Dress Behind Bars : Prison Clothing As Criminality

From nineteenth-century broad arrows and black and white stripes to twenty first-century orange jumpsuits, prison clothing has both mirrored and bolstered the power of penal institutions over prisoners’ lives. Vividly illustrated and based on original research, including throughout the voices of the incarcerated, this book is a pioneering history and investigation of prison dress, which demystifies the experience of what it is like to be an imprisoned criminal. Juliet Ash takes the reader on a journey from the production of prison clothing to the bodies of its wearers. She uncovers a history characterized by waves of reform, sandwiched between regimes that use clothing as punishment and discovers how inmates use their dress to surmount, subvert or survive these punishment cultures. She reveals the hoods, the masks, and pink boxer shorts, near nakedness, even twenty first-century "civvies" to be not just other types of uniform but political embodiments of the surveillance of everyday life. CONTENTS......Page 8 LIST OF FIGURES......Page 10 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 12 INTRODUCTION: Unravelling Prison Clothing......Page 14 CHAPTER 1. From Near Naked to Uniforms, Pre-1800 to 1830s......Page 22 CHAPTER 2. Uniforms: Stripes, Broad Arrows and Aprons, 1830s to 1900......Page 42 CHAPTER 3. Seams of Change: The Abolition of Iconic Uniforms, 1900s to 1930s......Page 70 CHAPTER 4. Inside Out: From Extremes to Reform, Resistance and Back, 1930s to 1990s......Page 100 CHAPTER 5. Consumption as Redemption? Britain, 1950s to 1990s......Page 120 CHAPTER 6. Contemporary Prison Clothing: Inside turns Out......Page 152 CHAPTER 7. The View from Outside/Visions behind the Bars......Page 176 NOTES......Page 200 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY......Page 222 INDEX......Page 230 This is a history of prison clothing, from nineteenth-century broad arrows and black and white stripes to twenty first-century orange jumpsuits. Distinctive prison uniforms have both mirrored and bolstered the power of penal institutions over prisoners' lives. The book takes readers on a journey from the production of prison clothing to the bodies of its wearers, tracing a history characterized by waves of reform, and sandwiched between regimes that used clothing as punishment. It looks at how inmates have used their dress - hoods, masks, pink boxer shorts, near nakedness, even twenty first-century 'civvies' - to surmount, subvert or survive punishment cultures This work, illustrated and based on original research, is a history and investigation of prison dress. Ash reveals how regimes use clothing as a punishment, but also how the inmates use the clothing to subvert these punishment cultures Juliet Ash. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [209]-215) And Index.