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, now available in paperback after performing superbly in hardback, 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.

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|This book is brilliant in conception, haunting in its emotional reach through the contemporaneous accounts, and altogether illuminating.
This is a hugely important, major and scholarly contribution to our understanding of the different forms and shapes of regulatory control., David Wilson, The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Howard Journal Vol 53 No 1, pp.104-115, 2014|"O'Sullivan and O'Donnell provide an outstanding insight into the raison d'etre of these various institutions; their relationships with the state, the Church, and society at large (often forgotten); entry and (often torturous) exit pathways; the flow of individuals across institutions (transcarceration); the routines and practices employed therein; and the subjective experiences of the bad, the mad, the fallen and the vulnerable....This is an outstanding book, one which is superbly written and crafted."

(Shane Kilcommins, University College Cork, Irish Journal of Sociology, 2014), Shane Kilcommins, University College Cork, Irish Journal of Sociology, 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 9780719095450
Author Eoin Sullivan
Format Paperback
Page Count 324
Imprint Manchester University Press
Publisher Manchester University Press
Weight(grams) 494g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 18mm