This book provides a detailed and practical exploration of criminal recidivism and social reintegration in Jamaica. It uses various methods to seek the authentic voices of inmates, ex-prisoners, deported migrants and practitioners, drawing on an original study to examine factors that might help ex-prisoners more successfully transition from a prison environment to life within the community. Leslie also raises important questions about the Jamaican state's capacity to meet the needs of inmates, particularly as a large number of its citizens are subject to forced repatriation to their homeland by overseas jurisdictions due to their offending. Recidivism in the Caribbean provides a unique insight into institutional and community life in a post-colonial society, whilst linking practices theories of offender management. It will particularly appeal to criminologists and sociologists interested in tertiary crime prevention but also those interested in correctional policy and practice, punishment and deviance.

This edited volume brings together a diverse group of contributors to create a review of research and an agenda for the future of dog care and training in correctional facilities. Bolstered by research that documents the potential benefits of HAI, many correctional facilities have implemented prison dog programs that involve inmates in the care and training of canines, not only as family dogs but also as service dogs for people with psychological and/or physical disabilities. Providing an evidence-based treatment of the topic, this book also draws upon the vast practical experience of individuals who have successfully begun, maintained, improved, and evaluated various types of dog programs with inmates; it includes first-person perspectives from all of the stakeholders in a prison dog program-the corrections staff, the recipients of the dogs, the inmate/trainers, and the community volunteers and sponsors Human-animal interaction (HAI) is a burgeoning field of research that spans different disciplines: corrections, psychology, education, social work, animal welfare, and veterinary medicine, to name a few. Written for an array of professionals interested in prison dog programs, the book will hold special interest for researchers in criminal justice and corrections, forensic psychology, and to those with a commitment to promoting the ideals of rehabilitation, desistance thinking, restorative justice, and re-entry tools for inmates.

This book offers a sociological exploration of street children in India and what pulls and pushes them into delinquency, at a time when the government of India is contemplating strengthening its juvenile justice system. It draws on in-depth, qualitative research carried out by an NGO which included unstructured and structured interviews with over 600 children as well as stakeholders. Through the stories of Indian children, this book examines the major factors which together play a crucial role in their engagement in deviant behaviour as they grow up. However, the authors argue that they should not be viewed not as a dangerous threat but as the country's most valuable resource. The authors conclude that a punitive strategy may not be the best option, advocating instead for a focus on restorative justice which has been found to be effective and beneficial alongside other strategies which help strengthen families and enhance parenting skills.

The huge prison buildup of the past four decades has few defenders, yet reforms to reduce the numbers of those incarcerated have been remarkably modest. Meanwhile, an ever-widening carceral state has sprouted in the shadows, extending its reach far beyond the prison gate. It sunders families and communities and reworks conceptions of democracy, rights, and citizenship--posing a formidable political and social challenge. In Caught, Marie Gottschalk examines why the carceral state remains so tenacious in the United States. She analyzes the shortcomings of the two dominant penal reform strategies--one focused on addressing racial disparities, the other on seeking bipartisan, race-neutral solutions centered on reentry, justice reinvestment, and reducing recidivism. With a new preface evaluating the effectiveness of recent proposals to reform mass incarceration, Caught offers a bracing appraisal of the politics of penal reform.

This powerful book reveals how modern strategies of punishment--and, by all accounts, their failure--relate to political and economic transformations in society at large. Jonathan Simon uses the practice of parole in California as a window to the changing historical understanding of what a corrections system does and how it works. Because California is representative of policies and practices on a national level, Simon explicitly presents his findings within a national framework.
When parole first emerged as a corrections strategy in the nineteenth century, work was supposed to keep ex-prisoners out of trouble. This strategy foundered in the changing economy after World War II. What followed was a rehabilitative strategy, where the clinical expertise of the parole agent replaced the discipline of the industrial labor market in defining and controlling criminal deviance. Today, Simon argues, as drastic changes in the economy have virtually locked out an entire class, rehabilitation has given way to mere management. The effect is isolation of the offender, either in jail or in an underclass community; the result is an escalating cycle of imprisonment, destabilization, and insecurity.
No significant improvement in the current penal crisis can be expected until we better understand the relationship between punishment and social order, a relationship which this book explores in theoretical, historical, and practical detail.

Prisons and AIDS is the first book to offer critical information on the proliferation of HIV and AIDS among prison populations and to provide a much needed resource for the design and implementation of education and prevention programs within correctional facilities. Written by experts in the field - including lead author Ronald L. Braithwaite, one of the foremost authorities on public health in the United States - this comprehensive resource is grounded in solid research, including survey information funded by the National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control. The book details numerous case studies from a variety of correctional facilities that reveal compelling information on frequency of sexual contact, drug use, needle sharing, tattooing, and the lack of access to condoms among inmates. In response to the disproportionately high incarceration rate of ethnic minorities, the authors provide strategies for developing culturally sensitive HIV/AIDS prevention programs in correctional settings. The book also documents differences in the patterns of HIV/AIDS cases among adult and juvenile and male and female inmates and explores policies and programs relevant to these populations, including education and prevention, testing and disclosure, partner notification, and housing. Written for policymakers, researchers, educators, health and human service providers, managers, and administrators of correctional institutions and community-based organizations, Prisons and AIDS provides the essential information for making informed decisions concerning this growing public health crisis.

This book explores the dual nature of legitimacy in prison. It examines the inter-connectivity between audience perception of legitimacy (the prisoners' perception) and the power-holders' perception of legitimacy (the prison staff perception). It defines legitimacy in this scenario as the ability of prison workers to implement their authority in an honest, lawful, and just manner, while prisoners acknowledge their status as eligible power-holders who deserve to be obeyed and comply with their decisions. Using mixed methods of qualitative and quantitative research, data were collected in all Slovenian prisons as well as a correctional home. The volume discusses the various factors influencing prisoner's perspective of legitimacy, and recommends avenues for further research. This work will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, particularly with an interest in prison and incarceration, or with an interest in Eastern Europe. It will also be of interest to those studying legitimacy within the criminal justice system more generally, and related fields such as sociology, law enforcement, and organizational psychology. Utilizing an in-depth and longitudinal study of legitimacy in Slovenian prisons, Hacin and Mesko shed light on legitimacy's dual nature with an exquisite research design that removes any ambiguity about its essential nature in achieving prison order and correctional environments more conducive to rehabilitation. [...] Overall, the book is an excellent contribution to penological theory, research, and practice. A monograph and case study of a post-modern and post-socialist prison system, it offers a lens for re-examining the mass incarceration models of western prisons for cross-cultural comparisons of prison legitimacy. -Rosemary L. Gido, Professor Emerita, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA This book studies legitimacy in prisoners and among prison staff through the lens of procedural justice theory, focusing on the context of Slovenia. The book is a must-read for scholars who are theoretically and methodologically interested in testing and applying procedural justice theory. Rarely, both prison staff and prisoners are studied in the same inquiry. This is the added value. The results have value for prison policy. This book will be of interest to scholars in criminology and criminal justice, as well as political science and public policy. - Lieven Pauwels, Professor, Department of Criminology, Criminal Law and Social Law, Ghent University, Belgium The now global epistemic community for the study of criminal justice and criminology requires that scholars everywhere be in frequent communication, and that they engage in the testing of concepts that are of potential universal application in democratic countries seeking to build just and efficacious public institutions. The time is here for comparative criminal justice research of high quality to be undertaken, and this book represents exemplary scholarship in this regard. For those scholars from around the world interested in determining the potential and limitations of the theory of procedural justice as applied in the corrections setting, this book represents a "must read" for you. It presents findings from a comprehensive, mixed-methods study of how the core concepts of the theory of procedural justice can be insightfully explored within correctional institutions. The study done in the progressive, highly regarded setting of the Slovenian prison system - carried out with inmates, prison staff (corrections officers and rehabilitation services personnel) and administrators - serves as an excellent template for replication in other countries. The interpretation of findings made by two scholars of remarkable experience and profound knowledge add greatly to the value of this book. For scholars doing worthwhile research into the challenges of building and maintaining just and capable criminal justice systems in democratic countries, this book will inform and inspire you. - Nicholas Lovrich, Research Professor Emeritus, Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Washington State University, Pullman, USA

In 1787, the twenty-eighth year of the reign of King George III, the British Government sent a fleet to colonize Australia…

An epic description of the brutal transportation of men, women and children out of Georgian Britain into a horrific penal system which was to be the precursor to the Gulag and was the origin of Australia. The Fatal Shore is the prize-winning, scholarly, brilliantly entertaining narrative that has given its true history to Australia.

Published some two decades ago, Elizabeth Comack's Women in Trouble explored the connections between the women's abuse histories and their law violations as well as their experience of imprisonment in an aged facility. What has changed for incarcerated women in those twenty years? Are experiences of abuse continuing to have an impact on the lives of criminalized women? How do women find the experience of imprisonment in a new facility? Drawing on the stories of forty-two incarcerated women, Coming Back to Jail broadens the focus to examine the role of trauma in the women's lives. Resisting the popular move to understand trauma in psychiatric terms - as post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) - the book frames trauma as "lived experience" and locates the women's lives within the context of a settler-colonial, capitalist, patriarchal society. Doing so enables a better appreciation of the social conditions that produce trauma and the problems, conflicts and dilemmas that bring women into the criminal justice net. In Coming Back to Jail, Comack shows how - despite recent moves to be more "gender responsive" - the prisoning of women is ultimately more punishing than empowering. What is more, because the sources of the women's trauma reside in the systemic processes that have contoured their lives and their communities, true healing will require changing women's social circumstances on the outside so they no longer keep coming back to jail.

Who is responsible for juvenile delinquency? Mark D. Jacobs uses ethnographic, statistical, and literary methods to uncover the many levels of disorganization in American juvenile justice. By analyzing the continuities betwen normal casework and exceptional cases, he reveals that probation officers must commonly contrive informal measures to circumvent a system which routinely obstructs the delivery of services to their clients. Jacobs defines the concept of the "no-fault society" to describe the larger context of societal disorder and interpersonal manipulation that the juvenile justice system at once reflects and exacerbates.

This book draws on historical and cross-disciplinary studies to critically examine penal practices in Scandinavia. The Nordic countries are often hailed by international observers as 'model societies', with egalitarian welfare policies, low rates of poverty, humane social policies and human rights oriented internal agendas. This book, however, paints a much more nuanced picture of the welfare policies, ideologies and social control in strong centralistic states. Based on extensive new empirical data, leading Nordic and international scholars discuss the relationship between prison conditions in Scandinavia and Scandinavian social policy more generally, and argue that it is not always liberating and constructive to be embraced by a powerful welfare state. This book is essential reading for researchers of state punishment in Scandinavia, and it is highly relevant for anyone interested in the 'Nordic Model' of social policy.

Reflections on Life in Ghettos, Camps and Prisons explores the relationship between ghettos, camps, places of detention and prisons with a focus on those people who are confined, encamped, imprisoned, detained, stuck, or forcibly removed through the lens of 'stuckness'. From a point of departure in anthropology, with important contributions from criminology, geography and philosophy, the chapters explore how life is lived in and across these sites of confinement by focusing on the tactics of everyday life, while being mindful of how forms of abjection are constitutive elements of these sites. Stuckness, from this inter-disciplinary perspective, is not simply a function of the spatial form it takes; we need to understand how temporality animates stuckness as an important dimension of confinement. Death, the ultimate temporal boundary, emerges as particularly significant in this regard. With case studies from Palestine, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Northern Australia, Rwanda, Ivory Coast and Nicaragua, the contributors focus on the empirical question of how structures of stuckness, confinement and forced mobility impact on the possibilities of 'making life'. Suggesting new ways of thinking about how temporality and spatiality intersect and overlap in the lives of people struggling to manage conditions of stuckness, Reflections on Life in Ghettos, Camps and Prisons will be of great interest to scholars of anthropology, geography, criminology and philosophy. The chapters in this book originally published as a special issue of Ethnos.

At the height of the Middle Ages, a peculiar system of perpetual exile--or abjuration--flourished in western Europe. It was a judicial form of exile, not political or religious, and it was meted out to felons for crimes deserving of severe corporal punishment or death. From England to France explores the lives of these men and women who were condemned to abjure the English realm, and draws on their unique experiences to shed light on a medieval legal tradition until now very poorly understood. William Chester Jordan weaves a breathtaking historical tapestry, examining the judicial and administrative processes that led to the abjuration of more than seventy-five thousand English subjects, and recounting the astonishing journeys of the exiles themselves. Some were innocents caught up in tragic circumstances, but many were hardened criminals. Almost every English exile departed from the port of Dover, many bound for the same French village, a place called Wissant. Jordan vividly describes what happened when the felons got there, and tells the stories of the few who managed to return to England, either illegally or through pardons. From England to France provides new insights into a fundamental pillar of medieval English law and shows how it collapsed amid the bloodshed of the Hundred Years' War.

Thousands of pregnant women pass through our nation's jails every year. What happens to them as they carry their pregnancies in a space of punishment? In this time when the public safety net is frayed, incarceration has become a central and racialized strategy for managing the poor. Using her ethnographic fieldwork and clinical work as an ob-gyn in a women's jail, Carolyn Sufrin explores how jail has, paradoxically, become a place where women can find care. Focusing on the experiences of incarcerated pregnant women as well as on the practices of the jail guards and health providers who care for them, Jailcare describes the contradictory ways that care and maternal identity emerge within a punitive space presumed to be devoid of care. Sufrin argues that jail is not simply a disciplinary institution that serves to punish. Rather, when understood in the context of the poverty, addiction, violence, and racial oppression that characterize these women's lives and their reproduction, jail can become a safety net for women on the margins of society.

Brazilian authorities continuously fail to comply with international norms on minimal conditions of incarceration. Brazil's prison population has risen ten-fold since the country's return to democracy in the 1980s. Its prisons typically operate at double official capacity and with 100 prisoners for each guard on duty. At the same time, however, the average Brazilian prison is not as disorderly or its staff-inmate relations so conflictual as our established theories on prison life might predict. This monograph explores the means by which Brazilian prisons function in the absence of guards. More specifically, the means by which prison security and inmate discipline is negotiated between prison managers, gangs and the wider inmate body. While fragile and varied, this historical tradition of co-produced governance has for decades kept most prisons in better order and enabled most prisoners to better survive.

San Quentin State Prison, California's oldest prison and the nation's largest, is notorious for once holding America's most dangerous prisoners. But in 2008, the Bastille-by-the-Bay became a beacon for rehabilitation through the prisoner-run newspaper the San Quentin News. Prison Truth tells the story of how prisoners, many serving life terms, transformed the prison climate from what Johnny Cash called a living hell to an environment that fostered positive change in inmates' lives. Award-winning journalist William J. Drummond takes us behind bars, introducing us to Arnulfo Garcia, the visionary prisoner who led the revival of the newspaper. Drummond describes how the San Quentin News, after a twenty-year shutdown, was recalled to life under an enlightened warden and the small group of local retired newspaper veterans serving as advisers, which Drummond joined in 2012. Sharing how officials cautiously and often unwittingly allowed the newspaper to tell the stories of the incarcerated, Prison Truth illustrates the power of prison media to humanize the experiences of people inside penitentiary walls and to forge alliances with social justice networks seeking reform.

Current Issues in Corrections explores a variety of the most timely and salient challenges facing the correctional system. The text is comprised of chapters written by experts in the field who have experience as both academic and criminal justice practitioners.The book begins with an exploration of issues in private corrections and then moves forward to discuss the history of the field, legal issues, jails, diversion programs, community corrections, institutional corrections, correctional career concerns, and the interaction of the system with women, people of color, and juveniles. The text concludes by considering the future of capital punishment in America and examining the field of corrections from a human rights perspective. Each chapter includes pre-reading and post-reading questions to stimulate reflection and critical thinking. Featuring a unique balance of theory and practice, Current Issues in Corrections is an exemplary textbook for courses in criminal justice and corrections.

Life imprisonment is the punishment most often imposed worldwide for what societies regard as the most serious offences. Yet, in Asia the phenomenon has never been studied systematically. Life Imprisonment in Asia fills this major gap. It brings together thirteen new essays on life imprisonment in key jurisdictions in the region. Each chapter consolidates what is known about the law and practice of life imprisonment in the jurisdiction and then explores aspects of the imposition or implementation of life sentences that the authors regard as particularly problematic. In some instances, the main issue is the imposition of life sentences by the courts and their relationship to the death penalty. In others, the focus is on the treatment of life sentenced prisoners. In many instances, the most prominent question is whether life sentenced prisoners should be released and, if so, according to what processes. In the overview chapter, the editors place the complex picture that emerges of life imprisonment in Asia in a global context and point to reforms urgently required to ensure that Asian life sentences meet international human rights standards. Life Imprisonment in Asia should be read by everyone who has an interest in just punishments for serious offences, not only in Asia, but throughout the world. It will be an invaluable tool for lawyers, criminologists, policy makers and penal reform advocates in the region and beyond.

The Routledge International Handbook of Forensic Psychology in Secure Settings is the first volume to identify, discuss and analyse the most important psychological issues within prisons and secure hospitals. Including contributions from leading researchers and practitioners from the UK, US, Australia and Canada, the book covers not only the key groups that forensic psychologists work with, but also the treatment options available to them, workplace issues unique to secure settings, and some of the wider topics that impact upon offender populations. The book is divided into four sections: population and issues; treatment; staff and workplace issues; contemporary issues for forensic application. With chapters offering both theoretical rigour and practical application, this is a unique resource that will be essential reading for any student, researcher or practitioner of forensic psychology or criminology. It will also be relevant for those interested in social policy and social care.

Drawing on autobiographical writings, oral histories, interrogation protocols, and cell spy reports, If the Walls Could Speak focuses on the lives of women in prison in postwar communist Poland. Some were jailed for their alleged collaboration with the Nazis during the war, some for postwar activities in various civil as well as quasi-military groups, still others for allegedly dubious activities on the basis of their relationships with those already imprisoned. In some cases, there was some evidence of their anti-state activities; in many others, the accusations were absurd and based on cumbersome definitions of "anti-state." Anna Muller shows how these women struggled to resist identifying themselves as "prisoners" and regain their voices through a dialogue between the "self," a hostile prison world, and the world outside, which, as time passed, became increasingly menacing. The prison system in postwar Poland functioned as a tool to subjugate society and silence or destroy enemies-anti-communists, but also committed communists. Arrests, trials, and prison sentences directly and indirectly affected tens of thousands of people. Imprisonment stigmatized both prisoners and their families, inspiring fear and insecurity. Out of fear, worry for their loved ones, or a need to act, women prisoners took on different roles and personalities to protect themselves and create a semblance of normality, despite abuses and prison confinement. They used words to (re)create themselves during an interrogation; they used their senses to orient themselves in the spatial organization of the prison and to create a feeling of security; they used their physicality as a confirmation of their gender identity and a means of exerting pressure on the authorities; and they attempted to build a communal cultural, social, religious, and educational life by drawing on patterns they had acquired in their lives outside of prison. Following the trajectory of women's life stories-from the moment of interrogation, through the attempt to create themselves in a cell, to the post-prison reordering of their old lives-this book reveals how the prison cell in postwar Poland became a laboratory of human heterogeneity, of reconstruction, and reinvention of the self, and how life in a Stalinist prison adds to our understanding of coercion and resistance under totalitarian regimes.

Although service outsourcing has spread throughout Canada's prisons and jails, into its police, courts, and national security institutions, and along the border in recent decades, the expanding scope and pace of corporate involvement in criminal justice functions has not yet been closely investigated. Changing of the Guards provides a detailed assessment of privatization and private influence across the twenty-first-century Canadian criminal justice system. It illuminates the many consequences of public-private arrangements for law and policy, transparency, accountability, the administration of justice, equity, and the public. This trenchant analysis raises issues that are relevant in Canada and abroad.

Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Western societies abandoned public executions in favor of private punishments, primarily confinement in penitentiaries and private executions. The transition, guided by a reconceptualization of the causes of crime, the nature of authority, and the purposes of punishment, embodied the triumph of new sensibilities and the reconstitution of cultural values throughout the Western world. This study examines the conflict over capital punishment in the United States and the way it transformed American culture between the Revolution and the Civil War. Relating the gradual shift in rituals of punishment and attitudes toward discipline to the emergence of a middle class culture that valued internal restraints and private punishments, Masur traces the changing configuration of American criminal justice. He examines the design of execution day in the Revolutionary era as a spectacle of civil and religious order, the origins of organized opposition to the death penalty and the invention of the penitentiary, the creation of private executions, reform organizations' commitment to social activism, and the competing visions of humanity and society lodged at the core of the debate over capital punishment. A fascinating and thoughtful look at a topic that remains of burning interest today, Rites of Execution will attract a wide range of scholarly and general readers.

Key Issues in Corrections is an engaging textbook critically analyzing the most important challenges affecting the correctional system in the USA. Written by a highly respected expert in the field, and building on his best-selling book Special problems in corrections, it examines long-standing and emerging issues, grounding the discussion in empirical research and current events. Updates to this edition include: * Integrating new scholarship, lawsuits, and the use of technology * The introduction and evaluation of new policies and practices * New sections on "The Privatization of Prisons" and "The Death Penalty" Primarily written for undergraduate students who have already had an introduction to the topic, the book offers a no-nonsense approach to explaining the problems of correctional officers, correctional managers, prisoners, and the public.

After decades of the American "war on drugs" and relentless prison expansion, political officials are finally challenging mass incarceration. Many point to an apparently promising solution to reduce the prison population: addiction treatment. In Addicted to Rehab, Bard College sociologist Allison McKim gives an in-depth and innovative ethnographic account of two such rehab programs for women, one located in the criminal justice system and one located in the private healthcare system-two very different ways of defining and treating addiction. McKim's book shows how addiction rehab reflects the race, class, and gender politics of the punitive turn. As a result, addiction has become a racialized category that has reorganized the link between punishment and welfare provision. While reformers hope that treatment will offer an alternative to punishment and help women, McKim argues that the framework of addiction further stigmatizes criminalized women and undermines our capacity to challenge gendered subordination. Her study ultimately reveals a two-tiered system, bifurcated by race and class.