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Crime in Literature: Sociology of Deviance and Fiction

challenge the underlying philosophy of punishment and incarceration. It is in offering a new vision both of prison scholarship and of the foundation on which some of the most debilitating and counterproductive technologies of control lies that Rhodes’ work can be read with a sense of optimism. Although her own theoretical framework would seem to lie in a poststructural direction, she avoids, to paraphrase Sartre, dissolving her subjects in a vat of structural sulfuric acid that renders the human subject invisible. I read her volume as an existential treatise that, while not rejecting the need for punishment and control, challenges us to rethink how we implement them in ways that respect and promote the dignity of the human spirit and common humanity on both sides of the walls. Some readers might cavil that Rhodes’ volume is yet another exercise in giving voice to male prisoners and continuing the invisibility of incarcerated women. But, such criticisms obscure two points. First, prisons keep people (especially researchers) out, just as they keep people in. Access to any prison to conduct ethnographic research does not always conform to the researcher’s preferences. We get in where we can. Second, and most important, such a criticism misses the point. Rhodes’ Foucault-based theoretical and conceptual framework offers a powerful means of examining gender issues on both sides of the walls. It also expands ways to examine what Jones and Schmid (2003) view as the parallel prison experiences shared both by men and women by looking at the common frameworks that sustain each. Rhodes’ volume significantly advances recent work on women (e.g., Bosworth 1999; Zaitzow and Thomas 2003) by suggesting new ways to expand on gender and social control. Despite the subtle sophistication of the underlying theoretical foundations that weave the data into a tapestry of rich conceptual insights, this well written volume is exceptionally accessible to specialists, students, and nonacademics. Perhaps because Rhodes is an anthropologist by training, an observer of mental health and corrections in practice, and a theoretically grounded scholar by design, Total Confinement cuts across a variety of disciplines and would be of interest to practitioners, researchers, and informed lay persons. It would be of special interest to social scientists, mental health specialists, and of course, to criminal justice and corrections professionals. The blend of theoretical, conceptual, and empirical issues would make this suitable as a supplement for theory or methods courses as well. Her easy writing style, combined with numerous diagrams, prisoner poems and other writings, and photographs add ethnographic detail that enrich, rather than detract, from the prose, making it a valuable volume for both graduate and undergraduate students. While books that have something for everybody too often have little for anybody, Total Confinement is a welcome and valuable exception.