Professor Ian O'Donnell wins prestigious international book award
Professor Ian O’Donnell’s latest book, Prison Life: Pain, Resistance, and Purpose, published by New York University Press, has won the 2025 Outstanding Book Award given by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences International Section. Last year it won the Outstanding Book Award given by the American Society of Criminology’s Division of International Criminology.
The award was presented at the Academy’s annual conference in Denver on 13 March.
Prison Life offers a fresh appreciation of how people in prison organize their lives, drawing on case studies from Africa, Europe and the US. The book describes how order is maintained, how power is exercised, how days are spent, and how meaning is found in a variety of environments that all have the same function – incarceration – but discharge it very differently. It is based on an unusually diverse range of sources including photographs, drawings, court cases, official reports, memoirs, and site visits.
The book was the subject of a symposium in (opens in a new window)The Prison Journal and an author-meets-critic review in (opens in a new window)Incarceration. It has been widely and enthusiastically reviewed. According to International Criminology: "The book is written beautifully, with compassion and piercing insight”. The International Criminal Justice Review described it as: “One of the best books on prison life I have ever read … an outstanding contribution to the cumulative knowledge on prison social order … a powerful and touching narrative … beautifully written … monumental research." For the British Journal of Criminology it “illustrates the centrality of human stories to the study of prisons ... detailed, vivid and often surprising”. The Irish Jurist described Professor O’Donnell as “internationally recognised as one of the finest European criminologists of his generation” and Prison Life as “a really interesting book written by a scholar at the top of his game”.
Prison Life is available in paperback and as an e-book from all of the usual outlets.
In addition to his scholarly work, Professor O'Donnell continues to contribute to the national debate about penal policy See his recent opinion piece in (opens in a new window)The Irish Times.