Hutchinson Heinemann bags 'remarkable' history of prison by Stopes in six-way auction

Hutchinson Heinemann has bagged a “remarkable” sweeping international history of prison by Orwell Prize-nominated historian and journalist Harry Stopes in a six-way auction  

Rowan Borchers, editorial director, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Matt Turner at RCW. It is provisionally titled The Age of Incarceration, and will publish in spring 2025, followed by a Penguin paperback in 2026. North American rights were sold at auction to Amy Cherry at Norton. 

The book explores the rise of the prison over three centuries through the stories of 10 jails and their inmates. The publisher said: “The evidence is clear: prison doesn’t work. And yet today, almost 12 million people are imprisoned globally, with prison capacity growing by over 400,000 each year. How did we get here? 

“In this sweeping international history, Harry Stopes examines how this most peculiar and ineffective form of punishment became the world’s dominant response to crime. He vividly re-creates life inside over the past 250 years: everywhere from Pentonville, London – one of the first ‘rational’ prisons, designed to reform rather than merely punish its inmates – to Angola, Louisiana, built on the site of one of America’s most notorious slave plantations, and still populated largely by Black inmates. 

“Along the way, Stopes unravels the threads between incarceration, racism and class inequality – all to argue that the prison evolved not to tackle crime, but to serve the interests of the state. The resulting book offers a damning indictment of our approach to criminal justice, and points the way to an alternative.” 

Stopes said: “A striking feature of the conversation about prison, reform and abolition is how rarely it is informed by a sense of historical context. Prisons are a relatively recent invention, and it’s well within our power to change or get rid of them. By telling the stories of individual prisoners, I hope to contribute to the movement for sweeping criminal justice reform, as well as to shed light on the lives of people who have often been ignored and neglected. Prisoners are some of the most reviled people in our society but their stories deserve to be told. 

“Matt Turner at RCW has done so much to shape the project, and Rowan Borchers and the team at Hutchinson Heinemann have understood and shared my vision from the beginning. I am delighted to be working with them to bring it to life.” 

Borchers added: “This is a remarkable book: at once a vivid depiction of life inside over three centuries, and an incisive critique of our approach to criminal justice. It marks the arrival of a major new voice in social history.”