The Arts of Imprisonment

Prize: Winner of the 2015 Outstanding Critical Criminal Justice Scholar Award, awarded by the Critical Criminal Justice Section of the American Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences 'for distinguished accomplishments in critical criminal justice scholarship across the most recent two-year period'. Winner of the 2014 Best Public Intellectual Special Issue Award, American Council of Learned Journals Leonidas K. Cheliotis was awarded the ASC 2013 Critical Criminologist of the Year Award. ...essential for all practitioners and scholars who engage in prison arts programming and those who study prisons with any eye toward the qualitative life experiences of incarcerated people.' Critical Criminology 'What is apparent throughout the book is that relationships between the arts and imprisonment are extremely varied. This is a rich and fascinating collection that is highly recommended to both academics and practitioners in this field' British Journal of Criminology 'This edited collection has extraordinary breadth and depth, covering a range of critical issues for arts in prisons. It successfully provides a series of accounts that are largely sociologically grounded but also in touch with the messy and complicated business of nurturing arts in prisons. This is a rich and fascinating collection that is highly recommended to both academics and practitioners in this field' Crime, Media, Culture 'The Arts of Imprisonment explores every connection that the title suggests, from the architecture specially designed to disenchant the imprisoned to the creative powers that some prisoners have been able to summon in the face of systematic oppression. A serious contribution to the prisons' literature.' Rod Morgan, University of Bristol, UK and former Chairman of the Youth Justice Board and HM Chief Inspector of Probation, UK 'This timely and stimulating collection addresses a long-neglected topic of great importance. It concerns not only the production of artwork by people in prison, but also the place of the prison in art and in wider public representations and discourses. The contributions are both international in scope and in the best sense interdisciplinary, traversing the humanities and social sciences in the way the issues so clearly demand. Leonidas Cheliotis and his contributors are to be congratulated for their creative work in bringing these questions sharply into focus.' Richard Sparks, University of Edinburgh, UK and Co-Director, Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research 'Leonidas Cheliotis has provided a profoundly scholarly and highly readable exploration of the many ways in which the arts and prison life intersect. The contributions collected in this volume are relevant globally but also offer local depth and range from the German Red Army Faction to US prison choirs, from educational and therapeutic programs to media initiatives and the arts of resistance . They treat, in refreshing detail, efforts to reclaim dignity and agency but they also raise issues of denial, gender trouble, and other current debates, through the symbiosis of arts and aesthetics with the world of the imprisoned.' Gonda Van Steen, University of Florida, USA 'The essays in this collection go some way to a recuperation of cultural criminology's unfulfilled promise of a new and exciting challenge to its more traditional modes of interpretation...While critiques of the landscape of social control are discussed engagingly and with erudition, the enduring effect of this collection is that it incites the reader to admire and support the human ability to resist the call of prison, and its destructive effects, in creative ways.' Scottish Justice Matters