Table of Contents

Foreword by Phil Scraton
Prologue: 29 October 1987, Jika Jika High-Security Unit, HM Pentridge Prison, Coburg, Victoria, Australia

IntroductionModern High Security in AustraliaImprisoning Resistance: The Politics of Modern High-SecurityDisciplinary Power, Resistance and High-SecurityCultures of Violence and High-SecurityOfficial Discourse and Official Responses to Disorder, Death and Institutional CrisisBook Overview

Part One: Power and Resistance
Polarisation, Power and Prisoner Resistance in Australian Maximum-Security During the Explosive 1970sManaging a Resistance Proff Panopticon: The Official Beginnings of the Jika Jika High-Security UnitContextualising Resistance: Prisoner Accounts of Power and Survival in the 'Pressure-Can''Rebelling Against the Dictatorial Regime in Jika' : Acts of Prisoner Transgression and Resistance

Part Two: Concealing Crisis
Descent into Crisis: The Deaths of John Williams and Sean Downie
Exonerating Institutional Liability: Official Responses to the Death of Sean DownieImprisoning Crises: Official Responses to the Jika Fire as Strategies of Damage Control and Concealment
Epilogue Bibliography Index

Reviews

Bree Carlton in Imprisoning Resistance offers a committed researcher's account of the transition from H Division at Pentridge prison in Victoria to the high security Jika Jika unit which operated from 1979 until its closure as a high security unit after the October 1987 fire that claimed the lives of five prisoners. Importantly... the book focuses on transitions and transmission, the deeply flawed attempts to transfer the problematic functions of high security prison regimes into new architectural setting and 'new' control regimes, in part a shift from control and punishment through direct and brutal physical violence to forms of enviromental and psychological control, or what the Jika Jika prisoners often referred to as 'mind games'... - David Brown, Emeritus Professor, University of NSW, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, Volume 21 No 1, July 2009