Transgender Prisoners Book Launch

Book launch: Olga Suhomlinova and Saoirse Caitlin O’Shea. Transgender and Non-binary Prisoners’ Experiences in England and Wales. Emerald Publishing

Wednesday 8 January 2025 4:00pm – 6:00pm

Peter Jackson Lecture Theatre, Brookfield, School of Business, LE2 1RQ

The monograph ‘Transgender and Non-binary Prisoners’ Experiences in England and Wales’ released in November 2024 by Emerald Publishing is an outcome of a three-year-long research project during which the authors – Dr Olga Suhomlinova, University of Leicester School of Business, and Dr Saoirse Caitlin O’Shea, the Open University Business School - engaged in correspondence with 19 transgender women and 4 non-binary individuals incarcerated across nineteen prisons for men, generating a unique half-million-word archive of their accounts of life before and in prison. The book combines the first-person narratives with historical and policy analyses of treatment of trans and non-binary people in the English prison system and critical assessments of material and interpersonal aspects of their confinement.

The monograph has already collected glowing endorsements from academic experts. Valerie Jenness, Distinguished Professor at University of California, Irvine, and President of the American Society of Criminology (2024), wrote:

This book works on multiple levels: it honours diverse voices of the transgender and non-binary people …, demystifies prison life.., and interrogates how gender infuses prison regimes and how prison policy and practice encode gender. For these reasons, this book should be read by researchers, teachers, politicians and other policymakers, activists and advocates, and others interested in learning important lessons about the nexus between gender diversity and the carceral state in England and Wales – and beyond.

Dr Matt Maycock, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Monash University, described the book as ‘rich, complex, and engaging’, and the analysis – one of best ‘relating to experiences of prison, trans or otherwise’. The project participants who read the manuscript prior to its publication found it ‘accessible’, ‘powerful’, and ‘impactful’, tackling ‘the raw realities of life for transgender prisoners’, with ‘care and sensitivity’ (Jess, Hotaru, and Poppy [pseudonyms]). They also described it as a ‘prison primer’ that captures the entire ‘diaspora of the prison estate with all its variances’ and lays out prison realities not just for transgender and non-binary but all prisoners (Fayth [pseudonym]).

Programme

LOCATION: Peter Jackson Lecture Theatre, Brookfield, School of Business, LE2 1RQ