Using penal culture as a conceptual and theoretical vehicle, and Australia as a case study, this book analyses international developments in penality and imprisonment. Authored by some of Australia’s leading penal theorists, the book considers historical and contemporary influences such as colonialism, post colonialism, race, and the ‘penal/colonial complex’, on the use of the prison, the construction of imprisonment rates and on the development of the phenomenon of hyperincarceration. Comparative, contemporary and historical in its approach, the book provides a new analysis of penality in the 21st century.
