Book Review: The Arts of Imprisonment: Control, Resistance and Empowerment. By Leonidas k. Cheliotis, ed. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012, 322pp. £65.00 hb)

There has been a growing emphasis on aesthetics within criminology (e.g. Young 2005; Millie 2008; Carrabine 2012). The Arts of Imprisonment: Control, Resistance and Empowerment adds to this ‘aesthetic criminology’ by drawing our attention to relationships between the arts and prison, including ‘the visual, design, performing, media, musical and literary genres ... [as] an alternative lens through which to understand state-sanctioned punishment and its place in public consciousness’ (p. 1). Themes covered include prisoner arts as resistance, prisoner literature and prisons in literature, prison architecture and prison music (from singing in nineteenth-century Greek prisons to Hip Hop). The book contains 17 chapters from 20 authors.