Ashley T Rubin, The Deviant Prison: Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary and The Origins of America’s Modern Penal System, 1829–1913

Abstract

violent, mentally and physically healthier than others also keeping them from using or dealing drugs in order to maintain parental relationship and protect their children. Through observation of mother-child interactions both inside and outside, Rahimipour Anaraki reveals that the repressive power exercised in prison also affects children of incarcerated mothers. Regulations and disciplines to structure inmate’s life in prison were applied to children as well, including the bedtimes, mealtimes, television rules and rules about what could be done in one’s cell. Children had no play area, they had to stay on the unit with their mothers. Interviews with women in prison are moving, especially mothers who are on death row and had to give up their children either to their families or to caregivers. The book reveals that patterns in the control of prisoners both before and after the revolution have persistently relied on the body. Policies such as methadone maintenance treatment and the presence of children keep the bodies and spirits of the prisoners controllable and dependable. But usually there are no rehabilitation programs or supporting educational programs, or they are too poorly equipped and unsuitable to heal the delinquent past of the prisoners or remedy the problems of poverty. Although these prisoners (contrary to political prisoners) are not tortured, the pain they suffer is no less significant. The author argues, and well demonstrates, that prison reflects society. Prisoners are differentiated according to their wealth, power, social capital, gender, sexuality and are not treated equally. For example, violent criminals, especially drug traffickers, are kings of prison with their palaces inside the prison. They are respected by other prisoners and even recruit their novice young men as petty servants. Homosexuality is stigmatized in prison like in society, but the stigma of female homosexuality is even more acute. Prison in Iran. A Known Unknown is a welcome and rare attempt to study ‘ordinary’ prisons and prisoners in Iran. Through her investigations, observations and interviews Rahimipour Anaraki has successfully depicted the sufferings of prisoners, especially women’s and children’s, as a reflection of a society in which social inequalities are paramount and where prison’s raison d’être is not to educate but to punish, not to integrate but to exclude.