Foreword: on stemming the tide Thomas Mathiesen
1. Why prison? Posing the question David Scott
2. Prisons and social structure in late-capitalist societies Alessandro De Giorgi
3. The prison paradox in neoliberal Britain Emma Bell
4. Crafting the neoliberal state: workfare, prisonfare, and social insecurity Loic Wacquant
5. Pleasure, punishment and the professional middle class Magnus Hornqvist
6. Penal spectatorship and the culture of punishment Michelle Brown
7. Prison and the public sphere: toward a democratic theory of penal order Vanessa Barker
8. The iron cage of prison studies Mark Brown
9. The prison and national identity: citizenship, punishment and the sovereign state Emma Kaufman and Mary Bosworth
10. Punishing the detritus and the damned: penal and semi-penal institutions in Liverpool Vickie Cooper and Joe Sim
11. Why prison? Incarceration and the great recession Keally McBride
12. Ghosts of the past, present, and future of penal reform in the United States Marie Gottschalk
13. Schooling the carceral state: challenging the school to prison pipeline Erica Meiners
14. Why no prisons? Julia Oparah; 15. Unequalled in pain David Scott.