Prison in Iran: A Known Unknown

ISBN-13: 9783030571689 / Angielski / Twarda / 2020 / 178 str.

Nahid Anaraki

Recenzje

"The book ... provide a rich, thoughtful read. ... Prison in Iran offers a truly unique insight. ... The book is accessible and informative ... . Sociologists and those interested in the theories behind punishment and penal systems should undoubtedly read this book. Human rights activists and country experts alike may also gain a specific benefit. In addition to scholars and students, this book is recommended for anyone interested in the vivid narratives of people who are incarcerated." (Kelly Blount, Crime Law and Social Change, Vol. 76, 2021)

"Prison in Iran. A Known Unknown is a welcome and rare attempt to study 'ordinary' prisons and prisoners in Iran. Through her investigations, observations and interviews Rahimipour Anaraki has successfully depicted the sufferings of prisoners, especially women's and children's, as a reflection of a society in which social inequalities are paramount and where prison's raison d'e tre is not to educate but to punish, not to integrate but to exclude." (Azadeh Kian, Punishment & Society, June 30, 2021)

Spis treści

Chapter 1 5

Introduction 6

The so called “prison” 6

Chapter 2 24

History of Prison 24

The First Spark of Juridical Reform in Iran 24

Prisons In The Qajar Reign 27

The Constitutional Revolution 29

A Root-and-Branch Revamping of the Whole Judicial System 33

Interregnum (1941-1953) 38

Prison Life from 1971 to 1977 42

The 1979 Revolution and its impact on prison conditions 49

Chapter 3 61

Prison Subculture 61

Unstable pyramid 63

Captives as a society 88

Battle zone 91

Hegemony of drug-related networks 96

Multidimensional identity 103

Instrumental relationships 111

Two sides of the same coin 121

Chapter 4 131

Incarcerated women and children 131

Women’s Pathway to Prison 131

Incarcerated Mothers 136

The Most Visible Victims 141

Being Prisoned Outside of Prison 150

Chapter 5 165

Conclusion 165

Never accomplished modernization

Index

O autorze

Nahid Rahimipour Anaraki is Postdoctoral Fellow at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. She holds an MA in Sociology from the University of Kerman, Iran and a PhD in sociology from Memorial University, and she has co-authored several articles published in Quality & Quantity journal.

Blurb

This book offers a unique look into prisons in Iran and the lives of the prisoners and their families. It provides an overview of the history of Iranian prisons, depicts the sub-culture in contemporary Iranian prisons, and highlights the forms that gender discrimination takes behind the prison walls. The book draws on the voices of 90 men and women who have been imprisoned in Iran, interviewed in 2012 and 2017 across various parts of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It presents a different approach to the one proposed by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish because the author argues that  Iran never experienced “the age of sobriety in punishment” and “a slackening of the hold on the body”. Whilst penal severity in Iran has reduced, its scope has now extended beyond prisoners to their families, regardless of their age and gender. In Iran, penalties still target the body but now also affect the bodies of the entire prisoner’s family. It is not just prisoners who suffer from the lack of food, clothes, spaces for sleeping, health services, legal services, safety, and threats of physical violence and abuse but also their families. The book highlights the costs of mothers’ incarceration for their children. It argues that as long as punishment remains the dominant discourse of the penal system, the minds and bodies of anyone related to incarcerated offenders will remain under tremendous strain. This unique book explores the nature of these systems in a deeply under-covered nation to expand understandings of prisons in the non-Western world.