The Role of Prison in Europe: Travelling in the Footsteps of John Howard (Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology) T. Vander Beken. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (2016) 243pp. £79.99hb ISBN 978‐3‐319‐29387‐5
Journal: The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice
Year: 2019

Between May 2013 and November 2014, criminologist Tom Vander Beken visited 15 prisons in six European countries. This book (which first appeared in Dutch in 2015) recounts his experiences. As the subtitle indicates, Vander Beken drew inspiration from John Howard's celebrated tours of European penal establishments in the 1770s and 1780s, and, like him, chose to present his findings in the first person, ‘complete with my personal experiences, hesitations, doubts and feelings as they progressed’; i