How I[reland] learned to stop worrying and love the prison

This essay pieces together the history of Ireland's prison system. It does this by looking at prison from the formation of the State and tracing the changing penal priorities, policies, and practices up to the present day. In the short history of our nation, the prison was at one time shaped by an admirable, but now largely forgotten, humane pastoral penality, which gave way to an express punitive sentiment in the 1990s. This history should matter to those of us interested in penal reform and social justice today. In recovering Ireland's history of penal policy, an attempt is made to develop what Nellis has called "a historically tutored memory so as "to ensure that our penal heritage is properly remembered." This can remind the Irish Prison Service of "its roots and its achievements, its turning points, its lost opportunities, its past ambitions," but also "its still unrealised possibilities."