In the prison business, all roads lead to Texas. A pioneer in criminal justice severity--from assembly-line executions to supermax isolation, from mandatory sentencing to prison privatization--Texas is the most locked-down state in the most incarcerated country in the world. "Texas Tough," ""a sweeping history of American imprisonment from the days of slavery to the present, explains how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric became a template for the nation.

Drawing on the individual stories as well as authoritative research, "Texas Tough" reveals the true origins of America's prison juggernaut and points toward a more just and humane future.

General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1917 Original Publisher: The H.W. Wilson company Subjects: Prisons Reformatories Debates and debating Language Arts

On October 26, 2004, Dominique Green, thirty, was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas. Arrested at the age of eighteen in the fatal shooting of a man during a robbery outside a Houston convenience store, Green may have taken part in the robbery but always insisted that he did not pull the trigger. The jury, which had no African Americans on it, sentenced him to death. Despite obvious errors in the legal procedures and the protests of the victim's family, he spent the last twelve years of his life on Death Row.
When Cahill found himself in Texas in December 2003, he visited Dominique at the request of Judge Sheila Murphy, who was working on the appeal of the case. In Dominique, he encountered a level of goodness, peace, and enlightenment that few human beings ever attain. Cahill joined the fierce fight for Dominique's life, even enlisting Dominique's hero, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to make an historic visit to Dominique and to plead publicly for mercy. Cahill was so profoundly moved by Dominique's extraordinary life that he was compelled to tell the tragic story of his unjust death at the hands of the state.
"A Saint on Death Row" will introduce you to a young man whose history, innate goodness, and final days you will never forget. It also shines a necessary light on America's racist and deeply flawed legal system. "A Saint on Death Row" is an absorbing, sobering, and deeply spiritual story that illuminates the moral imperatives too often ignored in the headlong quest for justice.

On any given day, there are over 100,000 youthful offenders held in a variety of residential placements, from community-based wilderness experience programs or group homes to high security facilities that are almost indistinguishable from prisons. In addition, thousands of juveniles are incarcerated in adult jails or prisons and some will serve the rest of their lives behind bars. Despite a 200-year history of holding juveniles in these settings, there is a gap in our knowledge about what actually occurs within these places. There are assaults, murders and suicides, as well as staff and resident misconduct, medical misadventures, unintentional injuries and mismanagement. On the other hand, there are thousands of hard-working, dedicated, and professional staff members in these facilities who enthusiastically work toward the rehabilitation of these young people. The contributors to this volume examine some of the key issues and trends within contemporary juvenile corrections, highlight promising rehabilitative practices, and identify the challenges of working with these youth.

This book presents an extensive overview of the main issues surrounding violence in prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities. One in one hundred American adults are currently incarcerated and the threat of violence in these facilities affects not only the inmates who reside there but also the custodial and professional staff. Despite recent reductions in lethal violence over the past two decades, each year approximately 70 homicides occur in these facilities and tens of thousands of incidences of non-fatal violence occur. The threat of violence may, in many cases, force treatment and rehabilitation efforts to take a backseat to institutional and personal safety concerns. Further, the aftermath of violence for victims, perpetrators, and witnesses poses serious issues for the community as the overwhelming majority of inmates eventually return home. The contributors to this volume examine these issues, highlight promising violence prevention and reduction strategies, and outline an agenda for future research.

The career of Donald "D.J." Vodicka encompassed the rapid expansion of the prison system. For sixteen years, he was a prison guard in California's highest security prisons, serving meals to gang leaders, serial killers in lockdown cells, and patrolling exercise yards filled with violent felons while unarmed and outnumbered 1000-to-2. He belonged to an elite unit called the Investigative Services Unit (Internal Affairs), responsible for solving horrific crimes inside the walls. He was a decorated veteran officer. He became the largest "whistle-blower" to uncover a group of rogue prison guards who called themselves "The Green Wall."The Green Wall" is a real-life drama of one man's courage to do the right thing against the California State Prison System. It is an unblinking look at what can go wrong when only one person is willing to stand up and speak for what is right, against almost insurmountable odds. Vodicka's televised state senate testimony exposed a scandal that led to resignations, transfers, sudden retirements, and reforms of the system that are still underway. The story is a classic tale of the triumph of personal integrity in the most dishonest place imaginable.

A revolutionary book that offers a fresh, bold approach to confronting the juvenile crime epidemic With the rise of violent crimes committed by teenagers in recent years, heated discussion has arisen over the societal factors that lead to juvenile criminality and the ways that public institutions are failing to curtail them. Now a team of experts with decades of collective hands-on experience present a book that cuts through the hype and paranoia to offer real solutions. Drawing on actual case studies, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall shows how conventional ?tough on crime? tactics have only worsened the problem, and presents a new blueprint for change that incorporates punitive action, rehabilitation, and family intervention?a progressive program that will encourage and enlighten all those concerned about the future of our youth.

What is healing justice? Who practices it? What does it look like? In this groundbreaking international comparative study on healing justice, Jarem Sawatsky examines traditional communities including Hollow Water - an Aboriginal and Metis community in Canada renowned for their holistic healing work in the face of 80 per cent sexual abuse rates; the Iona Community - a dispersed Christian ecumenical community in Scotland known for their work towards peace, healing and social justice, rebuilding of community and the renewal of worship; and Plum Village - a Vietnamese initiated Buddhist community in southern France, and home to Nobel Peace Prize nominated author, Thich Nhat Hanh. These case studies record a search for the kind of social, structural, and spiritual relationships necessary to sustain a healing view of justice. Through comparing cases, Sawatsky identifies the common patterns, themes, and imagination which these communities share. These commonalities among those that practice healing justice are then examined for their implications for wider society, particularly for restorative justice and criminal justice. This innovative book is accessible to those new to the topic, while at the same time being beneficial to experienced researchers, and will appeal internationally to practitioners, students, and anyone interested in restorative justice, law, peace building, and religious studies.

Author William Upski Wimsatt covers a truly remarkable array of topics and perspectives, all while recounting his own evolution from idealistic urban wanderer to community organizer, from graffiti writer to renowned essayist. Wimsatt delivers stories, strategies, suggestions, straight talk, and conversations with maverick activists. He advocates youth taking charge of their own education, whether it s in or out of school, and promotes the power of young people engaging in philanthropy. A truly original treatise from the paradigm-flipping theorist of youth activism, "No More Prisons" goes beyond pinpointing problems to hone in on solutions, and declares that today s youth is poised to surpass the activist efforts of the 1960s generation."

America is driven by vengeance in Terry Aladjem's provocative account - a reactive, public anger that is a threat to democratic justice itself. From the return of the death penalty to the wars on terror and in Iraq, Americans demand retribution and moral certainty; they assert the "rights of victims" and make pronouncements against "evil." Yet for Aladjem this dangerously authoritarian turn has its origins in the tradition of liberal justice itself - in theories of punishment that justify inflicting pain and in the punitive practices that result. Exploring vengeance as the defining problem of our time, Aladjem returns to the theories of Locke, Hegel and Mill. He engages the ancient Greeks, Nietzsche, Paine and Foucault to challenge liberal assumptions about punishment. He interrogates American law, capital punishment and images of justice in the media. He envisions a democratic justice that is better able to contain its vengeance.

Since 1996, death sentences in America have declined by more than 60 percent, reversing a generation-long trend toward greater acceptance of capital punishment. In theory, most Americans continue to support the death penalty. But it is no longer seen as a theoretical matter. Prosecutors, judges, and juries across the country have moved in large numbers to give much greater credence to the possibility of mistakes - mistakes that in this arena are potentially fatal. The discovery of innocence, documented in this book through painstaking analyses of media coverage and with newly developed methods, has led to historic shifts in public opinion and to a sharp decline in use of the death penalty by juries across the country. A social cascade, starting with legal clinics and innocence projects, has snowballed into a national phenomenon that may spell the end of the death penalty in America.

This book is an examination of sample companies that produce theatre with and for prison inmates. It is a careful compilation of comprehensive case studies of three such producing companies. Based on personal interviews, newspaper reviews and articles, and other testimonials from participants, each case study catalogs the working processes of the given company, the conditions they faced working in the prison environment, and how the theatre-artists tailored their work to meet these conditions. Alongside the empirical study of the companies, the author has employed prevalent theories from criminology and penology, as well as applicable performance theory, to discuss the significance of the theatre work as a social phenomenon within the very specific culture of the prison. From these individual studies, the author draws conclusions about the potential importance and place theatre could have in the penal system. This book, a first study of its kind, is a groundbreaking and important contribution to theatre studies.

It is often assumed that the law and religion address different spheres of human life. Religion and ethics articulate complex systems of moral reasoning that concern norms, deliberation of ends, cultivation of disposition, and transformation of moral agency. Law, in contrast, seeks to govern human conduct through procedural justice, rights, and public good. Doing Justice to Mercy challenges this assumption by presenting the reader with an urgent conversation between the law and religion that yields a constructive approach, both theoretically and practically, to the complex role of mercy in our legal process.

Authored by legal practitioners, activists, and theorists in addition to theologians and ethicists, the essays collected here are informed by timeless principles, and yet they could not be timelier. The trend in sentencing moves toward an increased severity, and the number of incarcerated people in the United States is at an all-time high. In the half-decade since 9/11, moreover, homeland security has established itself as a permanent fixture in our lives. In this atmosphere, the current volume seeks initially to clarify how justice and mercy intertwine in relation to a number of issues, such as rehabilitation, the death penalty, domestic violence, and war crimes. Exploring the legal, philosophical, and theological grounds for mercy in our courts, the discussion then moves to the practical ways in which mercy may be implemented.

Contributors: Marc Mauer, The Sentencing Project * Lois Gehr Livezey, McCormick Theological Seminary * Ernie Lewis, Public Advocate, Commonwealth of Kentucky * Jonathan Rothchild, Loyola Marymount University * Albert W. Alschuler, Northwestern University School of Law * David Scheffer, Northwestern University School of Law * David Little, Harvard Divinity School * Matthew Myer Boulton, Andover Newton Theological School * Mark Lewis Taylor, Princeton Theological Seminary * Sarah Coakley, Cambridge University * William Schweiker, University of Chicago Divinity School * Kevin Jung, College of William and Mary * Peter J. Paris, Princeton Theological Seminary * W. Clark Gilpin, University of Chicago Divinity School * William C. Placher, Wabash College

"Justice for Deborah Thornton is complete, " Richard Thornton said after the execution of her killer, Karla Faye Tucker, in Texas. "I want to say to every victim in the world, demand this." But which form of justice is this victim demanding-retribution or restoration?

Taking seriously the claims of death penalty supporters, Lloyd Steffen constructs a theory of just execution. For every acknowledged killer on death row there are dozens who maintain their innocence. Supporters of the death penalty -- along with its opponents -- must demand fairness so that innocent persons are not subjected to the terror of an unjust execution.

Reminding us that Jesus likewise faced the terror of unjust execution, Steffen asks Christians to reacquaint themselves with the symbol of the cross as an instrument of state terror rather than a divine decoration.