for students and scholars of Irish history and Irish political prisoners; it is also a major contribution to the study of imprisonment.

Focusing on women's relationships, life-circumstances and agency, Elaine Farrell reveals the voices, emotions and decisions of incarcerated women and those affected by their imprisonment, offering an intimate insight into their experiences of the criminal justice system across urban and rural post-Famine Ireland.

Learning behind Bars is an oral history of former Irish republican prisoners in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland between 1971, the year internment was introduced, and 2000, when the high-security Long Kesh Detention Centre/HM Prison Maze closed. Dieter Reinisch outlines the role of politically motivated prisoners in ending armed conflicts as well as the personal and political development of these radical activists during their imprisonment. Based on extensive life-story interviews with Irish Republican Army (IRA) ex-prisoners, the book examines how political prisoners developed their intellectual positions through the interplay of political education and resistance. It sheds light on how prisoners used this experience to initiate the debates that eventually led to acceptance of the peace process in Northern Ireland. Politically relevant and instructive, Learning behind Bars illuminates the value of education, politics, and resistance in the harshest of social environments.

This volume contains an Open Access Chapter Leading scholars on Irish penal history and theory explore trends and debates that have surrounded patterns of punishment in Ireland since the formation of the State and foreground often absent perspectives in criminology and punishment.

This book examines the forms and practices of Irish confinement from the 19th century to present-day to explore the social and political failings of 20th and 21st century postcolonial Ireland. Building on an interdisciplinary conference held in the Crumlin Road Gaol, Belfast, the methodological approaches adopted across this book range from the historical and archival to the sociological, political, and literary. This edited collection touches on topics such as industrial schools, Magdalen laundries, struggles and resistance in prisons both North and South, Direct Provision, and the ways in which prison experiences have been represented in literature, cinema, and the arts. It sketches out an uncomfortable picture of the techniques for policing bodies deployed in Ireland for over a century. This innovative study seeks to establish a link between Ireland’s inhumane treatment of women and children, of prisoners, and of asylum seekers today, and to expose and pinpoint modes of resistance to these situations.

States around the world imprison people for their beliefs or politically-motivated actions. Oppositional movements of all stripes celebrate their comrades behind bars. Yet they are more than symbols of repression and human rights. Dance in Chains examines the experiences of political prisoners themselves in order to understand who they are, what they do, and why it matters. This is the first book to trace the history of modern political imprisonment from its origins in the mid-nineteenth century. The letters, diaries, and memoirs of political prisoners, as well as the records of regime policies, relate the contest in the prison cell to political conflicts between regime and opposition. Padraic Kenney draws on examples from regimes ranging from communist and fascist to colonial and democratic, including Ireland, the United Kingdom, Poland, and South Africa. They include the Fenian Brotherhood, imprisoned in England and Ireland in the 1860s, and their successors during the Irish War of Independence and the Northern Ireland Troubles; Afrikaaners suspected of treason during the Boer War; socialists fighting for Polish freedom in the Russian Empire, and then Communists denouncing "bourgeois" rule in newly-independent Poland; the opponents of apartheid South Africa and stalinist Poland; and those imprisoned by the United States in Guantanamo Bay detention camp today. Some prisons are well-known; in others, inmates suffered in obscurity. Through self-organization, education, and actions ranging from solitary non-cooperation to mass hunger strikes, these prisoners transform their incarceration and counter states' efforts to control them. While considering the international movements that have sought to publicize the plight of political prisoners, Dance in Chains examines the actions of the prisoners themselves to find universal answers to questions about the meaning and purpose of their imprisonment.

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. Oisín Wall 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. Considering the public discourse around prisons and prisoners during this period, Wall investigates how it shaped and was shaped by the movement. Finally, the book examines the experiences of more than twenty individuals in prison, setting their activism within the context of their lives and their politics. Their stories are reconstructed through oral histories, court records, press reports, prisoners’ publications, and archival material. Prisoners’ Bodies seeks to amplify the voices of people who have been systemically and institutionally silenced in the history of modern Irish prisons.

This book considers how the social construction of crime and the criminalising of political expression impact upon different stages in a violent political conflict. The freedom to express our political opinions is regarded as an essential human right throughout most of the world, and yet, in defence of our security, governments often place various restrictions on it. This book directly considers what these restrictions are in the context of deeply divided societies to understand how they impact upon intergroup relations in four different contexts: nonviolent movements, counter-insurgency, peace negotiations, and post-settlement peacebuilding. Drawing on an extensive body of original interviews and archival material, the volume analyses this relationship through an in-depth consideration of Northern Ireland and South Africa, followed by a wider analysis of Turkey, Sri Lanka, Belgium, and Canada. The overarching argument is that the implications of criminalising political expression depend on both its ‘target’ and the wider social reality it contributes towards. This book will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, transitional justice, law, and International Relations.

The first historical study to offer an in-depth exploration of the complex relationship between the prison and mental breakdown.