Prisons of the World

In 2022 Andrew Coyle’s book Prisons of the World was published by Bristol University Press.  I reviewed the book for FATIK, a Dutch-language journal on prisons and penal policy which is published by the Flemish League of Human Rights (the review (in Dutch) is available here).  In this post you can read a translated version of my review of Coyle’s book.

In Prisons of the World, Andrew Coyle looks back on a rich career in which the prison has always been central. He does this from different angles and positions he has held over the past half century: prison director, advisor/expert, professor, head of the International Center for Prison Studies, … The book deals – as he writes in the opening sentence of the introductory chapter – about the world of prisons and jails of the world. Coyle tells his story of almost fifty years of professional involvement in that world, a lifetime in which he visited hundreds of prisons in more than 70 countries. His experience is extensive and unique. Although the book does not provide a comprehensive overview – that would be virtually impossible – Coyle is able to share with the reader some of his memories and impressions and uses his experiences to elaborate on a number of themes.

In chapter two, Coyle takes the reader back to the start of his career and discusses in detail his experiences as a prison director. In 1973 he started as Assistant Governor at Edinburgh Prison in Scotland. In the following years he would take on leadership roles in various places in the Scottish prison system. In 1991, Coyle started working at Brixton Prison in London, where he remained until 1997, after which he took up a position at the University of London.

Coyle focuses the reader’s attention mainly on his experiences in Peterhead and Brixton. Between November 1986 and October 1987 there were riots in several Scottish prisons, including Peterhead where two prison officers were taken hostage. The action ended when Margaret Thatcher sent a team of SAS soldiers to the prison. In May 1988 Coyle became director of Peterhead. After the incidents in October 1987, all detainees were placed in isolation in their cells, which led to a lot of dissatisfaction that was also expressed, for example by smearing feces on the cell walls. The personnel wore helmets and protective clothing. In that context, Coyle took over the role of director to get the prison back on track.

In 1991, Coyle was called upon to run Brixton prison. The London prison had a bad reputation. On 7 July 1991, two category A detainees suspected of IRA-related offenses escaped and took a guard hostage. An investigation followed, after which the director’s head rolled. Against that backdrop, Coyle would start in Brixton. Coyle turned out to be a handy communicator: he invited journalists and camera crews to the prison and showed the difficult living and working conditions. However, the reforms he was able to initiate would die a quiet death shortly after his departure in 1997. It taught him an important lesson about prison reform: “…while attempts at prison reform and improvement are always to be encouraged, ultimately they can only have limited success until such time as there is a root and branch re-examination of the principles on which imprisonment is based and the manner in which it is currently (over)used in many countries at great social and fiscal expense” (p. 30).

From chapter 3 (‘Prisons of the world’) onwards Coyle goes out into the wide world. In 1984 he traveled to the United States (US) and Canada to study the treatment of long-term prisoners. In the US, the so-called ‘supermax’ departments attracted his attention (that is, high-security units in already high-security institutions), and in Canada the handling of violence in detention. Those first experiences turned out to be relevant for his later work in both countries. For example, Coyle was involved in lawsuits exposing extreme prison conditions in the US (seclusion in the infamous Pelican Bay prison in California) or the suicide of a young female inmate in Canada. Chapter 4 (‘International Center for Prison Studies’) discusses his research interest in the prison world. In 1981, while still working as a prison director, he started his PhD research at the University of Edinburgh, under the supervision of Derick McClintock. In 1986, Coyle obtained his doctorate with a thesis entitled ‘The organizational development of the Scottish Prison Service with particular reference to the role and influence of the prison officer’. In 1997 he left the prison system and went to work at King’s College London, where he founded the International Center for Prison Studies (ICPS). During that period he also increasingly acted as an advisor to international organizations such as the UN and the Council of Europe.

Chapter 5 is devoted to women in detention: Coyle talks about a ‘forgotten minority’. About 93% of all prisoners are male and prison systems are designed accordingly. Coyle recalls a theme that caused quite a stir in England in the mid-1990s: pregnant women who gave birth in handcuffs to prevent escapes. In Costa Rica, he noticed that – after an escape from a men’s prison – extra security fences were installed around all the prisons, including a women’s prison that Coyle visited. The director was disappointed: no detainee had ever escaped from her institution and those resources could be much better spent on activities to prepare the women for life after detention.

Chapter 6 (‘The legacy of the Gulag’) is about prisons in the former Soviet Union. From 1992, one year after the collapse of the Russian Empire, Coyle made several visits in various capacities. He looks back on, among other things, the penal colonies and labour camps. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the gulag, a labour-based system that was a vital part of the Russian economy, also fell into disrepair. The penal colonies continued to exist in the 1990s, but they mainly became a burden for the government. Coyle also discusses Belarus, which has been under the control of its president-dictator Lukashenko since its independence (in 1991). He visited the country and its prisons for the first time in October 1994: on his first night in Minsk he was almost run over. His visit to Zhodino revealed that the prison did not receive foreign visitors very often: Coyle and his group were repeatedly warned about the freshly painted walls and doors. He returned in 1997. A feeling of powerlessness came over him: “Only once have I come in contact with a prison system where I reluctantly had to conclude that there was neither the political nor the practical will to change and that by continuing to be involved with that system one would merely be providing a veneer of respectability to an immovable structure. That one time was in Belarus in 1997” (p. 66). In Moscow in 1992 he visited the heavily overcrowded SIZO n° 2 prison (Butyrka): he describes the tour as ‘a journey into hell’ (p. 68). Detainees were held en masse in musty, semi-dark rooms of about 80 square meters, where they had less than one square meter of space and had to sleep in turns due to a lack of sufficient beds.

Chapter 7 is devoted to his experiences with the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) of the Council of Europe. The CPT went to the UK in 1990, in its first year of operation, in the wake of the Strangeways Prison uprising and came to a harsh assessment of the three prisons it visited during its mission, describing detention conditions as inhumane and degrading. Coyle was meanwhile a director in Brixton, one of the prisons visited, and was therefore also involved in developing the response to the CPT report: “Immersed as I was in the pressing challenge of restoring a degree of normality and sanity to the battered and demoralized prison, I found myself dancing on the head of a pin as the Home Office drafters sought a form of words to refute the CPT’s finding that prisoners in the UK were being subjected to ‘inhuman and degrading treatment”’ (p. 79). Coyle would later participate, as an ad hoc expert, in several CPT missions, including visits to Russia in 1998 and 1999, which left a deep impression on him. It was a fascinating period in European history, with a growing number of countries from Central and Eastern Europe becoming members of the Council of Europe and ratifying the European Anti-Torture Convention, including Russia, in 1998. In November 1998, the CPT immediately went to Russia for a first visit. During the 1999 visit, Coyle visited Kresty Prison, in St. Petersburg: the institution could accommodate 1,150 people, but during the visit it housed 10,000 inmates and had serious tuberculosis problems. Detainees slept in a rotating system due to a shortage of beds. Some prisoners reported that their main activity was limited to joining three queues: the toilet queue, the water supply queue and the window breather queue. The prison closed its doors in 2018.

In chapter 8, Coyle shifts his focus to Cambodia and Japan. Cambodia has a bloody past: the Khmer Rouge terrorized the country and its people in the second half of the 1970s (1975-79). Coyle traveled to Cambodia in 1995, at the request of the UN, to provide advice on prison reform. He visited the infamous T3 prison in Phnom Penh, which was in particularly poor condition and would eventually close its doors in 2000. In the same chapter he also discusses his experiences in Japan, under the heading ‘prison as a reflection of a society’. Japan traditionally has a low detention rate, but the regime is extremely strict and violations are severely punished. In 1996 he visited Fuchu Prison, the largest in Japan with a capacity of 2,600. When detainees were in their cells (without heating), they had to sit motionless on a tatami mat. While working in the workshops, they sat or stood with their heads bowed about their task: “Not one eye was raised as our party passed through, neither did the prisoners look at each other” (p. 111). There was a complete lack of ‘human rapport’ between staff and detainees. During a visit to a detention center in Tokyo, Coyle learned that the medical team was mainly concerned with surgically removing objects that prisoners swallowed (in order to escape prison). It was indicative of the lack of humanity in Japanese prisons, so Coyle suggests.

In chapter 9 he turns his gaze to Latin America. Coyle gets straight to the point: here are some of the most problematic prisons in the world, with gang violence and inmates controlling prisons. He elaborates, among other things, on his visit to the Villahermosa prison, in Cali (Colombia), in 1995. While Coyle and his group were waiting in line to enter the prison, they noticed that a man in front of them in the line – dressed in a suit and tie – was carrying a large leather bag: when he was asked to open it, it turned out to contain a lot of cash. The man was allowed in without any problems. The money would be used to buy privileges or distributed among gang members. In addition, all buildings around the prison turned out to be owned by members of the local drug cartel. The drug trafficking continued from prison. In Venezuela – where Chavez came to power and wanted to implement reforms in the deplorable prison system (which Chavez himself had experienced) – Coyle visited the La Planta prison, in Caracas. There were few staff in the prison and no guards in the living areas. Prisoners belonged to different gangs and were assigned a living unit based on their gang affiliation. The toilets – a row of open holes with no shielding – stank for hours in the wind and flies and rats were ubiquitous. During the visit, the director who showed Coyle around pointed out trash in a room under which the detainees hid their weapons. There were about 80 murders in the prison annually. The prison would finally close its doors in 2012.

In 2006 he visited Pavon prison in Guatemala. The institution was owned by the prisoners and this was even laid down in a formal agreement that transferred internal control to the prisoners. At the time of his visit, there were 1,627 inmates and 40 prison officers, who were concerned only with the prison’s perimeter. Visits were only possible with the consent of the detainees and at your own risk. Some detainees had a luxurious life behind bars, financed by organized crime. On September 25, 2006, the government sent 3,000 police and soldiers to the prison to regain control. There were 7 deaths in the prison.

El Salvador is also discussed in the same chapter. Coyle visited the country for the first time in October 1999, following a seminar on prison reform. He also noticed the violence in El Salvador, which was mainly gang-related. After a deadly clash between two gangs – with 31 victims – the government decided to segregate the gang members, in two prisons for each rival gang, effectively taking control of the prisons. The prison policy went completely off the rails, as he was able to discover for himself in 2016 when he returned. He was struck by, among other things, the extremely heavy overcrowding, such as in the Mariona prison (about 5,000 inmates for 800 places). Gang members were subjected to exceptional measures, confined to small overcrowded spaces, without the right to visit, and with a brief moment of fresh air once a week or every two weeks. In the Dominican Republic he visited the prison in Santo Domingo. There were long lines of women at the gate, waiting to enter, paying to gain entry. The prison (La Victoria) had about 4500 prisoners for 1200 places in 2003; in 2020, that figure had grown even further to 9,000. Prisoners paid for everything they needed: a place to sleep, food, drink, medication, visitors, transport to court or hospital, etc.

Chapter 10 takes us to Barbados, in the Caribbean. Coyle visited Glendairy Prison which was built in 1855. It is the only prison in Barbados and can hold 245 inmates. At the time of his visit (in September 1994) there were 702 male and 22 female detainees. In the prison there was also a separate section where prisoners who had been sentenced to death stayed. With the exception of 30 minutes of ventilation in a small caged room, they spent the entire day in unventilated cells. In 2005, the prison became unusable due to a fire. The detainees were transferred to Harrison Point, where living conditions were substandard. Coyle would testify about it in Costa Rica, before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Barbados was convicted on November 20, 2007. Chapter 11 then heads to Africa, where he visited South Africa in August 1995, shortly after the end of Apartheid, and on to Gambia and Mozambique.

Chapter 12 is entirely devoted to a special mission. In March 2002, Coyle was asked to travel to Ramallah to investigate security arrangements at the prison at Yasser Arafat’s compound, the Mukataa. This involved the inspection of the detention of prisoners held by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah prison. The operation must be framed against the background of the assassination of Israeli minister Rehavam Ze’evi in ​​Jerusalem in October 2001. The PFLP claimed responsibility. Under great pressure, Arafat would have Ahmed Sa’adat, Secretary General of the PFLP, arrested and demand that the four men directly involved in the murder be handed over to the PLO in Ramallah. The Israeli government (led by Ariel Sharon) was convinced that the detention of the prisoners would be a joke and that they were largely free to leave the Mukataa. Israel wanted to hold them themselves, but Arafat resisted. Hence Tony Blair, during a visit to Sharon in November 2001, suggested that the UK send a team to inspect the detention of prisoners and confirm that they were effectively locked up. At the end of April, Coyle was contacted again and shortly afterwards he would effectively be part of such an operation, which unfolded against the tense backdrop of the second intifada. Coyle played an important role in the negotiations and eventual transfer of the prisoners to Jericho. In the following years, Coyle would return several times. In 2004, the search for an exit scenario became increasingly urgent: on March 14, 2006, the IDF carried out an operation and manu militari took control.

In the final chapter ‘Towards ‘a better way’ Coyle reflects on the future of the prison. He sees hopeful signals in ‘Justice Reinvestment’ initiatives: how many resources do we pump into the criminal justice system, what are the benefits we reap from this, and how can we better deploy those resources elsewhere to achieve a better return? He discusses the experiences in Oregon (where youth incarceration was dramatically reduced through initiatives focused on investing in community services rather than incarceration) and Connecticut (where a similar approach led to a reduction in the prison population). In the longer term, however, a more radical approach is needed, with a focus on ‘human development’, Coyle believes. In the words of UNDP, this is about “expanding the richness of human life, rather than simply the richness of the economy in which human beings live” (p. 212). Coyle highlights that the UN Sustainable Development Goals also have an explicit reference to ‘justice’, especially in Goal 16: “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels” (p. 213). Or again: “…in a time of world economic austerity the argument for a redistribution of the large expenditure on reactive criminal justice solutions to proactive community solutions becomes increasingly relevant” (p. 214).

And with those reflections we have come to the end of Prisons of the World, a fascinating and accessible book written by an author who has come to know this world so well. We have only discussed a few themes from the book here; and the book itself is – in turn – just a sampling of Andrew Coyle’s rich and extensive experience of prisons and incarceration, in all corners of the world. Highly recommended.

(this is a review of Andrew Coyle, Prisons of the World. Bristol University Press, 2022, 241 pages – the review was published originally (in Dutch), online and open access, in issue 182 (2/2024) of FATIK).