Based on a lifetime of experience and drawing on ancient values Alison Liebling has produced a book that is essential reading for anyone concerned with penal reform. She writes not only as an academic but as one who herself has been shaped and changed by the values she expounds. Compassionate, wise and thoroughly researched, this book will become a classic of its kind. * Sir Terry Waite, KCMG CBE * This is an extraordinary book - the crowning jewel of a career - a life even. It has a texture and a richness that are oh, so rare. The book vibrates. Mobilizing immense and beautiful sources, it simultaneously says important things about prisons, about life in general, and about the author, insightfully suggesting that prison enhances moral reality in all its complexity and urgency. It is strikingly humanistic. My encounter with the text was truly memorable. * Leo Zaibert, Professor of Penal Theory and Ethics, University of Cambridge * This is a 'life's work' volume, drawing together learning from over 30 years of research conducted largely by standing alongside staff and prisoners in this country and across the world. It is a very personal work, driven by passion as well as an unmatched depth of knowledge. It can honestly claim to be equivalent to the first reliable map of a prison's DNA, explaining what it is that makes a prison a safe and life-enhancing place to live or work. Alison describes what a good prison officer does more convincingly and comprehensively than anyone I've ever come across. Crucially, the book provides a way to measure how close prisons are to reaching that condition, and where the threshold lies for those few that do. * Peter Dawson, former prison Governor, and former Director of the Prison Reform Trust * When approaching my research inside America's most violent prisons I turned to the work of Alison Liebling. Made possible only by Liebling's unique strategy for immersive research working inside prisons, this book, for once, captures the whole story of the prison as an institution. I've referred to Alison in front of my students as "the prison whisperer" - because her work gets so close to the pains, fears, and occasionally growth points, of those directly impacted by prison. She reveals the power, wisdom, and utility of kindness in otherwise extremely difficult circumstances. This book is invaluable. It foregrounds human suffering but manages to capture and operationalize the exceptional nature of the survivable prison. * Dr. Michael Hallett, Professor of Criminology & Criminal Justice at the University of North Florida * This book will shape our understanding of criminology as a moral science for decades to come. * Professor Susanne Karstedt, Griffith University *
