ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers the experience of loss and bereavement within the marginalised prisoner community, based on a number of pivotal papers related to bereavement care and support in prisons. It also considers the question of the sympathy and compassion towards the offender. The book explores the challenges of providing holistic palliative care within restrictive environments for the healthcare worker, the prison staff and the patients and their families. It also considers the deaths that occur within and across sites of state confinement that are produced through systemic, routine and mundane forms of state and corporate violence. The book seeks to broaden the conception of 'loss' and 'bereavement' in criminal justice by drawing attention to those social processes through which people subjected to state punishment are then rendered marginal in their post-sentence lives. It provides a personal reflection of a person-centred counsellor.
