Mickey B

Earlier today I was planning ahead for the next academic year.  I am hoping to run a Prison Films series and was trying to narrow down my list to only six when a friend who attended the ICOPA conference last week phoned.  The conference, he reported, had been really good with one of the highlights being the showing of a new film Mickey B.  This is a remake of Macbeth, set in prison, starring and produced by prisoners.

I am afraid to say, I had not heard of this film, but a quick search took me to this trailer.

Mickey B Trailer from Educational Shakespeare Co on Vimeo.

The film can be brought from the Educational Shakespeare Company here

International Conference on Penal Abolition Conference Belfast 23-25 June 2010

ICOPA 13 is happening in Belfast this coming June.

Further details from here

This short film on ICOPA 11 is worth a watch

Abolition, Reform and the Politics of Global Incarceration

ICOPA 13

Abolition, Reform and the Politics of Global Incarceration

23-25 June 2010

CALL FOR PAPERS


The 13th International Conference on Penal Abolition will be held in Belfast at a defining moment regarding the devolution of Policing and Justice to the recently constituted Northern Ireland Assembly. A decade on from the release of political prisoners under the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement, Northern Ireland’s prisons are under continuing criticism. We invite international papers, art, film, policy proposals, reports and posters on any aspect of the generic theme from researchers, activists, prisoners and former prisoners on penal abolition at a time dominated by reformist discourses about ‘healthy prisons’ alongside global expansion of incarceration in prisons, special hospitals and other places of detention. Individuals and groups can offer sessions/ panels in diverse formats. Current and former prisoners unable to attend, please contact us to enable presentations by proxy.



The Conference will be held at the University and in the community. We will provide a range of options for people to book directly with local hotels and hostels and endeavour to accommodate former prisoners.

ICOPA 13 will also acknowledge the life and work of Louk Hulsman who died in 2009:

Abolition of criminal justice is that you abolish that in yourself, in the same way we are doing with racism and in the same way we are doing that with gender differences …You abolish criminal justice in yourself … Abolishing means that you will not anymore talk that language. And if you do not talk that language anymore then you see other things.

Submission of Abstracts:

Deaglan Coyle
d.p.coyle@qub.ac.uk
0044 28 9097 3472