In this pathbreaking book, Dan Berger offers a bold reconsideration of twentieth century black activism, the prison system, and the origins of mass incarceration. Throughout the civil rights era, black activists thrust the prison into public view, turning prisoners into symbols of racial oppression while arguing that confinement was an inescapable part of black life in the United States. Black prisoners became global political icons at a time when notions of race and nation were in flux. Showing that the prison was a central focus of the black radical imagination from the 1950s through the 1980s, Berger traces the dynamic and dramatic history of this political struggle. The prison shaped the rise and spread of black activism, from civil rights demonstrators willfully risking arrests to the many current and former prisoners that built or joined organizations such as the Black Panther Party. Grounded in extensive research, Berger engagingly demonstrates that such organizing made prison walls porous and influenced generations of activists that followed.

An Innovative New Text That Addresses A Critical Issue Nearly 2,000 People Are Released From Prison Every Day In The United States, Many Of Whom Face Significant Barriers To Re-Entry Into The Civilian Population. Within Three Years, Two-Thirds Of Them Will Be Rearrested, And Nearly Half Will Return To Prison For A New Crime Or Parole Violation. Offender Reentry: Rethinking Criminology And Criminal Justice Is The First Text Of Its Kind To Address This Major Issue In Criminology And Criminal Justice. Bringing Together Cutting-Edge And Never-Before-Published Research, And Authored By The Most Critically Recognized Experts In The Field, This Text Offers Students Extraordinary Insight Into The Experiences Of Both Offenders In Reentry And The Practitioners Who Work Within The Legal System. Real-World Stories From Criminal Justice Professionals And Offenders Themselves Are Integrated With Up-To-The Minute Research And Thought-Provoking Analysis. Student-Oriented Pedagogical Features, Including Critical-Thinking And Discussion Questions For Every Chapter, Push Students To Engage Deeply With The Text And Synthesize Their Own Innovative Solutions To Contemporary Problems. The Text Addresses All Of The Societal Factors That Affect Offender Reentry, As Well As The Political And Economic Effects On The Community And Issues Of Public Safety. Ideally Suited For Upper-Level Undergraduate And Graduate Courses In Criminal Justice And Criminology, Offender Reentry Is An Invaluable New Addition To The Field.

Presents data from the National Inmate Survey (NIS), 2008-09, conducted in 167 state and federal prisons, 286 local jails, and 10 special correctional facilities (operated by U.S. Armed Forces, Indian tribes, or the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)) between October 2008 and December 2009, with a sample of 81,566 inmates ages 18 or older. The report provides a listing of facilities ranked according to the prevalence of sexual victimization, as required under the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (P.L. 108-79). The prevalence of victimization as reported by inmates during a personal interview is based on sexual activity in the 12 months prior to the interview or since admission to the facility, if less than 12 months. Included are estimates of nonconsensual sexual acts, abusive sexual contacts, inmate-on-inmate and staff sexual misconduct, and level of coercion. The report also presents findings on reported sexual victimization by selected characteristics of inmates, including demographic characteristics, sexual history and orientation, and criminal justice status. It includes details on victims' experiences and the circumstances surrounding incidents of sexual victimization. Highlights include the following: An estimated 4.4% of prison inmates and 3.1% of jail inmates reported experiencing one or more incidents of sexual victimization by another inmate or facility staff in the past 12 months or since admission to the facility, if less than 12 months. Female inmates in prison (4.7%) or jail (3.1%) were more than twice as likely as male inmates in prison (1.9%) or jail (1.3%) to report experiencing inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization. Among inmates who reported inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization, 13% of male prison inmates and 19% of male jail inmates said they were victimized within the first 24 hours after admission, compared to 4% of female inmates in prison and jail.

Throughout the nineteenth century the idyllic island of Fernando de Noronha, which lies two hundred miles off Brazil's northeastern coast, was home to Brazil's largest forced labor penal colony. In Punishment in Paradise Peter M. Beattie uses Noronha as a case study to understand nineteenth-century Brazil's varied social and cultural values, especially in relation to justice, class, color, civil condition, human rights and labor. As Brazil's slave population declined after 1850, the use of colonial-era disciplinary practices at Noronha-such as flogging and forced labor-stoked anxieties about human rights and Brazil's international image. Beattie contends that the treatment of slaves, convicts, and other social categories subject to coercive labor extraction were interconnected and that reforms that benefitted one of these categories made them harder to deny to others. In detailing Noronha's history and the end of slavery as part of an international expansion of human rights, Beattie places Brazil firmly in the purview of Atlantic history.

Throughout the nineteenth century the idyllic island of Fernando de Noronha, which lies two hundred miles off Brazil's northeastern coast, was home to Brazil's largest forced labor penal colony. In Punishment in Paradise Peter M. Beattie uses Noronha as a case study to understand nineteenth-century Brazil's varied social and cultural values, especially in relation to justice, class, color, civil condition, human rights and labor. As Brazil's slave population declined after 1850, the use of colonial-era disciplinary practices at Noronha-such as flogging and forced labor-stoked anxieties about human rights and Brazil's international image. Beattie contends that the treatment of slaves, convicts, and other social categories subject to coercive labor extraction were interconnected and that reforms that benefitted one of these categories made them harder to deny to others. In detailing Noronha's history and the end of slavery as part of an international expansion of human rights, Beattie places Brazil firmly in the purview of Atlantic history.

The punitive turn of penal policy in the United States after the acme of the Civil Rights movement responds not to rising "criminal" insecurity but to the "social "insecurity spawned by the fragmentation of wage labor and the shakeup of the ethnoracial hierarchy. It partakes of a broader reconstruction of the state wedding restrictive "workfare" and expansive "prisonfare" under a philosophy of moral behaviorism. This paternalist program of penalization of poverty aims to curb the urban disorders wrought by economic deregulation and to impose precarious employment on the postindustrial proletariat. It also erects a garish theater of civic morality on whose stage political elites can orchestrate the public vituperation of deviant figures--the teenage "welfare mother," the ghetto "street thug," and the roaming "sex predator"--and close the legitimacy deficit they suffer when they discard the established government mission of social and economic protection. By bringing developments in welfare and criminal justice into a single analytic framework attentive to both the instrumental and communicative moments of public policy, "Punishing the Poor" shows that the prison is not a mere technical implement for law enforcement but a core political institution. And it reveals that the capitalist revolution from above called neoliberalism entails not the advent of "small government" but the building of an overgrown and intrusive penal state deeply injurious to the ideals of democratic citizenship.

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Valuable to genealogists and history buffs, this guide provides records of the crimes and criminals plaguing Washington, DC, in the mid-19th century and of the penitentiary constructed to house them. As Washington emerged as the nation's capital, it faced many problems, one of which was crime. Created from land ceded by Maryland and Virginia, the new federal district operated under the criminal codes of both states. From 1829-1831, the newly constructed U.S. Penitentiary remained vacant until, in 1831, Congress enacted a criminal code specifically for the District. The author combines an interesting historical narrative with lists of convicts taken into the penitentiary during its 33-year operation between 1829-1862. The lists generally include full name, birthplace, race and gender, crime (including details when available), and sentence. In addition, the text includes the names of victims, judges, wardens and other law enforcement personnel, Civil War soldiers, doctors, ministers, etc. associated with the criminal justice system at the time. A surname index provides quick reference to those names. Every entry has a source footnote.

Health care professionals, including physicians, nurses, and clinical social workers, are required by law and professional codes of conduct to report suspected child abuse. These so called "mandated reporters" need current and practical information to recognize the signs and symptoms of child maltreatment. The fourth edition of Recognition of Child Abuse for the Mandated Reporter has been revised and updated to include contemporary best practices in the evaluation of child abuse and neglect. The authors and editors of this vital text represent a diverse array of professional disciplines and research interests. Together, they have assembled a multidisciplinary work concerned with a variety of topics essential to the recognition and prevention of child abuse wherever it may occur. These topics include: Recognizing and reporting physical abuse, sexual abuse, and child neglect Medical child abuse, or Munchausen's syndrome by proxy Risks to children in the digital age, including online predation and sexual exploitation Creative art therapy and its potential benefits to traumatized children Recognizing and reporting child abuse in the school setting Recognition of Child Abuse for the Mandated Reporter is a definitive reference for front line professionals seeking to comply with mandated reporting guidelines. In addition, this publication serves as a textbook for students studying medicine, nursing, social work, and law enforcement and who plan to work with children and families in their professional practice. Written by experts on the front lines of child protection, Recognition of Child Abuse for the Mandated Reporter details the most effective methods for interviews, examinations, documentation, and appropriate referrals in cases of child maltreatment.

Focusing on the intersection of Christianity and politics in the American penitentiary system, Jennifer Graber explores evangelical Protestants' efforts to make religion central to emerging practices and philosophies of prison discipline from the 1790s through the 1850s. Initially, state and prison officials welcomed Protestant reformers' and ministers' recommendations, particularly their ideas about inmate suffering and redemption. Over time, however, officials proved less receptive to the reformers' activities, and inmates also opposed them. Ensuing debates between reformers, officials, and inmates revealed deep disagreements over religion's place in prisons and in the wider public sphere as the separation of church and state took hold and the nation's religious environment became more diverse and competitive. Examining the innovative New York prison system, Graber shows how Protestant reformers failed to realize their dreams of large-scale inmate conversion or of prisons that reflected their values. To keep a foothold in prisons, reformers were forced to relinquish their Protestant terminology and practices and instead to adopt secular ideas about American morals, virtues, and citizenship. Graber argues that, by revising their original understanding of prisoner suffering and redemption, reformers learned to see inmates' afflictions not as a necessary prelude to a sinner's experience of grace but as the required punishment for breaking the new nation's laws.

An initiative supported by leading political, academic, religious and professional figures and in association with Queen Mary University of London. Virtually half-a-century has passed since the last Royal Commission on the Penal System was dissolved, its work uncompleted. Looking forwards, six members of the Commission asserted that 'after some years' a new Royal Commission would be of great public service. As commentators, writers and practitioners, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC and Professor Sean McConville have many decades of experience of penal policy and practice. Some 20-years ago they urged the appointment of a new Royal Commission on the subject. They have since pressed their case in letters to major newspapers and in earlier writings. In this publication the momentum for which is supported by leading figures, they make the case for a new Royal Commission that will be reflective, effective and swift, capable of building consensus and providing directions for generations. They argue that penal policy is fragmented and frequently irrational, contradictory, counterproductive, insubstantial and put together in a haphazard way.The dynamics and pressures of party politics inevitably mean that penal policy often emerges in response to hard cases and headlines. As this pamphlet claims, broader and more considered views, drawing on evidence and seeking to maximise social good, cannot be delivered by politicians afraid of missing an opportunity to score party political points.

Shining new light on early American prison literature--from its origins in last words, dying warnings, and gallows literature to its later works of autobiography, expose, and imaginative literature--"Reading Prisoners" weaves together insights about the rise of the early American penitentiary, the history of early American literacy instruction, and the transformation of crime writing in the "long" eighteenth century.
Looking first at colonial America--an era often said to devalue jailhouse literacy--Jodi Schorb reveals that in fact this era launched the literate prisoner into public prominence. Criminal confessions published between 1700 and 1740, she shows, were crucial "literacy events" that sparked widespread public fascination with the reading habits of the condemned, consistent with the evangelical revivalism that culminated in the first Great Awakening. By century's end, narratives by condemned criminals helped an audience of new writers navigate the perils and promises of expanded literacy.
Schorb takes us off the scaffold and inside the private world of the first penitentiaries--such as Philadelphia's Walnut Street Prison and New York's Newgate, Auburn, and Sing Sing. She unveils the long and contentious struggle over the value of prisoner education that ultimately led to sporadic efforts to supply prisoners with books and education. Indeed, a new philosophy emerged, one that argued that prisoners were best served by silence and hard labor, not by reading and writing--a stance that a new generation of convict authors vociferously protested.
The staggering rise of mass incarceration in America since the 1970s has brought the issue of prisoner rehabilitation once again to the fore. "Reading Prisoners" offers vital background to the ongoing, crucial debates over the benefits of prisoner education.

The diary of one man's experiences of his time in prison written over 300 days as he reels from and makes sense of being under lock and key. A white collar criminal he sees himself as someone who should not really be in prison - as 'a good man' for whom his incarceration is doubly punitive, not practically necessary or achieving much other than the degradation and powerlessness of being in prison. But as time passes he accepts his fate and settles down to the regime, helping others and using the experience to best advantage. Captures the essence of the sudden incarceration of a previously respectable white collar offender whose reputation and comfortable life have been turned upside down. Not only from self-interest, does he try to explain the futility of locking up people like himself making the book of interest to prison reformers as well as general readers. A rare white collar account of prison: Contains insights for anyone interested in prisoners and imprisonment; Set out as a diary and very easy to read; Illustrated by the author; Humorous, sometimes dark, critical, insightful and of particular interest to prison reformers. Will Phillips is a singer-songwriter and performer whose on-stage experiences include as lead singer in bands and appearing in musicals such as Camelot and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Having also worked as a chef and catering events consultant and organizer, in 2010 he found himself in prison for fraudulent offences. The author of several short stories, including Ouija Board and Curse, he spends his free time at home playing his guitar in the company of his Siamese cat and best friend Dexter.