Introduction: New Perspectives on Prison Masculinities

According to the 11th World Prison Brief, more than 9 in 10 (93%) of the world’s prisoners are male (Warmsley 2016). While over recent years there has been a small but significant increase in the proportion of female prisoners globally, male prisoners still constitute the vast majority of prisoners in all 223 prison systems in independent countries and dependent territories considered in the World Prison Brief. Globally, among those countries where data is available, the highest proportion of male prisoners is found in African countries, in which 97% of the prison population is male, while in the Americas, this figure is at its lowest, at 90% of the prison population in the USA and 92% in the remainder of the Americas (Warmsley 2015). Thus, for all of the jurisdictions which feature within the chapters of this book, this picture of male predominance within penal systems is consistently reflected.