Our Violence and Theirs: Comparing Prison Realities

In recent decades, the use of imprisonment has undergone a dramatic rise in a large number of countries around the globe. As of late 2013, the estimated number of people held in penal insti tutions throughout the world had reached a rec ord high of over eleven million (Walmsley 2013). Despite the inherently violent nature of the experi ence for those subjected to it, as is so frequently attested to by the manifold imprints it leaves on their souls and bodies (in the form, for example, of chronic mental and physical illnesses; see FleurySteiner and Crowder 2008; Simon 2013; Moran 2013), imprisonment is more often than not approached in pertinent scholarship in terms that either dodge its painful nature or miss an