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.

Oisín Wall is lecturer at University College Cork.

Oisín Wall's profile page

“Wall is innovative in his approach to thinking about how prisoners communicate and significantly advances what we know about what happened in Irish prisons at this time.” William Murphy, author of Political Imprisonment and the Irish, 1912–1921