"What a long, extraordinary process digging into the deepest secrets of the Gulag has been. Now, here is its history, fully, factually, and humanly effected for the present day by Oleg Khlevniuk."- Robert Conquest, from the forward The human cost of the Gulag, the Soviet labor camp system in which millions of people were imprisoned between 1920 and 1956, was staggering. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and others after him have written movingly about the Gulag, yet never has there been a thorough historical study of this unique and tragic episode in Soviet history. This groundbreaking book presents the first comprehensive, historically accurate account of the camp system. Russian historian Oleg Khlevniuk has mined the contents of extensive archives, including long-suppressed state and Communist Party documents, to uncover the secrets of the Gulag and how it became a central component of Soviet ideology and social policy. Khlevniuk argues persuasively that the Stalinist penal camps created in the 1930s were essentially different from previous camps. He shows that political motivations and paranoia about potential enemies contributed no more to the expansion of the Gulag than the economic incentive of slave labor did. And he offers powerful evidence that the Great Terror was planned centrally and targeted against particular categories of the population. Khlevniuk makes a signal contribution to Soviet history with this exceptionally informed and balanced view of the Gulag.

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.

" Given the choice, instead of a slow, scheduled death, we ask the government of France, the voice of human rights and liberties, to instantly re-establish the real death penalty for all of us ."
- This petition, dated 16 January 2006, was signed by ten prisoners serving long sentences at Clairvaux
Description

"Bastille Nation" tells the story of an attempt to reform the French prison system, resulting in the passing of a penitentiary law at the end of 2009. This law had been ten years in the making, and was presented as the culmination of the modernization and humanization of the French prison system. The law was challenged by political parties, unions, associations and human rights groups. Yet, despite this opposition, the prison administration went about recovering its position of expertise in the face of this vocal criticism. Unresolved points of conflict still exist and continue to shift. The persistence of activist groups, official authorities and opposition parties has allowed prisoners to continue to challenge the system. By contributing to the study of the various means by which prisoners make demands and subjectify themselves, this book also recounts the history of prisons on the "outside" as well as on the "inside, " casting light on both the juxtaposition of voices and their unequal power relationship.

Endorsements

..".What is striking, and what Berard and Chantraine bring out with admirable clarity and passion is the insistence by prisoners on their dignity and that they be treated as human beings and as citizens of the Republic."
- James Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science, Yale University and author of "The Art of Not Being Governed."
..".an emancipatory text which breaks down the prison walls and gives voice to the incarcerated, presenting them as political subjects rather than as offenders or criminals."
- Emma Bell, Senior Lecturer, Universite de Savoie, and author of "Criminal Justice and Neoliberalism."

A bold and provocative interpretation of one of the most religiously vibrant places in America--a state penitentiary
Baraka, Al, Teddy, and Sayyid--four black men from South Philadelphia, two Christian and two Muslim--are serving life sentences at Pennsylvania's maximum-security Graterford Prison. All of them work in Graterford's chapel, a place that is at once a sanctuary for religious contemplation and an arena for disputing the workings of God and man. Day in, day out, everything is, in its twisted way, rather ordinary. And then one of them disappears.
"Down in the Chapel "tells the story of one week at Graterford Prison. We learn how the men at Graterford pass their time, care for themselves, and commune with their makers. We observe a variety of Muslims, Protestants, Catholics, and others, at prayer and in study and song. And we listen in as an interloping scholar of religion tries to make sense of it all.
When prisoners turn to God, they are often scorned as con artists who fake their piety, or pitied as wretches who cling to faith because faith is all they have left. Joshua Dubler goes beyond these stereotypes to show the religious life of a prison in all its complexity. One part prison procedural, one part philosophical investigation, "Down in the Chapel "explores the many uses prisoners make of their religions and weighs the circumstances that make these uses possible. Gritty and visceral, meditative and searching, it is an essential study of American religion in the age of mass incarceration.

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.

George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis triggered abolitionist shockwaves. Calls to defund the police found receptive ears around the world. Shortly after, Sarah Everard's murder by a serving police officer sparked a national abolitionist movement in Britain. But to abolish the police, prisons and borders, we must confront the legacy of Empire. Abolition Revolution is a guide to abolitionist politics in Britain, drawing out rich histories of resistance from rebellion in the colonies to grassroots responses to carceral systems today. The authors argue that abolition is key to reconceptualising revolution for our times - linking it with materialist feminisms, anti-capitalist class struggle, internationalist solidarity and anti-colonialism. Perfect for reading groups and activist meetings, this is an invaluable book for those new to abolitionist politics - whilst simultaneously telling a passionate and authoritative story about the need for abolition and revolution in Britain and globally.

The setting is the United States of America, land of the free, yet the world's leading jailer. The U.S. prison population has reached an explosion point. Attorney and author Jack W. Cline reveals the issues involved in his powerful memoir Yardbird USA: How the United States Became the World's Leading Jailer (Musings of a Trial Lawyer). The book contains a dozen true crime cases with bizarre, humorous and unjust outcomes, but all point to a single conclusion: Politicians have made a mess of the criminal justice system, and have created a monster in the U.S. prison population. As a result of the prison population explosion of the past two decades, Americans now have more people behind bars than Russia and China combined! The cost and side effects of this fetish for incarceration is staggering. How did this happen and what can be done to stop the bleeding? Jack W. Cline is a practicing trial lawyer in western Pennsylvania. "I am very disturbed at our prison population growth, the criminal justice system being hijacked by the legislative branch, and the erosion of our liberties. The government is so far up in our business right now it is amazing that anyone can still walk." http://sbpra.com/JackWCline

Presents data from the 2008-09 National Survey of Youth in Custody (NSYC), conducted in 195 juvenile confinement facilities between June 2008 and April 2009, with a sample of over 9,000 adjudicated youth. The report provides national-level and facility-level estimates of sexual victimization by type of activity, including youth-on-youth sexual contact, staff sexual misconduct, and level of coercion. It also includes an analysis of the experience of sexual victimization, characteristics of youth most at risk to victimization, where the incidents occur, time of day, characteristics of perpetrators, and nature of the injuries. Finally, it includes estimates of the sampling error for selected measures of sexual victimization and summary characteristics of victims and incidents. The report and appendix tables provide a listing of results for sampled state and large locally or privately operated facilities, as required under the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (P.L. 108-79). Facilities are listed alphabetically by state with estimated prevalence rates of sexual victimization as reported by youths during a personal interview and based on activity in the 12 months prior to the interview or since admission to the facility, if shorter. Highlights include the following: This report presents findings from the first National Survey of Youth in Custody (NSYC), representing 26,550 adjudicated youth held nationwide in state operated and large locally or privately operated juvenile facilities. Overall, 91% of youth in these facilities were male; 9% were female. About 12% of youth in state juvenile facilities and large non-state facilities (representing 3,220 youth nationwide) reported experiencing one or more incidents of sexual victimization by another youth or facility staff in the past 12 months or since admission, if less than 12 months. About 2.6% of youth (700 nationwide) reported an incident involving another youth and 10.3% reported an incident involving staff.

Thomas Mott Osborne's account of his voluntary stay in Auburn State prison. Osborne, the head of a state commission on "the prison problem," checked into Auburn to personally experience conditions there. It is really engaging and heartfelt, as well as highly political. Osborne encountered tremendous institutional and political resistance to his reform efforts and you get a real sense of that in this book ... In a review of a biography of Osborne the New York Times had this to say: Thomas Mott Osborne presents the phenomenon, not rare among men of genius and high talent, where the work of the man surpasses the individual. To no one person is the modem world of prison reform and the whole broad subject of penology so much in debt as to him. Yet in his own eyes he felt, near the end of his days, that he had lived an ineffectual life. With the shortsightedness of disappointment and despair he could not realize that within ten years of his death biographers would be preoccupied with the ideal of evaluating him as one of the major figures in American reform . . .

Urbina's consideration of capital punishment seeks to examine racial and ethnic differences, stressing how Latinos' and Latinas' experiences are distinct from those of Caucasians and African Americans. In considering Latinos he focuses on the problem of lack of data and addresses it through several means. His goal is to go beyond traditional approaches of analyzing death penalty information, with the ultimate objective of addressing theoretical and methodological shortcomings empirically, and quantitatively analyzing death sentence outcome data for California, Florida, and Texas between 1975 and 1995.

ADVANCE READER COPY: The bold account of launching an innovative creative writing class inside San Quentin and the journey of hardship, inspiration, and redemption of its members, from New York Times bestselling twin authors. San Quentin State Prison would be an unlikely place to look for writing talent. But Keith and Kent Zimmerman, twin brothers and New York Times bestselling coauthors of Operation Family Secrets, have found creative passion, a range of gritty, authentic voices, and a path to hope and redemption behind the guarded walls of the H-Unit at San Quentin-through a creative writing course they founded almost a decade ago. H-Unit: A Story of Writing and Redemption Behind the Walls of San Quentin is the dramatic account of hope and purpose that recounts Keith and Kent's experience teaching the class and their students' experience in the Literary Throwdown writing competition. Seen from the inside, H-Unit is written in an authentic voice and tells the story of real-life characters, from the recidivous "Big Bob" to the incorrigible "Midget Porn," whose lives are transformed by the written word.

Prison-reformation has been a controversial and politically charged issue in Kenya. In the past it has elicited such legendary and emotional responses as 'What reforms? Prisons are not supposed to be five star hotels ' Recently, however, there has been a greater consensus between the public sector and the civic society in Kenya - than has ever in the past - of the need to revisit the human rights of inmates in various Kenyan prisons. Since 2003 a number of ground breaking reforms have been introduced in Kenyan prisons and more reforms seem to be on the way. Jacqueline Korir in this book takes a serious and dispassionate look into a single variable: the quality of catering in Kenyan prisons. Her findings were both shocking and challenging. The food was lacking in both nutritive value as well aesthetic appeal. The site of food samples was only reminiscent of a grotesque meaning of the famous Council in Church History - The Diet of Worms This book, grounded, in empirical data analysis by hard statistics and backed by rare photographs from inside Kenyan prisons serves as an eye-opener to both the prison-reformists as well as students and teachers of African sociology and institutional catering all over the world.

One of the most comprehensive examinations of US torture policy, from the Cold War to the War on Terror to the debate over accountability Waterboarding. Sleep deprivation. Sensory manipulation. Stress positions. Over the last several years, these and other methods of torture have become garden variety words for practically anyone who reads about current events in a newspaper or blog. We know exactly what they are, how to administer them, and, disturbingly, that they were secretly authorized by the Bush Administration in its efforts to extract information from people detained in its war on terror. What we lack, however, is a larger lens through which to view America's policy of torture-one that dissects America's long relationship with interrogation and torture, which roots back to the 1950s and has been applied, mostly in secret, to "enemies," ever since. How did America come to embrace this practice so fully, and how was it justified from a moral, legal, and psychological perspective? The United States and Torture opens with a compelling preface by Sister Dianna Ortiz, who describes the unimaginable treatment she endured in Guatemala in 1987 at the hands of the the Guatemalan government, which was supported by the United States. Then a psychologist, a historian, a political scientist, a philosopher, a sociologist, two journalists, and eight lawyers offer one of the most comprehensive examinations of torture to date, beginning with the CIA during the Cold War era and ending with today's debate over accountability for torture. Ultimately, this gripping, interdisciplinary work details the complicity of the United States government in the torture and cruel treatment of prisoners both at home and abroad and discusses what can be done to hold those who set the torture policy accountable. Contributors: Marjorie Cohn, Richard Falk, Marc D. Falkoff, Terry Lynn Karl, John W. Lango, Jane Mayer, Alfred W. McCoy, Jeanne Mirer, Sister Dianna Ortiz, Jordan J. Paust, Bill Quigley, Michael Ratner, Thomas Ehrlich Reifer, Philippe Sands, Stephen Soldz, and Lance Tapley.

This book provides insight into, knowledge of, and skills for an integrated and participative approach to unit management in prisons. The book will inspire corrections managers to meet the challenges posed by imprisonment in future generations. Contents include: the philosophy of unit management * architecture * case management * risk management * security management * human rights and unit management * the human rights of inmates * avoiding negligence and liability * valid decision making * international principles.

In this volume, the author sets aside the usual division between theories of punishment that do or do not focus on retribution. In its place he proposes and explores the distinction between internalist and externalist theories.

Many Western countries now use electronic monitoring (EM) of some offenders as an alternative to more traditional forms of punishments such as imprisonment. While the main reason for introducing EM is the growing prison population, politicians and administrators also believe that this type of punishment achieves a positive effect by reducing recidivism and the probability of post-release marginalisation. The small existing empirical literature on the effect of EM finds mixed support for this belief, but is, however, based on very small sample sizes. The authors expand this literature by studying the causal effect of EM on social benefit dependency after the sentence has been served. They use administrative data from Statistics Denmark that include information on all Danish offenders who have served their sentence under EM rather than in prison. They compare post-release dependency rates for this group with outcomes for a historical control group of convicted offenders who would have served their sentences with EM had the option been available (ie: who are identical to the EM group on all observed and unobserved characteristics).

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.

The death penalty arouses our passions as does few other issues. Some view taking another person's life as just and reasonable punishment while others see it as an inhumane and barbaric act. But the intensity of feeling that capital punishment provokes often obscures its long and varied history in this country. Now, for the first time, we have a comprehensive history of the death penalty in the United States. Law professor Stuart Banner tells the story of how, over four centuries, dramatic changes have taken place in the ways capital punishment has been administered and experienced. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the penalty was standard for a laundry list of crimes-from adultery to murder, from arson to stealing horses. Hangings were public events, staged before audiences numbering in the thousands, attended by women and men, young and old, black and white alike. Early on, the gruesome spectacle had explicitly religious purposes-an event replete with sermons, confessions, and last-minute penitence-to promote the salvation of both the condemned and the crowd. Through the nineteenth century, the execution became desacralized, increasingly secular and private, in response to changing mores. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, ironically, as it has become a quiet, sanitary, technological procedure, the death penalty is as divisive as ever. By recreating what it was like to be the condemned, the executioner, and the spectator, Banner moves beyond the debates, to give us an unprecedented understanding of capital punishment's many meanings. As nearly four thousand inmates are now on death row, and almost one hundred are currently being executed each year, the furious debate is unlikely to diminish. The Death Penalty is invaluable in understanding the American way of the ultimate punishment.

A brand new book by eminent legal biographer and historian John Hostettler. Hard on the heels of his acclaimed work with Richard Braby on Sir William Garrow, comes a further text on one of crime and punishments under-recorded and maybe unsung heroes. In eighteenth century continental Europe penal law was barbaric. Gallows were a regular feature of the landscape, branding and mutilation common and there existed the ghastly spectacle of men being broken on the wheel. To make matters worse, people were often tortured or put to death for minor crimes (sometimes both) and often without any trial at all. Like a bombshell, a book entitled On Crimes and Punishments, exploded onto the scene in 1764 with shattering effect. Its author was a young nobleman named Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794). A central message of that - now classic - work were that such punishments were part of 'a war of nations against their citizens' and should be abolished. It was a cri de coeur for thorough reform of the law affecting punishments and it swept across the continent of Europe like wildfire, being adopted by one ruler after another. It even crossed the Atlantic to the new United States of America, in the hands of Thomas Jefferson. In a wonderful sentence which concludes Beccaria's book, he sums up matters as follows: 'In order that every punishment may not be an act of violence, committed by one man or by many against a single individual, it ought to be above all things public, speedy, necessary, the least possible in the given circumstances, proportioned to its crime [and] dictated by the laws'. A welcome addition to the Waterside Press list of biographical and historical works, this new book on Cesare Beccaria - targeted to highlight matters of both universal and current relevance - will be of considerable interest to anyone wishing to trace the development of the rights of individuals charged with or convicted of crimes, and of the importance of fairness, proportionality, decency and similar matters which may be at-risk in the wrong hands. Civilising penal law remains a topical issue but it began with the subject of this work.

How did a nation so famously associated with freedom become internationally identified with imprisonment? After the scandals of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and in the midst of a dramatically escalating prison population, the question is particularly urgent. In this timely, provocative study, Caleb Smith argues that the dehumanization inherent in captivity has always been at the heart of American civil society.

Exploring legal, political, and literary texts--including the works of Dickinson, Melville, and Emerson--Smith shows how alienation and self-reliance, social death and spiritual rebirth, torture and penitence came together in the prison, a scene for the portrayal of both gothic nightmares and romantic dreams. Demonstrating how the "cellular soul" has endured since the antebellum age, "The Prison and the American Imagination" offers a passionate and haunting critique of the very idea of solitude in American life.

An innovative text/reader featuring the best of both worlds: author-written text and carefully selected articles Presenting a more practical viewpoint than other texts available for the course, this book offers a unique textbook/reader alternative to the traditional textbook format. The book is divided into 11 author-written sections that present basic concepts, key terms, and recent data. Each section is followed by two to three cutting-edge, research-based articles.