Susan Easton is a Barrister and Professor of Law at Brunel Law School. She has lectured and published in both sociology and law, specialising in prisoners' rights, and has taught in UK prisons.
This might be a very dangerous book. Dangerous in the best sense of the word because it threatens conventional ways of thinking about prison and prisoners. Each and every chapter gifts the reader some new insight about prisoners and prison life, but it is the overarching theme that is so challenging. Prisoners, at once familiar but perversely fascinating creatures of the imagination, are reconceptualised - as zoon politikon - political animals, citizens, like the rest of us. Easton thus brings them back within the fold of humanity where they belong - not other to, but of, us. Read this book and rise to that challenge. - Dr Rod Earle, The Open University