The spatial and temporal development of British prisons from 1901 to the present: The role of de-industrialisation

Jones, Phil Mike; Gray, Emily; Farrall, Stephen

Abstract

This paper combines archival data and statistical analysis to investigate the context-specific ways that prisons expanded and affected communities in the UK, focusing closely on the role of the UK's political economy. We present evidence of a significant increase of prisons in the counties where the coal-mining industry was dismantled during the 1980s and 1990s. We identify former coal-mining areas based on Coal Mining Reporting Areas and the methodology used by Beatty and Fothergill (1996) and test if more prisons were opened in former coal-mining areas than non-coal-mining areas per capita post-closures. Using Poisson regression analyses and controlling for population changes, we found that coal-mining counties were significantly more likely to acquire a new prison between 1981 and 2001 than those areas which were not affected by de-industrialisation. We apply Derrida's thinking on hauntology to reexamine the spatial legacy of Thatcherism in these communities as a means to understand history and culture, and the unraveling of the past, present, and future.

Citation

Jones, P. M., Gray, E., & Farrall, S. (2024). The spatial and temporal development of British prisons from 1901 to the present: The role of de-industrialisation. European Journal of Criminology, 21(1), 140-159. https://doi.org/10.1177/14773708221115159

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 30, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Aug 24, 2022
• Publication Date: 2024-01
• Deposit Date: Jul 1, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 24, 2022
• Journal: European Journal of Criminology
• Print ISSN: 1477-3708
• Electronic ISSN: 1741-2609
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 21
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 140-159
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/14773708221115159
• Keywords: Thatcherism; Geography; Prisons; Prison Building; Politics; Neoliberalism; Hauntology
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/8770734
• Publisher URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14773708221115159