Skip to content
Open search
Close search popup

Search the site

Suggested Pages

  • Welcome from the Principal
  • Why Linacre College
  • How to apply

Most Popular

  • Scholarships
  • Common Room
  • Vacancies

Quick Links

  • Conference & Hospitality
  • Facilities
  • Daily Menu
  • About
    About
    • Welcome from the Principal
    • College History
    • People at Linacre
    • Vacancies
    • Sustainablility
    • Strategy & Annual Reports
    • Statutes, Regulations & Policies
    • Global Community
    • Centre for Eudaimonia
    • Merchandise
    • Go back
  • Study Here
    Study Here
    • Why Linacre College
    • How to apply
    • Fees
    • Scholarships
    • Graduate Access
    • Life after Linacre
    • Go back
  • College Life
    College Life
    • Common Room
    • Student Support
    • Accommodation
    • College Facilities
    • Student Handbook
    • Fellows
    • Awards
    • Linacre Seminar Series
    • Go back
  • Alumni
    Alumni
    • Events
    • Support Linacre
    • Global Community
    • Linacre News
    • Networks & Societies
    • Update Your Details
    • Visiting Linacre
    • Alumni Cards
    • Go back
  • News & Events
    News & Events
    • News
    • Events
    • Linacre Lectures
    • Go back
  • Conference & Hospitality
  • Current Members
  • Contact
twitter twitter instagram instagram facebook facebook linkedin linkedin

Professor Ian O’Donnell

Director, UCD Institute of Criminology

Linacre Adjunct Fellow Ian O’Donnell’s latest book, Prison Life: Pain, Resistance, and Purpose, has been awarded the 2023 Outstanding Book Award, given by the American Society of Criminology’s Division of International Criminology. Professor O’Donnell will collect his prize in Philadelphia next month.

 

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.

 

Professor O’Donnell contrasts the soul-destroying isolation of the federal supermax in Florence, Colorado with the crowded conviviality of an Ethiopian prison where men and women cook their own meals, seek opportunities to generate an income, elect a leadership team, and live according to a code of conduct that they devised and enforce. He explores life on wings controlled by the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland’s H Blocks, where men who saw the actions that led to their incarceration as politically-motivated moved as one, in perpetual defiance of the authorities. He shows how prisoners in Texas took to the courts to overthrow a regime that allowed their routine subjugation by violent men known as building tenders, who had been selected by staff to supervise and discipline their peers.

Back to all people

Where next?

Facilities Life after Linacre Fees

Facilities

Life after Linacre

Fees

Linacre College offers a stimulating and supportive graduate community at the University of Oxford.

twitter twitter instagram instagram facebook facebook linkedin linkedin

Contact

Linacre College
St. Cross Road,
Oxford
OX1 3JA

01865 271650

Quick links

  • Study Here
  • Conference & Hospitality
  • Current Members
  • Daily Menu
  • Accommodation
  • Vacancies

© Linacre College 2025

• Accessibility Statement

• Privacy Policy

• Registered Offices

© Linacre College 2025

Web design by TWK