Towards the end of the 20th century, the decades of abuse and neglect perpetrated in Ireland’s comprehensive carceral network began finally to be exposed.

By focusing on this one institution: on its ethos, development, operation and built environment, and the lives of the girls and women held there, this book reveals the underlying framework of Ireland’s wider system of institutionalization. The analysis includes a focus on the privatization and commodification of public welfare, reproductive injustice, institutionalized misogyny, class prejudice, the visibility of supposedly “hidden” institutions, and the role of oral testimony in reconstructing history.

In undertaking such a close study, the authors uncover truths missing from the state’s own investigations to shed new light on how these brutal institutions came to have such a powerful presence in Irish society and to highlight the significance of their continuing impact on modern Ireland.