Carrabine seeks to show how various dimensions of the prison’s organization, culture and demolition were imprinted by discourses of masculinity, the analysis

and demolition were imprinted by discourses of masculinity, the analysis is also somewhat uncomfortable. To identify the gendered elements of prison officer culture, management styles and of violent transgression is certainly important, but the sections in which Carrabine does so feel a little ‘tacked-on’. The book is also somewhat concept-heavy. It is always refreshing to see a criminologist draw on social and cultural theory, but at times the explanation of terms such as ‘translation’, ‘drift’, ‘resistance’, ‘genealogy’ and ‘fatalism’ makes for difficult reading. The last term is the most important and the most problematic. If fatalism promotes stability, but can also lead to such deep feelings of hopelessness that prisoners are inclined towards dramatic displays of agency, how are we to understand which one is the likely outcome? To some degree, this is precisely Carrabine’s point: that we cannot over-generalize about when riots will occur and the shape they will take. True though this is, the difference between shrugging one’s shoulders and taking up arms is significant and this difference would merit further exploration. Finally, Carrabine may have overstated the degree to which fatalism is absent from previous discussions of prison order. Sparks et al. (1996) would no doubt argue that their description of the Vulnerable Prisoners Unit at HMP Albany is all about prisoners being resigned to the ‘external fact’ of their predicament, in the absence of legitimacy. Nevertheless, in the term ‘dull compulsion’, Carrabine has provided a crucial vocabulary for a key element of prison life that has certainly been under-theorized elsewhere. His book is crammed with interesting ideas about the diverse sources of order and resistance; and his ambition to span traditional dualisms within prison sociology should serve as an example to others within the field.