Prisoners' Bodies: Activism, Health, and the Prisoners' Rights Movement in Ireland, 1972-1985

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 Irel...