Saying the Unsayable: Foregrounding Men in the Prison System

Abstract

In this chapter, I argue that whilst men comprise 95% of the prison population in England and Wales (MoJ 2017), and dominate the prison and criminal justice systems across the world, they do not dominate the academic and policy discourse surrounding punishment and penal reform. Instead, certain groups such as women, young people, ethnic minorities, religious groups or the mentally ill tend to be given specific attention. Rarely are men in prison as a group foregrounded within critical discourse around penal policy and research; rather, they are ‘seen’ (whilst simultaneously going ‘unseen’) as the norm, the stereotype and the population that prison was designed for in the first place.