This book provides an overview of the incarceration of tens of thousands of men, women and children during the first fifty years of Irish independence. Psychiatric hospitals, mother and baby homes, Magdalen homes, Reformatory and Industrial schools, prisons and Borstal formed a network of institutions of coercive confinement that was integral to the emerging state. The book provides a wealth of contemporaneous accounts of what life was like within these austere and forbidding places as well as offering a compelling explanation for the longevity of the system and the reasons for its ultimate decline. While many accounts exist of individual institutions and the factors associated with their operation, this is the first attempt to provide a holistic account of the interlocking range of institutions that dominated the physical landscape and, in many ways, underpinned the rural economy. Highlighting the overlapping roles of church, state and family in the maintenance of these forms of social control, this book will appeal to those interested in understanding twentieth-century Ireland: in particular, historians, legal scholars, criminologists, sociologists and other social scientists. These arguments take on special importance as Irish society continues to grapple with the legacy of its extensive use of institutionalisation.

About the Author
Eoin O'Sullivan is Head of the School of Social Work and Social Policy and Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin|Ian O'Donnell is Professor of Criminology at University College Dublin and Adjunct Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford

Reviews

Most of these people were simply locked up in state institutions, creating a shameful legacy that is only now being dragged into the light. Coercive Confinement in Ireland is a valuable contribution to that process., Andrew Lynch, Sunday Business Post|Some of the documents reproduced here give a powerful insight into the social mores of the time., Andrew Lynch, Sunday Business Post|"Coercive Confinement in Ireland deserves a readership well beyond its jurisdiction of interest.", Mark Finnane, Griffith University, Australia, Punishment & Society, 28 March 2013|"Coercive Confinement raises important questions about levels of awareness among the general population and challenges the notion that Irish Society was ignorant of the existence of Magdalene convents and industrial schools until the late twentieth century.", Cliona Rattigan, History Ireland, June 2013|This book provides an invaluable contribution to criminology in Ireland and wider afield., Una Convery, The Irish Jurist, May 2013|Among the many stengths of this book is that the authors have allowed the documents to speak for themselves apart from a necessary introduction to each one. Their analysis of the collection is saved for the insightful and typically well-informed introductory and concluding chapters. This book eloquently traces the heavy dependence on institutional punishment and 'care' by those charged with or self-appointed in the field of criminal justice and moral policing in twentieth-century Ireland.

The book is strongly recommended for scholars, students or anybody concerned with understanding at first-hand, some of the thinking that under-pinned the many layers of institutional detention to which the Irish state was firmly wedded., Conor Reidy, University of Limerick, Irish Historical Studies Vol. XXXVII, No 151, 1 October 2013|...lively and intelligent, Dara Robinson, Irish Times, 13 August 2013|...the authors put forward a more holistic analysis of those other forms of confinement, Ann Reade, The Probation Service, Dublin, 3 October 2012|"This is a hugely important, major and scholarly contribution to our understanding of the different forms and shapes of regulatory control."
(Loraine Gelsthorpe, The Howard Journal Vol 53 No 1, Feb 2014), Loraine Gelsthorpe, University of Cambridge, The Howard Journal Vol 53 No 1, 1 February 2014|"While some survivors of those institutions begin to find a voice to express their experiences, the absence of documentary material from the period in which these institutions was used has also been striking. O'Sullivan and O'Donnell's seminal work brings together contemporary accounts of life within some of these institutions among with perceptions of those places."

Mary Rogan, Irish Journal of Applied Social Studies, 2014, Mary Rogan, Dublin Institute of Technology, Irish Journal of Applied Social Studies, 14 May 2014|Overall, this is a fascinating collection and O'Sullivan and O'Donnell's contextual introductory and concluding chapters are informative and thought provoking. The book will be useful to scholars interested in institutional care and also in teaching, with its short extracts providing interesting material for students to read and analyse through group work and individual reflection., Linda Moore, University of Ulster, Irish Studies Review, 10 November 2014|Overall, this is a fascinating collection and O'Sullivan and O'Donnell's contextual introductory and concluding chapters are informative and thought provoking. The book will be useful to scholars interested in institutional care and also in teaching, with its short extracts providing interesting material for students to read and analyse through group work and individual reflection., Linda Moore, University of Ulster, Irish Studies Review 23.1, 1 February 2015

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Book Information
ISBN 9780719086489
Author Eoin Sullivan
Format Hardback
Page Count 320
Imprint Manchester University Press
Publisher Manchester University Press