October 29, 2007 marks twenty years since the death of five prisoners in a riot and fire in the infamous Pentridge Prison Jika Jika High-Security Unit in Victoria. This book resurrects these events and invites us to learn urgent lessons in our current age of supermax and privatised prisons, detention of asylum seekers, and the controversial use of indefinite detention under the banner of a "war on terror."

Imprisoning Resistance provides an experiential account of life and death in the controversial Jika Jika High-Security Unit during the 1980s. One of Australia's first hi-tech supermax prisons, Jika Jika was designed to house and manage the system's "worst of the worst" prisoners. After several years of deaths in custody, escapes, assaults, murders, prisoner campaigns and protests, hunger strikes, and allegations of prison staff brutality, everything escalated in 1987 to a dramatic protest fire that resulted in the deaths of five prisoners. The prison was closed and a series of inquiries were commissioned.

Bree Carlton revisits this uncomfortable past and reconstructs events leading up to and surrounding the fire and deaths. She critically analyses official responses to the discreditable episodes, crises, and deaths that plagued Jika Jika.

Summary Table of Contents

Foreword by Phil Scraton
Prologue: 29 October 1987, Jika Jika High-Security Unit, HM Pentridge Prison, Coburg, Victoria, Australia
Introduction

PART ONE: POWER AND RESISTANCE
CHAPTER 1: Polarisation, Power and Prisoner Resistance in Australian Maximum-Security During the Explosive 1970s
CHAPTER 2: Managing a Resistance Proff Panopticon: The Official Beginnings of the Jika Jika High-Security Unit
CHAPTER 3: Contextualising Resistance: Prisoner Accounts of Power and Survival in the 'Pressure-Can'
CHAPTER 4: 'Rebelling Against the Dictatorial Regime in Jika' : Acts of Prisoner Transgression and Resistance

PART TWO: CONCEALING CRISIS
CHAPTER 5: Descent into Crisis: The Deaths of John Williams and Sean Downie
CHAPTER 6: Exonerating Institutional Liability: Official Responses to the Death of Sean Downie
CHAPTER 7: Imprisoning Crises: Official Responses to the Jika Fire as Strategies of Damage Control and Concealment

Epilogue
Bibliography
Index