THE PRISON DOCTOR: My time inside Britain’s most notorious jails. THE HONEST, UNBELIEVABLE TRUE STORY AND A SUNDAY TIMES BEST SELLING AUTOBIOGRAPHY

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Walmsley was understandably reluctant when her friend, Carol Finlay, asked her to support the Collins Bay book club, several years before she had been badly traumatised when she was violently mugged outside her London home. She has little recollection of the first meeting at Collins Bay but decided to return, taking strength from her late father's (a former judge) advice, "If you expect the best of people, they will rise to the occasion." Foucault, Fransız bir hukukçu ve politikacı J. M. Servan'dan yapıyor bu alıntıyı. Bilgi, diyor, iktidara giden araçtır. Bu politikacıların, siyasetçilerin, hukukçuların, insan doğası hakkında keşfettiği küçük detaylar üzerine kurulu ''gözetim'' sistemi, günümüzde gerçekten de tıkır tıkır işliyor. The structures Foucault chooses to use as his starting positions help highlight his conclusions. In particular, his choice as a perfect prison of the penal institution at Mettray helps personify the carceral system. Within it is included the Prison, the School, the Church, and the work-house (industry) – all of which feature heavily in his argument. The prisons at Neufchatel and Mettray were perfect examples for Foucault, because they, even in their original state, began to show the traits for which Foucault was searching. Moreover, they showed the body of knowledge being developed about the prisoners, the creation of the 'delinquent' class, and the disciplinary careers emerging. Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la Prison = Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault

Some men spoke freely about their (rough) upbringing and past crimes during the book club discussions, while others only opened up in their journals. They seemed to gravitate most toward the themes of family, humanity and right vs. wrong. As the book progresses, you see this initiative becoming big thanks to the ever efficient and ambitious Carol, extended to every public prison in Canada. Foucault has Aced Bentham’s concept of the Panopticon, AKA electronic wizardry compiling its records: Everything You Ever Wanted to know About Anyone but are Afraid to Ask. It [torture] assured the articulation of the written on the oral, the secret on the public, the procedure of investigation on the operation of the confession; it made it possible to reproduce the crime on the visible body of the criminal; in the same horror, the crime had to be manifested and annulled. It also made the body of the condemned man the place where the vengeance of the sovereign was applied, the anchoring point for a manifestation of power, an opportunity of affirming the dissymmetry of forces." [3] :55I understood why Michel Foucault had acquired this fame from the first chapters. The divination of his analysis and the originality of his observations can only leave you speechless. It is a highly documented work. The author has conducted exhaustive research to include/understand the penitentiary system's current problems (in 1970). This genuine work as a historian led him to broaden his field of analysis to the organizational practices of our societies with the appearance, in the 16th century, of disciplinary structures inherited from monastic rules. These explain the gradual shift from justice as an authority's expression and power of a sovereign to a judge of control of normality. and as a reader of Plato’s Theaetetus and Sophist, I *fully* understand the philosophical and metaphysical implications of ‘the rhetorical’ – in fact, I teach a course on this topic. To show the effect of investigation on confession. (According to Foucault, torture could occur during the investigation, because partial proofs meant partial guilt. If the torture failed to elicit a confession then the investigation was stopped and innocence assumed. A confession legitimized the investigation and any torture that occurred.) Out of this movement towards generalized punishment, a thousand "mini-theatres" of punishment would have been created wherein the convicts' bodies would have been put on display in a more ubiquitous, controlled, and effective spectacle. Prisoners would have been forced to do work that reflected their crime, thus repaying society for their infractions. This would have allowed the public to see the convicts' bodies enacting their punishment, and thus to reflect on the crime. But these experiments lasted less than twenty years.

Written with both humour and deep concern for the lives of her incarcerated patients. It’s a poignant, compassionate read, giving an insight into the complicated and damaged lives of some of the offenders … a thoroughly enlightening and engaging book.’ Mail on Sunday I also feel like she really threw her colleagues under the bus by making it seem as if she was the only one who cared about the inmates and that she was the only member of staff that the inmates appreciated. A lot of the dialogue was poorly written as well, not resembling real speech at all, which makes me think that a lot of the praise given to her by the inmates was exaggerated, although this is obviously just speculation. I believe this is because the author probably had a very interesting life and was urged by all her friends and family to write a book. She's a clever woman, she could write one but without a natural talent or an editor with more than average ability, it wasn't elevated into a really good read. Because of the chapters on women in prison it gets an extra star, so 3 stars. eye-opening … harrowing … Though so many of the tales are unbearably sad, and some details quite difficult to read without flinching, frequent moments of hope and humanity mitigate what could otherwise be a bleak look at life on the lowest rung of society’s ladder.’ The TelegraphThis is a book about books. And books within books. It should come with a warning attached: you are not required to read ALL of the books listed in this book. Which of course means you will want to. I’m also inspired to start up a bunch of bookclubs, everywhere, all the time. I knew nothing of the work of Michel Foucault. So What prompted me to choose this book? Perhaps, it seems to me, the fact that Michel Foucault was one of the great French intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century and that he was a reference for many thinkers and philosophers.

I went into this book based on the blurb, especially the last line which had mentioned this book to be a "heartwarming example of the rehabilitative power of reading" and I just have to say, it is a very accurate description of this book. Fisher, George (1995). "The Birth of the Prison Retold" (PDF). Yale Law Journal. 105 (6): 1235–1324. doi: 10.2307/797132. JSTOR 797132. This is the to-die-for cornucopia of the absolute-zero straight goods on how Society has morphed (in my and Foucault’s own lifetime) into a Prison.

Garland, David (1986). "Review: Foucault's Discipline and Punish: An Exposition and Critique". American Bar Foundation Research Journal. 11 (4): 847–880. doi: 10.1111/j.1747-4469.1986.tb00270.x. JSTOR 828299. I admit that throughout the book I was waiting for something violent to happen to the author, either during the book club meetings or during her one-on-one interviews with the participants. I was pleasantly surprised that this was not the case. For me, the most powerful part of this novel was in learning about the prisoners themselves. Walmsley sat down monthly with bank robbers, drug dealers, even murderers. We are given insight that the regular person never has into the lives of a prisoner, how they've gotten to where they are, and how they cope with and accept their crimes. It is easy for anyone on the outside to assume these men are bad seeds, evil. What isn't easy is choosing to remember that there have been circumstances, sometimes unimaginable to us in our own safe lives, that have landed these men in prison. These aren't evil men, they aren't even monsters; they're men. They're men who have done something bad, and who are (for the most part) entirely conscious and aware of their wrongdoing. Reading this book has given me an entirely new appreciation for the delicacy of human nature and just how fragile our own freedom is.