This book provides an overview of the incarceration of tens of thousands of men, women and children during the first fifty years of Irish independence. Psychiatric hospitals, mother and baby homes, Magdalen homes, reformatory and industrial schools, prisons and borstal formed a network of institutions of coercive confinement that was integral to the emerging state. The book, now available in paperback after performing superbly in hardback, provides a wealth of contemporaneous accounts of what life was like within these austere and forbidding places as well as offering a compelling explanation for the longevity of the system and the reasons for its ultimate decline. While many accounts exist of individual institutions and the factors associated with their operation, this is the first attempt to provide a holistic account of the interlocking range of institutions that dominated the physical landscape and, in many ways, underpinned the rural economy. Highlighting the overlapping roles of church, state and family in the maintenance of these forms of social control, this book will appeal to those interested in understanding twentieth-century Ireland: in particular, historians, legal scholars, criminologists, sociologists and other social scientists.

Reviews

Most of these people were simply locked up in state institutions, creating a shameful legacy that is only now being dragged into the light. Coercive Confinement in Ireland is a valuable contribution to that process., Andrew Lynch, Sunday Business Post|Some of the documents reproduced here give a powerful insight into the social mores of the time., Andrew Lynch, Sunday Business Post|"Coercive Confinement in Ireland deserves a readership well beyond its jurisdiction of interest.", Mark Finnane, Griffith University, Australia, Punishment & Society, 28 March 2013|This book is brilliant in conception, haunting in its emotional reach through the contemporaneous accounts, and altogether illuminating.
This is a hugely important, major and scholarly contribution to our understanding of the different forms and shapes of regulatory control., David Wilson, The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Howard Journal Vol 53 No 1, pp.104-115, 2014|"O'Sullivan and O'Donnell provide an outstanding insight into the raison d'être of these various institutions; their relationships with the state, the Church, and society at large (often forgotten); entry and (often torturous) exit pathways; the flow of individuals across institutions (transcarceration); the routines and practices employed therein; and the subjective experiences of the bad, the mad, the fallen and the vulnerable....This is an outstanding book, one which is superbly written and crafted."

(Shane Kilcommins, University College Cork, Irish Journal of Sociology, 2014), Shane Kilcommins, University College Cork, Irish Journal of Sociology, 2014|Overall, this is a fascinating collection and O'Sullivan and O'Donnell's contextual introductory and concluding chapters are informative and thought provoking. The book will be useful to scholars interested in institutional care and also in teaching, with its short extracts providing interesting material for students to read and analyse through group work and individual reflection., Linda Moore, University of Ulster, Irish Studies Review, 10 November 2014|Overall, this is a fascinating collection and O'Sullivan and O'Donnell's contextual introductory and concluding chapters are informative and thought provoking. The book will be useful to scholars interested in institutional care and also in teaching, with its short extracts providing interesting material for students to read and analyse through group work and individual reflection., Linda Moore, University of Ulster, Irish Studies Review, 23.1, 1 February 2015

Introduction
1. Setting the scene
Part I: Patients, paupers and unmarried mothers
2. How to deal with the unmarried mother - Sagart
3. The unmarried mother: some legal aspects of the problem - Richard Devane
4. A plea for social service - Humbert MacInerny
5. Report Commission on the relief of the sick and destitute poor, including the insane poor
6. Report Inter-departmental committee appointed to examine the question of the reconstruction and replacement of county homes
7. Irish journey - Halliday Sutherland
8. Report commission of inquiry on mental illness
9. No birthright: a study of the Irish unmarried mother and her child - Michael Viney
10. Bird's nest soup - Hanna Greally
11. Mental illness: an inquiry - Michael Viney
Part II: Prisoners
12. The prisons - Edward Fahy
13. I did penal servitude - D83222
14. Prisons and prisoners in Ireland: report on certain aspects of prison conditions in portlaoighise convict prison - The Labour Party
15. The spyhole - Shea Murphy
16. Dungeons deep: a monograph on prisons, Borstals, reformatories and industrial schools in the republic of Ireland, and some reflections on crime and punishment and matters relating thereto - Peadar Cowan
Part III: Troubled and troublesome children
17. Report commission of Inquiry into the Reformatory and Industrial School System
18. Memorandum on children in institutions, boarded out and nurse children - Joint Committee of Women's Societies and Social Workers
19. Founded on fear: letterfrack industrial school, war and exile - Peter Tyrrell
20. Some of our children: a report on the residential care of the deprived child in Ireland - Tuairim
21. The dismal world of Daingean - Michael Viney
22. Report Committee and reformatory and industrial schools systems
23. The road to God knows where - Sean Maher
Index

Authors

Eoin O'Sullivan is Head of the School of Social Work and Social Policy and Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin|Ian O'Donnell is Professor of Criminology at University College Dublin and Adjunct Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford