The most straightforward overview available covering the entire criminal justice system. A 'no frills' explanation for beginners. This basic guide sets out the main components of the criminal justice system in an accessible way. Intended as a starting point for readers coming to the subject for the first time it is ideal for new staff, volunteers, first year students and other 'rookies' a short book of facts, explanations and pointers to further study. Chapters: 1. What is Crime? 2. What is Criminal Justice? 3. Who's Who? 4. Modern Developments 5. The Police 6. The Criminal Courts in Action 7. Sentencing (including Probation Work) 8. Prisons and Imprisonment 9. Victims and Restorative Justice 10. Causes of Crime The book also features the Rule of Law, risk assessment, decision-making, forensic investigation, witnesses, surveillance, criminology, crime reduction strategies, border controls, penal reform and some international and historical dimensions. With a Glossary of Words, Phrases and Abbreviations Bryan Gibson is a barrister and editor-in-chief at Waterside Press.

Told with equal parts raw honesty and unbridled compassion, All Day recounts a year in Liza Jessie Peterson's classroom at Island Academy, the high school for inmates detained at New York City's Rikers Island. A poet and actress who had done occasional poetry workshops at the correctional facility, Peterson was ill-prepared for a full-time stint teaching a full GED curriculum program for the incarcerated youth. For the first time faced with full days teaching the rambunctious, hyper, and fragile adolescent inmates, "Ms. P" comes to understand the essence of her predominantly Black and Latino students as she attempts not only to educate them, but to instill them with a sense of self-worth long stripped from their lives. "I have quite a spirited group of drama kings, court jesters, flyboy gangsters, tricksters, and wannabe pimps all in my charge, all up in my face, to educate," Peterson discovers. "Corralling this motley crew of bad-news bears to do any lesson is like running boot camp for hyperactive gremlins. I have to be consistent, alert, firm, witty, fearless, and demanding, and most important, I have to have strong command of the subject I'm teaching." Discipline is always a challenge, with the students spouting street-infused backtalk and often bouncing off the walls with pent-up testosterone. Peterson learns quickly that she must keep the upper hand-set the rules and enforce them with rigor, even when her sympathetic heart starts to waver. Despite their relentless bravura and antics-and in part because of it-Peterson becomes a fierce advocate for her students. She works to instill the young men, mostly black, with a sense of pride about their history and culture: from their African roots to Langston Hughes and Malcolm X. She encourages them to explore and express their true feelings by writing their own poems and essays. When the boys push her buttons (on an almost daily basis) she pushes back, demanding that they meet not only her expectations or the standards of the curriculum, but set expectations for themselves-something most of them have never before been asked to do. She witnesses some amazing successes as some of the boys come into their own under her tutelage. Peterson vividly captures the prison milieu and the exuberance of the kids who have been handed a raw deal by society and have become lost within the system. Her time in the classroom teaches her something, too-that these boys want to be rescued. They want normalcy and love and opportunity.

More than the citizens of most countries, Americans are either religious or in jail--or both. But what does it mean when imprisonment and evangelization actually go hand in hand, or at least appear to? What do "faith-based" prison programs mean for the constitutional separation of church and state, particularly when prisoners who participate get special privileges? In "Prison Religion," law and religion scholar Winnifred Fallers Sullivan takes up these and other important questions through a close examination of a 2005 lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a faith-based residential rehabilitation program in an Iowa state prison.

"Americans United for the Separation of Church and State v. Prison Fellowship Ministries," a trial in which Sullivan served as an expert witness, centered on the constitutionality of allowing religious organizations to operate programs in state-run facilities. Using the trial as a case study, Sullivan argues that separation of church and state is no longer possible. Religious authority has shifted from institutions to individuals, making it difficult to define religion, let alone disentangle it from the state. "Prison Religion" casts new light on church-state law, the debate over government-funded faith-based programs, and the predicament of prisoners who have precious little choice about what kind of rehabilitation they receive, if they are offered any at all.

"I learned that the problems were much deeper than a flawed criminal justice system, and that our work needed to begin in our relationships with each other and the natural world, and most importantly, with ourselves." (from the preface) Restorative justice, as it exists in Canada and the U.S., has been co-opted and relegated to the sidelines of the dominant criminal justice system. In Security, With Care, Elizabeth M. Elliott argues that restorative justice cannot be actualized solely within the criminal justice system. If it isn't who we are, says Elliott, then the policies will never be sustainable. Restorative justice must be more than a program within the current system - it must be a new paradigm for responding to harm and conflict. Facilitating this shift requires a rethinking of the assumptions around punishment and justice, placing emphasis instead on values and relationships. But if we can achieve this change, we have the potential to build a healthier, more ethical and more democratic society.

Challenging incarceration and policing was central to the postwar Black Freedom Movement. In this bold new political and intellectual history of the Nation of Islam, Garrett Felber centers the Nation in the Civil Rights Era and the making of the modern carceral state. The book examines efforts to build broad-based grassroots coalitions among liberals, radicals, and nationalists to oppose the carceral state and struggle for local Black self-determination. It captures the ambiguous place of the Nation of Islam specifically, and Black nationalist organizing more broadly, during an era which has come to be defined by nonviolent resistance, desegregation campaigns, and racial liberalism. Exhaustively researched, Felber illuminates new sites and forms of political struggle as Muslims prayed under surveillance in prison yards and used courtroom political theater to put the state on trial. This history captures familiar figures in new ways--Malcolm X the courtroom lawyer and A. Philip Randolph the Harlem coalition builder--while highlighting the forgotten organizing of rank-and-file activists in prisons such as Martin Sostre. This definitive account is a halting reminder that Islamophobia, state surveillance, and police violence have deep roots in the state repression of Black Muslim communities.

Getting Out offers the first systematic account of the evolution of early release as a public policy concern in England and Wales between 1960 and 1995. At a time when public discourse on crime has focused, to a significant degree, upon the powers of the police and the sentence of the court this book seeks to turn current debate on its head and examine the circumstances in which policy makers have found it desirable to reduce the custodial element of a prison sentence and return prisoners to the community. Drawing upon an extensive period of archival research, and interviews with key decision-makers, this book considers three defining periods of reform that illuminate the complex ideas, trade-offs, and moments of political controversy that have shaped this secretive and little understood area of penal policy. The book argues that early release is inherently bound up with prevailing societal justifications for punishment and the appropriate use of imprisonment within our liberal democratic system. It draws attention to the uneasy constitutional balance of power between the judiciary and the executive, and reflects upon the administrative task of governing large captive populations where the hopes and expectations of inmates do not always align with the interests of prison authorities or the community at large. In so doing, Getting Out challenges widespread assumptions about penal change and shows how government policy has been shaped by the legacy of past political choices, the organisation of central government departments and the fluid balance of power within Whitehall.

Now in its Sixth Edition, this book remains the most comprehensive and authoritative on the penal system, providing students with an incisive, critical account of the punitive, managerial and humanitarian approaches to criminal justice. Fully updated to cover the most recent changes in the Criminal Justice System, the new edition: Outlines contemporary policy debates on sentencing, staffing, youth custody and overcrowding. Explores growing inequalities in the criminal justice system including issues of race, religion, gender and sexuality, with new content on faith, and transgender prisoners. Considers the impact of privatisation on the probation service. Discusses the most recent debates around the parole process, including high-profile cases and attempts at reform. The book is supported by online resources for lecturers and students, including chapter PowerPoints, sample syllabus, summaries of key legislative acts, bills and official reports, a list of recommended further reading for each chapter, and links to important Penal Agencies and Organisations, Law Reform Organisations, and other useful academic sites. Essential reading for students of criminal justice and criminology, studying penology, punishments and the penal system.

In Their Names busts open the public safety myth that uses victims' rights to perpetuate mass incarceration, and offers a formula for what would actually make us safe, from the widely respected head of Alliance for Safety and Justice When twenty-six-year-old recent college graduate Aswad Thomas was days away from starting a professional basketball career in 2009, he was shot twice while buying juice at a convenience store. The trauma left him in excruciating pain, with mounting medical debt, and struggling to cope with deep anxiety and fear. That was the same year the national incarceration rate peaked. Yet, despite thousands of new tough-on-crime policies and billions of new dollars pumped into "justice," Aswad never received victim compensation, support, or even basic levels of concern. In the name of victims, justice bureaucracies ballooned while most victims remained on their own. In In Their Names, Lenore Anderson, president of one of the nation's largest reform advocacy organizations, offers a close look at how the political call to help victims in the 1980s morphed into a demand for bigger bureaucracies and more incarceration, and cemented the long- standing chasm that exists between most victims and the justice system. She argues that the powerful myth that mass incarceration benefits victims obscures recognition of what most victims actually need, including addressing their trauma, which is a leading cause of subsequent violent crime. A solutions-oriented, paradigm-shifting book, In Their Names argues persuasively for closing the gap between our public safety systems and crime survivors.

Imprisoned by the Past: Warren McCleskey, Race, and the American Death Penalty connects the history of the American death penalty to the case of Warren McCleskey. By highlighting the relation between American history and an individual case, Imprisoned by the Past provides a unique understanding of the big picture of capital punishment in the context of a compelling human story. McCleskey's criminal law case resulted in one of the most important Supreme Court cases in U.S. legal history, where the Court confronted evidence of racial discrimination in the administration of capital punishment. The case marks the last that the Supreme Court realistically might have held that capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As such, the constitutional law case also created a turning point in the death penalty debate in the country. The book connects McCleskey's case - as well as his life and crime - to the issues that have haunted the American death penalty debate since the first executions by early settlers and that still affect the legal system today. Imprisoned by the Past ties together three unique American stories in U.S history. First, the book considers the changing American death penalty across centuries where drastic changes have occurred in the last fifty years. Second, the book discusses the role that race played in that history. And third, the book tells the story of Warren McCleskey and how his life and legal case brought together the other two narratives.

Providing a historical analysis of the impact of criminology on the rationale of punishment and the sentencing systems in Europe and the United States between the 1870s and the 1930s, Reinventing Punishment: A Comparative History of Criminology and Penology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries investigates and contrasts the rise of the principles of individualization of punishment, social defence, preventive justice, and indeterminate sentencing. The manner in which US and European jurisprudence enforced these ideas resulted in the emergence of two different penological identities: the US penal reform movement led to the adoption of the indeterminate sentence system, whereas the European criminological approach resulted in the formulation of the dual-track system with punishment and measures of security. This theoretical divide, discussed at many international congresses and in studies of comparative criminal law, not only reflects two different ideas on the legitimacy and purpose of punishment, but also corresponds to two different constitutional views of criminal law. The book considers the relation between constitutional frameworks (rule of law and Rechtsstaat) and penological claims, explaining how some of the tenets of penal liberalism (such as principle of legality and separation of powers) were affected by penal modernism, even with the rise of authoritarian regimes. It examines the dilemmas provoked by criminology, focusing on the role of the judge in the execution of sentences, the distribution of sentencing powers among judicial and administrative bodies, the balance between social security and individual guarantees, and the inconsistencies of preventive detention. Filling a notable gap in Anglo-American literature by providing a sophisticated panoramic analysis of the development of criminology in late-nineteenth and first half of the twentieth-century Europe, Reinventing Punishment will be of interest to scholars of criminology, criminal law, and criminal justice studies, as well as legal historians and theorists.

The award-winning "radically original" (The Atlantic) restorative justice leader, whose work the Washington Post has called "totally sensible and totally revolutionary," grapples with the problem of violent crime in the movement for prison abolition A National Book Foundation Literature for Justice honoree A Kirkus "Best Book of 2019 to Fight Racism and Xenophobia" Winner of the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice Journalism Award Finalist for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice In a book Democracy Now! calls a "complete overhaul of the way we've been taught to think about crime, punishment, and justice," Danielle Sered, the executive director of Common Justice and renowned expert on violence, offers pragmatic solutions that take the place of prison, meeting the needs of survivors and creating pathways for people who have committed violence to repair harm. Critically, Sered argues that reckoning is owed not only on the part of individuals who have caused violence, but also by our nation for its overreliance on incarceration to produce safety-at a great cost to communities, survivors, racial equity, and the very fabric of our democracy. Although over half the people incarcerated in America today have committed violent offenses, the focus of reformers has been almost entirely on nonviolent and drug offenses. Called "innovative" and "truly remarkable" by The Atlantic and "a top-notch entry into the burgeoning incarceration debate" by Kirkus Reviews, Sered's Until We Reckon argues with searing force and clarity that our communities are safer the less we rely on prisons and jails as a solution for wrongdoing. Sered asks us to reconsider the purposes of incarceration and argues persuasively that the needs of survivors of violent crime are better met by asking people who commit violence to accept responsibility for their actions and make amends in ways that are meaningful to those they have hurt-none of which happens in the context of a criminal trial or a prison sentence.

In diesem Band 2 der Edition "Forschung und Entwicklung in der Strafrechtspflege" entfalten und vertiefen die Autoren das Konzept der Sozialen Strafrechtspflege und analysieren die Starken und Schwachen der Umsetzung in die Praxis der Strafverfolgung und Strafvollstreckung - sowohl auf der Ebene des Einzelfalls als auch des Managements und der Systementwicklung. In einem weiteren Schwerpunkt werden Innovationsstrategien dargelegt und erfolgreiche Innovationsprojekte prasentiert. Ein Ausblick entwickelt eine Agenda fur wirksame und nachhaltige Aktivitaten in den nachsten Jahren und Jahrzehnten.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, STARRING MICHAEL B. JORDAN, JAMIE FOXX, AND BRIE LARSON.

A NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, BOSTON GLOBE, ESQUIRE, AND TIME BOOK OF THE YEAR.

A #1 New York Times bestseller, this is a powerful, true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix America’s broken justice system, as seen in the HBO documentary True Justice.

The US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. One in every 15 people born there today is expected to go to prison. For black men this figure rises to one in 3. And Death Row is disproportionately black, too.

Bryan Stevenson grew up poor in the racially segregated South. His innate sense of justice made him a brilliant young lawyer, and one of his first defendants was Walter McMillian, a black man sentenced to die for the murder of a white woman ― a crime he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, startling racial inequality, and legal brinkmanship ― and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

At once an unforgettable account of an idealistic lawyer’s coming of age and a moving portrait of the lives of those he has defended, Just Mercy is an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of justice.

In 1987, the United States Supreme Court decided a case that could have ended the death penalty in the United States. Imprisoned by the Past: Warren McCleskey and the American Death Penalty examines the long history of the American death penalty and its connection to the case of Warren McCleskey, revealing how that case marked a turning point for the history of the death penalty. In this book, Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier explores one of the most important Supreme Court cases in history, a case that raised important questions about race and punishment, and ultimately changed the way we understand the death penalty today. McCleskey's case resulted in one of the most important Supreme Court decisions in U.S. history, where the Court confronted evidence of racial discrimination in the administration of capital punishment. The case currently marks the last time that the Supreme Court had a realistic chance of completely striking down capital punishment. As such, the case also marked a turning point in the death penalty debate in the country. Going back nearly four centuries, this book connects McCleskey's life and crime to the issues that have haunted the American death penalty debate since the first executions by early settlers through the modern twenty-first century death penalty. Imprisoned by the Past ties together three unique American stories. First, the book considers the changing American death penalty across centuries where drastic changes have occurred in the last fifty years. Second, the book discusses the role that race played in that history. And third, the book tells the story of Warren McCleskey and how his life and legal case brought together the other two narratives.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1965.

For Danielle Allen, punishment is more a window onto democratic Athens' fundamental values than simply a set of official practices. From imprisonment to stoning to refusal of burial, instances of punishment in ancient Athens fueled conversations among ordinary citizens and political and literary figures about the nature of justice. Re-creating in vivid detail the cultural context of this conversation, Allen shows that punishment gave the community an opportunity to establish a shining myth of harmony and cleanliness: that the city could be purified of anger and social struggle, and perfect order achieved. Each member of the city--including notably women and slaves--had a specific role to play in restoring equilibrium among punisher, punished, and society. The common view is that democratic legal processes moved away from the "emotional and personal" to the "rational and civic," but Allen shows that anger, honor, reciprocity, spectacle, and social memory constantly prevailed in Athenian law and politics.

Allen draws upon oratory, tragedy, and philosophy to present the lively intellectual climate in which punishment was incurred, debated, and inflicted by Athenians. Broad in scope, this book is one of the first to offer both a full account of punishment in antiquity and an examination of the political stakes of democratic punishment. It will engage classicists, political theorists, legal historians, and anyone wishing to learn more about the relations between institutions and culture, normative ideas and daily events, punishment and democracy.

The United States imprisons far more people, total and per capita, than any other country in the world. Among the more than 1.5 million Americans currently incarcerated, minorities and the poor are disproportionately represented. What's more, they tend to come from just a few of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the country. While the political costs of this phenomenon remain poorly understood, it's become increasingly clear that the effects of this mass incarceration are much more pervasive than previously thought, extending beyond those imprisoned to the neighbors, family, and friends left behind. For Trading Democracy for Justice, Traci Burch has drawn on data from neighborhoods with imprisonment rates up to fourteen times the national average to chart demographic features that include information about imprisonment, probation, and parole, as well as voter turnout and volunteerism. She presents powerful evidence that living in a high-imprisonment neighborhood significantly decreases political participation. Similarly, people living in these neighborhoods are less likely to engage with their communities through volunteer work. What results is the demobilization of entire neighborhoods and the creation of vast inequalities - even among those not directly affected by the criminal justice system. The first book to demonstrate the ways in which the institutional effects of imprisonment undermine already disadvantaged communities, Trading Democracy for Justice speaks to issues at the heart of democracy.

How does protest become criminalised? Applying an anthropological perspective to political and legal conflicts, Carolijn Terwindt urges us to critically question the underlying interests and logic of prosecuting protesters. The book draws upon ethnographic research in Chile, Spain, and the United States to trace prosecutorial narratives in three protracted contentious episodes in liberal democracies. Terwindt examines the conflict between Chilean landowners and the indigenous Mapuche people, the Spanish state and the Basque independence movement, and the United States' criminalisation of 'eco-terrorists.' Exploring how patterns and mechanisms of prosecutorial narrative emerge through distinct political, social and democratic contexts, Terwindt shines a light on how prosecutorial narratives in each episode changed significantly over time. Challenging the law and justice system and warning against relying on criminal law to deal with socio-political conflicts, Terwindt's observations have implications for a wide range of actors and constituencies, including social movement activists, scholars, and prosecutors.

Will Attwood was finishing a three-year sentence in prison when he was formally diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome for the first time. After his diagnosis he recognised just how much it had been affecting his life behind bars. This book is a practical advice guide for people with autism who have been sentenced to time in prison. Will shares his first-hand knowledge of what to expect and how to behave within the penal system. He sheds light on topics that are important for people with autism, answering questions such as: How should you act with inmates and guards? How do you avoid trouble? What about a prison's environmental stimuli may cause you anxiety? His thoughtful, measured writing debunks rumours about daily life in prison, and the useful tips and observations he offers will help anyone with autism prepare for the realities of spending time incarcerated, and be enormously helpful to those working with offenders on the autism spectrum.

NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES - #1 "NEW YORK TIMES "BESTSELLER
With a career, a boyfriend, and a loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the reckless young woman who delivered a suitcase of drug money ten years before. But that past has caught up with her. Convicted and sentenced to fifteen months at the infamous federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, the well-heeled Smith College alumna is now inmate #11187-424--one of the millions of people who disappear "down the rabbit hole" of the American penal system. From her first strip search to her final release, Kerman learns to navigate this strange world with its strictly enforced codes of behavior and arbitrary rules. She meets women from all walks of life, who surprise her with small tokens of generosity, hard words of wisdom, and simple acts of acceptance. Heartbreaking, hilarious, and at times enraging, Kerman's story offers a rare look into the lives of women in prison--why it is we lock so many away and what happens to them when they're there.
Praise for "Orange Is the New Black"
"Fascinating . . . The true subject of this unforgettable book is female bonding and the ties that even bars can't unbind."--"People" (four stars)
"I loved this book. It's a story rich with humor, pathos, and redemption. What I did not expect from this memoir was the affection, compassion, and even reverence that Piper Kerman demonstrates for all the women she encountered while she was locked away in jail. I will never forget it."--Elizabeth Gilbert, author of "Eat, Pray, Love"
"This book is impossible to put down because Kerman] could be you. Or your best friend. Or your daughter."--"Los Angeles Times"
"Moving . . . transcends the memoir genre's usual self-centeredness to explore how human beings can always surprise you."--"USA Today"
"It's a compelling awakening, and a harrowing one--both for the reader and for Kerman."--Newsweek.com
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The searing accounts of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Evgeniia Ginsberg and Varlam Shalamov opened the world's eyes to the terrors of the Soviet Gulag. But not until now has there been a memoir of life inside the camps written from the perspective of an actual employee of the Secret police. In this riveting memoir, superbly translated by Deborah Kaple, Fyodor Mochulsky describes being sent to work as a boss at the forced labor camp of Pechorlag in the frozen tundra north of the Arctic Circle. Only twenty-two years old, he had but a vague idea of the true nature of the Gulag. What he discovered was a world of unimaginable suffering and death, a world where men were starved, beaten, worked to death, or simply executed. Mochulsky details the horrific conditions in the camps and the challenges facing all those involved, from prisoners to guards. He depicts the power struggles within the camps between the secret police and the communist party, between the political prisoners (most of whom had been arrested for the generic crime of "counter-revolutionary activities") and the criminal convicts. And because Mochulsky writes of what he witnessed with the detachment of the engineer that he was, readers can easily understand how a system that destroyed millions of lives could be run by ordinary Soviet citizens who believed they were advancing the cause of socialism. Mochulsky remained a communist party member his entire life-he would later become a diplomat-but was deeply troubled by the gap between socialist theory and the Soviet reality of slave labor and mass murder. This unprecedented memoir takes readers into that reality and sheds new light on one of the most harrowing tragedies of the 20th century.

Faith in the power and righteousness of retribution has taken over the American criminal justice system. Approaching punishment and responsibility from a philosophical perspective, Erin Kelly challenges the moralism behind harsh treatment of criminal offenders and calls into question our society's commitment to mass incarceration. The Limits of Blame takes issue with a criminal justice system that aligns legal criteria of guilt with moral criteria of blameworthiness. Many incarcerated people do not meet the criteria of blameworthiness, even when they are guilty of crimes. Kelly underscores the problems of exaggerating what criminal guilt indicates, particularly when it is tied to the illusion that we know how long and in what ways criminals should suffer. Our practice of assigning blame has gone beyond a pragmatic need for protection and a moral need to repudiate harmful acts publicly. It represents a desire for retribution that normalizes excessive punishment. Appreciating the limits of moral blame critically undermines a commonplace rationale for long and brutal punishment practices. Kelly proposes that we abandon our culture of blame and aim at reducing serious crime rather than imposing retribution. Were we to refocus our perspective to fit the relevant moral circumstances and legal criteria, we could endorse a humane, appropriately limited, and more productive approach to criminal justice.