The chapters in this book explore and critically evaluate a number of significant positive developments in both discourse in the field of scholarship and practice in the areas of detention and imprisonment that have either occurred over the last decade or are currently under way. But equally they attest to the problems inherent in marking a change as a ‘reform’ (at least in various and sometimes incompatible senses this term has been used by Western scholars and the media). In fact, what we have called reform may be better understood and described as variations or fluctuations over time.