Religion and Prison: An Introduction

Abstract

This introduction to the book Religion and Prison: An Overview of Contemporary Europe provides an overview of the main empirical and theoretical issues addressed in its chapters. Firstly, it argues that a focus on prisons as institutional contexts is productive for the analysis of the presence and governance of religion in various national contexts. Secondly, this introduction highlights the original contributions to the existing literature on religion in prisons and more broadly on religious diversity brought by the different chapters. Thirdly, the introduction briefly explains how the content of the book is organised, before turning to the identification of the main topics that run across the different chapters, including, among others, the importance of historical church-state arrangements and regime changes for the presence and regulation of religion in prisons, and the widespread securitisation of religion in prisons across countries.