BSC Criminology Book Prize 2004

Congratulations to Laura Piacentini (Stirling University), whose book Surviving Russian Prisons: punishment, economy and politics in transition (published by Willan last year) won the BSC Criminology Book Prize 2004 – announced at the British Society of Criminology conference in Leeds in July 2005.

www.willanpublishing.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=1843921030

Here are some of the judges' assessments of the book:

' Excellent contribution, via sustained empirical field research, to debates about the development of penal policies and practices in post Soviet Russia and more generally in transitional societies. In particular, there is a very sensitive, creative critique of deterministic notions of globalisation. The book highlights the need to understand the national and local contexts in which international analytic theories and also policy discourses are applied. '

' Excellent, sensitive and reflexive anthropological account of doing research in a very different society. Extremely resourceful and determined approach to gaining access to data despite obstacles that would have defeated many researchers. Particularly fine discussion of the dilemmas of being a female researcher, seen as a `western` monitor of allegedly backward penal practices in a particular Russian patriarchal setting. '

' Excellent contribution to an understanding of policy transfer via the discourses of human rights based penal reform that may in practice act as a form of western colonialism. '

' Excellent contribution to criminology by providing a genuinely international analysis, contributing in a very creative way to theories of crime, control and globalisation, policy transfer, feminist, qualitative research and the sociology of work and power. '

' Very clear, accessible, engaging prose style that succeeds in bringing together large macro level discussions with highly personal, reflexive accounts of the research process. The argument is presented with great verve and is both subtle and highly convincing. It does not conclude with fixed claims but presents the reader with a route through the complexities of a fast changing situation. '

' It breaks new ground theoretically, and challenges some Eurocentric assumptions about human rights in Russian prisons. It is written in an engaging style: lively and committed, readable but scholarly. '

'Surviving Russian Prisons challenges conventional wisdom about the universal applicability of human rights standards on imprisonment, in particular in relation to prison labour, where the international rules are exposed as inadequate and largely irrelevant to the Russian context. '

' The methodology chapter will be helpful to other lone, female, western researchers working in Russia, and it adds an extra dimension to the existing literature on gender and prison research. '

' A well-written, readable addition to the literature of the purposes of imprisonment and comparative prison literature. It was a rare example of an un-put-downable criminology research book. The sections on barter and prisons' role in economic survival are highly original. The hypocrisy implicit in much western intellectual "aid" to poorer countries is tellingly exposed. '

' I was entirely convinced by the main arguments of the book. The author's immersion in Russian culture and history make it entirely authoritative. '