Flinders University criminologists Professor Mark Halsey and Emeritus Professor Andrew Goldsmith have led an international reconsideration of Gresham Sykes’s seminal study of incarceration, The Society of Captives, first published more than 60 years ago.

Written with peers in the field, the book – Power and Pain in the Modern Prison (The Society of Captives Revisited), published by Oxford University Press – offers new perspectives on the forms and functions of imprisonment. It includes chapters on correctional corruption and the challenges of prison-based research by Professors Goldsmith and Halsey, as well as a chapter on race that is co-written by Flinders University senior lecturer Dr Rajeev Gundur.

The Society of Captives, first published in 1958, is a classic of modern criminology and one of the most influential books ever written about prisons.

“Common wisdom suggests that modern prison systems have become more civilised in the decades since Sykes’s book first appeared, but that is not necessarily so,” says Professor Halsey, whose current ARC study examines strategies for reducing the imprisonment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people.

“This edited collection speaks of the enduring and more recent types of pain to emerge within prisons. And, importantly, it speaks to some of the dimensions of prisons and prison life which Sykes overlooked but which are essential to any nuanced understanding of such places.”

Professor Halsey, Professor Goldsmith and University of Cambridge Professor Ben Crewe are editors of the new edition.

“Our book is an edited collection of papers by leading prison scholars from around the world that reflect upon the modern prison and how Sykes’ empirical study of a prison from a sociological perspective contributes to current understandings of prisons today,” Professor Goldsmith says.