ABSTRACT
A central contention of this book is that it is impossible to study imprisonment in general, and the administration of prisons in particular, without paying attention to the relationship between important social actors and those ideas, beliefs and forms of knowledge (which we shall term discourses) that shape and contextualise imprisonment. We have already noted in the Introduction how our work has taken place at a confluence of subdisciplines in the social sciences and provided an initial statement of our perspective. This chapter begins to elaborate aspects of this position and is divided into three sections. First, to contextualise our discussion of the Scottish prison system today, we provide a brief historical account of its development; second, we characterise its current institutional topography and identify the most important social actors; and third, we examine some historical and comparative trends in the use of imprisonment. Hence, this chapter looks at institutions and actors in a comparative and historical context. The next chapter examines discourses in a similar way.
