Prisons are not the only places where people are held captive

By Prof. Ian O’Donnell and Prof. Eoin O’Sullivan

How do we know if a society is punitive? This might seem like an easy question to answer. Just count the number of people in prison and divide by the national population. The higher the rate, the more punitive the country.

But imprisonment rates are only part of the picture and the preoccupation with levels of incarceration in prisons deflects attention from a wide range of institutions that have been used to manage what are seen to be troubled or troubling groups.

What about patients held against their will in psychiatric hospitals? Or children detained in secure residential facilities of one kind or another? Or unmarried mothers and wayward girls who spend years in religious-run institutions? Or those seeking asylum from persecution whose freedom is curtailed while their applications for international protection are processed?

These cases, and others like them, are not usually considered when discussing levels of incarceration. Our view is that they should be. For this reason, we coined the term ‘coercive confinement’ to capture the wide variety of ways that people can be denied their liberty.

Taking Ireland as a case study, and looking at the long-term trend, the rate of imprisonment has steadily increased. This might suggest a society that is becoming more punitive. However, if we broaden the focus to coercive confinement, the trend is in the opposite direction. A massive reduction in the number of inmates – especially women and children – has been accompanied by a contraction in the range of sites of confinement, and the increasingly dominant role of the state (religious-run institutions are a thing of the past).

No longer are pregnant women locked away for fear of scandal. Children are not placed in institutions on account of their poverty or a perceived deficit of parental control. Psychiatric hospitalization is used much more sparingly. The level of coercive confinement in Ireland has declined dramatically since the 1950s, when it stood at more than one per cent of the population. This staggeringly high rate is even more remarkable when one considers that this was a time of huge outward migration. Without the safety valve of the emigrant boat, the level of coercive confinement would doubtless have soared further.

There were considerable difficulties associated with assembling the data required for our investigation. Partly this is because they are collated by a range of agencies encompassing criminal justice, education, health, and social care. Partly it is because the state did not prioritize the collection or publication of figures on populations that were stigmatized, vulnerable, and seen to be beyond the pale. Partly it is because the religious bodies which played a central role in some of these institutions have been reluctant to open their files to the public, as have some government departments. Sometimes the best that can be offered is a cautious estimate based on incomplete materials.

Despite all of these practical problems, the trends are clear and if we could make the shift from thinking in terms of imprisonment to thinking in terms of coercive confinement, we would view changes in the field of punishment very differently. This has major implications for theoretical and applied research.

None of the institutions of coercive confinement that we describe was unique to Ireland and it would be fascinating to trace their usage over time in other countries. While the texture of coercive confinement will no doubt vary according to the context in which it is observed, the time has now come to apply this idea more widely with a view to probing its parameters.

Our challenge to colleagues is to explore the extent to which the patterns found in Ireland are replicated elsewhere. The data collection challenges that are likely to accompany such an exercise should not diminish the urgency with which it is approached.

Article Details

‘Coercive confinement’: An idea whose time has come?
Ian O’Donnell and Eoin O’Sullivan
First published: July 23, 2020 Research article
DOI: 10.1177/2632666320936440
From Incarceration: An international journal of imprisonment, detention and coercive confinement

About the Authors