"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.

The coming of statehood to California in 1850 forced the authorities to face one immediately pressing issue: what to do with the many convicts who were pouring forth from the local county courtrooms in the wake of the great Gold Rush of 1848-49. Lawlessness was everywhere rampant, and something had to be done immediately. The answer was found in establishing the first state prison at Quentin Point in Marin County, soon to be called San Quentin. Librarians Bonnie Petry and Michael Burgess have here gathered together several key documents dealing with the earliest years of the prison, including James Harold Wilkins' seminal work, "The Evolution of a State Prison," together with a list of early convict names, a bibliography of "San Quentiniana" (publications by the convicts themselves) by Herman K. Spector, and a new annotated bibliography of nonfiction resources about the prison compiled by Ms. Petry. Complete with Introduction and Index.

The terror lasted for thirty-six hours. When it was over, thirty-three inmates were dead, all at the hands of their fellow convicts. It was an outbreak of inmate violence unequalled in the annals of prison uprisings. It happened at the Penitentiary of New Mexico - Time magazine called it the nation's most notorious prison. W.G. Stone was there. He witnessed the beatings, the stabbings, the rape, the torture. Tying the rope under his arms and around his chest, they strung him up on the basketball hoop for all to see. There he would hang for the rest of the riot. During those hours of madness that were to follow, inmates would come in and hack at his dangling corpse with knives, beat it with pipes, mutilating it so totally that it was beyond recognition, a raw, bloody mass of flesh, by the time the uprising was over. - The Hate Factory.

On August 9, 2001, 22 days after Archer--now known as Prisoner FF8282--was sentenced to four years in prison for perjury, he was transferred from a maximum security prison in London to HMP Wayland, a medium security prison in Norfolk. For the next 67 days, as he waited to be reclassified for an "open," minimum security prison, he encountered not only the daily degradations of a dangerously overstretched prison system but also the spirit and courage of his fellow inmates.
"Purgatory: A Prison Diary, Volume 2, "is Archer's frank, shocking, sometimes humorous, sometimes horrifying account of those 67 days.

Jerry's Riot: The True Story of Montana's 1959 Prison Disturbance examines the explosion that resulted when the prison's new reform warden collided with career convict Jerry Myles, who wanted to run the prison.

When news breaks that a convicted murderer, released from prison, has killed again, or that an innocent person has escaped the death chamber in light of new DNA evidence, arguments about capital punishment inevitably heat up. Few controversies continue to stir as much emotion as this one, and public confusion is often the result. This volume brings together seven experts-judges, lawyers, prosecutors, and philosophers-to debate the death penalty in a spirit of open inquiry and civil discussion. Here, as the contributors present their reasons for or against capital punishment, the multiple facets of the issue are revealed in clear and thought-provoking detail. Is the death penalty a viable deterrent to future crimes? Does the imposition of lesser penalties, such as life imprisonment, truly serve justice in cases of the worst offences? Does the legal system discriminate against poor or minority defendants? Is the possibility of executing innocent persons sufficient grounds for abolition? In confronting such questions and making their arguments, the contributors marshal an impressive array of evidence, both statistical and from their own experiences working on death penalty cases. The book also includes the text of Governor George Ryan's March 2002 speech in which he explained why he had commuted the sentences of all prisoners on Illinois's death row. By representing the viewpoints of experts who face the vexing questions about capital punishment on a daily basis, Debating the Death Penalty makes a vital contribution to a more nuanced understanding of the moral and legal problems underlying this controversy.

On22nd August 2000, Richard Wayne Jones' life was snuffed out on a gurney in Huntsville, Texas. It was another State execution. He'd been on death row for fourteen years. Quick and fair? Not in the current US legal climate, and certainly not in the post-conviction review system prevailing in Texas today. The author exchanged letters with the condemned man, then met him, and so began a long and deep friendship between them which accompanied the struggle for justice that Wendy, her husband, her friends and lawyers embarked upon. The brutal closure of it all has prompted this searching and at times harrowing denunciation of the legal morass surrounding judicial murder in the USA.

The Provider's Guide (Criminal Conduct and Substance Abuse Treatment for Adolescents) identifies psychological, biological, and social factors that contribute to the onset of adolescent deviance, including substance abuse, delinquency, and crime. Causal models for these problem behaviors are described, followed by a review of assessment and treatment protocols widely used in contemporary practice. Guidelines are provided for delivery of the 32- session PSD-C treatment curriculum, specifically designed for adolescents who manifest co-existing juvenile justice and substance abuse problems. The PSD-C Provider's Guide explains how effective adolescent treatment derives from integration of the following evidence-based: strategies: motivational enhancement; stages of change; gender and diversity proficiency; cognitive-behavioral skill development; relapse and recidivism prevention; differential assessment; and individualized treatment planning. The Provider's Guide delineates principles for effective adolescent-focused treatment in tandem with the Participant's Workbook: Pathways to Self-Discovery and Change (PSD-C).

The story of Stonney Ray Lane--a mild mannered young man who started his career in corrections as an inmate teacher/counselor at Brushy Mountain State Prison. He writes about his early experiences as a teacher and counselor.

In 1888, Wyoming's legislature appropriated funds to build a prison at Rawlins, Wyoming. Thirteen years later, on December 12, 1901, the first prisoners were transported from Laramie to their new home. Using news articles, governmental records, recollections of ex-employees, and his own experiences, the author takes the reader through the difficult period of prison occupancy, the eras of industry and agriculture, the use of prisoner work crews, and the era of rehabilitation programs. Included in the narrative are chilling accounts of Wyoming's executions and a selection of prison tales. Management of the prison changed to meet the needs of the state, while national trends to improve prisoner treatment stirred reformists both within and external to the prison. Wyoming's prisoners wee hungry for change.

Persons who pay a mere visit of curiosity to a prison, and are conducted by an official along rows of immaculately clean cells, where orderly prisoners are at work in perfect silence, cannot have the smallest conception of the extraordinary revelations in human nature, and in possibilities of human destiny, which are made known to those who are allowed to penetrate into the unveiled realities of the strange life that writhes within the impervious prison walls. Hidden there are elements of the deepest tragedy: abnormal facts, which raise the most intricate questions in moral responsibility and other psychological problems; true histories.

CONTENTS: Preface Introduction The Context of Prison Sexual Adjustment Prison Social Organization Prison Social Climate Non-Institutional Factors Affecting Sexual Adjustment Homosexuality in Male Institutions Incidence Prison Sexual Roles Homosexuality in Female Institutions Racial Factors in Prison Homosexuality Problem Definition and Solution Varieties of Intervention Administrative Responses Treatment Strategies Legal Measures Toward an Action and Research Strategy Notes Bibliography

"X'ed Out Part II" illustrates how tough it is for Americans to survive in the "real world" after being convicted of a felony. The author, an ex-parole officer, delivers information that other writers, publishers, and criminal justice officials are afraid to disclose.

Since 1987, there have been 49 inmate deaths in jails and prisons across the state of Mississippi. No study has been produced or written to explicate why such deaths have occurred in Mississippi's jails. Most of the deaths have been labeled suicide, but further research by the author has led to other explanations that these deaths were not all suicide. Many of the victims were African American, male, young and with no previous history of arrests. Within 24 hours of being incarcerated, many of these pre-trial detainees were found hanged in their jail cells with larynx and muscles missing, tongue cut out and body covered with bruises.

So used are we to witnessing new laws made and fresh crimes created, as well as the constant punishing of all sorts of citizens - a punishment being always the cheapest and easiest substitute for a positive remedy - that it is scarcely remarkable that men generally acquiesce. The author has therefore tried to analyze the theories and assumptions on which the criminal laws are founded, and to exhibit their falsity. Contents: Penal methods of the middle ages; With trials; Treatment of the insane; Banishment; Origin of the cell prisons; Penitentiary experiments; the model system; Breakup of the model; Penal servitude; Military despotism; Silent system; Visitation of the sick; Monotony; Conventional view; Instinct of retaliation; Classification of crimes and offenders; Direction of reform; Practical prisons.

Based on extensive research and many newly discovered sources, Crime, Punishment, and the Prison in Modern China examines the radical changes in Chinese society during the first half of the twentieth century through the lens of the Chinese prison system. More than a simple history of prison rules or penal administration, this book explores the profound effects and lasting repercussions of the superimposition of Western-derived models of repentance and rehabilitation on traditional Chinese categories of crime and punishment. A society's prisons reflect much about its notions not only of law and order and the rights of the individual, but of human nature itself, its tractability and capacity to change. In China during the tumultuous years from 1895 to 1949, these notions were transformed in dramatic ways.

Frank Dik?tter identifies penal reform as a radical modern tool to achieve an indigenous Chinese vision of social cohesion and the rule of virtue. Modernizing elites in China viewed the reformation of criminals as a constitutive part of a project of a national regeneration in which good order, economic development, and state power could only be obtained by shaping obedient subjects. This groundbreaking account of the evolution of Chinese penal theory is brought together with a richly textured portrait of daily life behind bars. Petty villains, abusive guards, ambitious wardens, and idealist reformers people its pages and vividly trace China's complicated movement from empire to republic to communist state.

James A. Paluch, Jr., is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole. In this remarkably perceptive book, he offers the reader a detailed account of the daily realities of prison life in its mundane essentials, from the culture of the cellblock to the etiquette of the yard and the mess hall. The book also highlights concepts of prisonization, institutionalization, and the community, as well as the nature of modern punishment.
Here, Paluch walks us through a complicated, sometimes treacherous culture behind bars, a place where manipulation and deception often rule. He introduces us to the world of the lifer, a community of men who know they will live and die behind bars. By the end of his book, Paluch leads the reader to question and reevaluate whether our prisons, in their present condition, should continue institutionalizing substantial numbers of offenders for the rest of their natural lives.

While this book is certainly a 'local' book (published, written in, about and by A Sheffielder) its interest certainly lays beyond the searchers of the local history shelves. While its focus is on Sheffield crime, the collected tales of misery, despair and sheer desperation ring true for anywhere in that era and suggest that maybe things haven't changed all that much after all. The book also offers a fascinating insight into the procedure of law in the 18th and 19th Century and contains a wealth of little facts that are both intriguing and a tad macabre.

In this timely book, Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell investigate the mindsets of individuals involved in the death penalty -- including prison wardens, prosecutors, jurors, religious figures, governors, judges, and relatives of murder victims -- and offer a textured look at a system that perpetuates the longstanding American habit of violence.

Richly rewarding and meticulously researched, Who Owns Death? explores the history of the death penalty in the United States, from hanging to lethal injection, and considers what this search for more "humane" executions reveals about us as individuals and as a society... and what the future of the death penalty holds for us all.

In fascinating detail, Ivan Solotaroff introduces us to the men who carry out executions. Although the emphasis is on the personal lives of these men and of those they have to put to death, The Last Face You'll Ever See also addresses some of the deeper issues of the death penalty and connects the veiled, elusive figure of the executioner to the vast majority of Americans who, since 1977, have claimed to support executions. Why do we do it? Or, more exactly, why do we want to?

The Last Face You'll Ever See is not about the polarizing issues of the death penalty -- it is a firsthand report about the culture of executions: the executioners, the death-row inmates, and everyone involved in the act. An engrossing, unsettling, and provocative book, this work will forever affect anyone who reads it.

A seafaring story with a twist--the incredible voyage of a shipload of "disorderly girls" and the men who transported them, fell for them, and sold them.
This riveting work of rediscovered history tells for the first time the plight of the female convicts aboard the Lady Julian, which set sail from England in 1789 and arrived in Australia's Botany Bay a year later. The women, most of them petty criminals, were destined for New South Wales to provide its hordes of lonely men with sexual favors as well as progeny. But the story of their voyage is even more incredible, and here it is expertly told by a historian with roots in the boat-building business and a true love of the sea.
Sian Rees delved into court documents and firsthand accounts to extract the stories of these women's experiences on board a ship that both held them prisoner and offered them refuge from their oppressive existence in London. At the heart of the story is the passionate relationship between Sarah Whitelam, a convict, and the ship's steward, John Nicol, whose personal journals provided much of the material for this book. Along the way, Rees brings the vibrant, bawdy world of London--and the sights, smells, and sounds of an eighteenth-century ship--vividly to life. In the tradition of Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, this is a winning combination of dramatic high seas adventure and untold history."