At a time when criminal justice systems appear to be in a permanent state of crisis, leading scholars from criminology and theology come together to challenge criminal justice orthodoxy by questioning the dominance of retributive punishment. This timely and unique contribution considers alternatives that draw on Christian ideas of hope, mercy and restoration. Promoting cross-disciplinary learning, the book will be of interest to academics and students of criminology, socio-legal studies, legal philosophy, public theology and religious studies, as well as practitioners and policy makers.

Discussions of punishment typically assume that punishment is criminal punishment carried out by the State. Punishment is, however, a richer phenomenon and it occurs in many contexts. This book contains a general account of punishment which overcomes the difficulties of competing accounts. Recognizing punishment's manifoldness is valuable not merely in contributing to conceptual clarity, but in that this recognition sheds light on the complicated problem of punishment's justification. Insofar as they narrowly presuppose that punishment is criminal punishment, most apparent solutions to the tension between consequentialism and retributivism are rather unenlightening if we attempt to apply them in other contexts. Moreover, this presupposition has given rise to an unwieldy variety of accounts of retributivism which are less helpful in contexts other than criminal punishment. Treating punishment comprehensibly helps us to better understand how it differs from similar phenomena, and to carry on the discussion of its justification fruitfully.

Handbook of Restorative Justice is a collection of original, cutting-edge essays that offer an insightful and critical assessment of the theory, principles and practices of restorative justice around the globe. This much-awaited volume is a response to the cry of students, scholars and practitioners of restorative justice, for a comprehensive resource about a practice that is radically transforming the way the human community responds to loss, trauma and harm. Its diverse essays not only explore the various methods of responding nonviolently to harms-done by persons, groups, global corporations and nation-states, but also examine the dimensions of restorative justice in relation to criminology, victimology, traumatology and feminist studies. In addition. They contain prescriptions for how communities might re-structure their family, school and workplace life according to restorative values. This Handbook is an essential tool for every serious student of criminal, social and restorative justice.

The issue of minority ethnic groups' experiences of the criminal justice process, and in particular whether they are subject to disadvantageous treatment, has received much attention in recent years following high-profile events such as the publication of the Macpherson report in 1999 and the riots involving British-born Asian youths in northern towns in 2001. At the same time there has been a burgeoning body of research evidence about the needs and experiences of minority ethnic offenders, the behaviour of racially motivated offenders, and concern with 'What Works' to reduce recidivism by members of both groups. This book reviews this field, drawing upon the largest study of minority ethnic probationers ever conducted in Europe, and seeks to understand the 'stark contrast between the experience of white and black minority ethnicpeople in some areas of the criminal justice system'. Part 1 of the book sets out the context of recent policy, research and practice initiatives; Part 2 focuses on the needs and experiences of minority ethnic offenders; Part 3 discusses aspects of recent practice and policy; Part 4 reviews conclusions and the way forward. Race and Probation also contributes to the wider debate about race and crime. The lessons learned will be of key importance as new arrangements linked to NOMS (National Offender Management Service) come in to place. It will be essential reading forprobation trainees and students of criminal justice, for probation practitioners and managers, and for academics and researchers in the field.

This is a frankly-written penetrating study of flagellation in all its aspects: penal, religious, educational and erotic. Represented here are soldiers and sailors, thieves and prostitutes, schoolboys and schoolgirls, slaves and servants, and the various forms of flagellation used on these groups throughout the ages. The physical, psychological and pathological dangers of corporal punishment are thoroughly studied, and an analysis of the pernicious effects of this punishment on sexual health-effects which are only too often ignored or overlooked-is also included.

This book provides and accessible text and critical analysis of the concepts and delivery of community justice, a focal point in contemporary criminal justice. The probation service in particular has undergone radical changes in relation to professional training, roles and delivery of services, but now operates within a mosaic of a number of inter-agency initiatives. This book aims to provide a critical appreciation of community justice, its origin and direction, and to engage with debates on the ways in which the trend towards community justice is changing the criminal justice system. At the same time it examines the inter-agency character of intervention and the developing idea of end-to-end offender management, and familiarises the reader with a number of more specialist area, such as hate crime, mental illness, substance abuse, and victims.

In this timely book, renowned criminologist and activist Renny Golden sheds light on the women behind bars and the 350,000 children they leave behind. In exposing the fastest growing prison population-a direct result of Reagan's War on Drugs-Golden sets up new framework for thinking about how to address the situation of mothers in prison, the risks and needs of their children and the implications of current judicial policies.

In this timely book, renowned criminologist and activist Renny Golden sheds light on the women behind bars and the 350,000 children they leave behind. In exposing the fastest growing prison population-a direct result of Reagan's War on Drugs-Golden sets up new framework for thinking about how to address the situation of mothers in prison, the risks and needs of their children and the implications of current judicial policies.

New Directions in Restorative Justice addresses a number of key themes and developments in restorative justice, and is based on papers originally presented at the 6th International Conference on Restorative Justice in Vancouver, British Columbia. It is concerned with several new areas of practice within restorative justice, with sections on restorative justice and youth, aboriginal justice and restorative justice, victimization and restorative justice, and evaluating restorative justice. Contributors to the book are drawn from leading experts in the field from the UK, US, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

This book examines what it means to be a family within the restrictive, disruptive, and often distressing context of imprisonment. Drawing on original qualitative data, it looks beyond traditional models of the family to examine the question of which relationships matter to individuals affected by imprisonment, and demonstrates how family relationships are actively constructed and maintained through family "practices" and "displays" such as visits, shared experiences and continuing family memories and traditions. It sheds new light not only on the true extent of who is impacted by the imposition of a prison sentence, but also the barriers to family life that these individuals encounter throughout its duration. This book also contributes to our understanding of wider issues such as poverty and social marginalisation, the role of family relationships on desistance from crime, and legitimacy. It argues that the act of supporting an individual in custody can bring families into regular contact with the criminal justice system in ways that can be both distressing and problematic, and therefore contends that the prison system should minimise the damage caused by imprisonment not only to family relationships, but also to the perceived legitimacy of the criminal justice system. Generating new conceptual insights into the harms of imprisonment and how perceptions of legitimacy and fairness are shaped by the criminal justice system, this book will be of much interest to students of criminology and sociology engaged in studies of criminal justice, prisons, gender, social work, and punishment. It will also be of interest to policy makers, penal-reformers, and activists.

The central theme of this book is the nexus between the self, the social, and the sacred in conversion and recovery. The contributions explore the complex interactions that occur between the person, the sacred, and various recovery situations, which can include prisons, substance abuse recovery settings and domestic violence shelters. With an interdisciplinary approach to the study of conversion, the collection provides an opportunity for a better understanding of lived religion, guilt, shame, hope, forgiveness, narrative identity reconstruction, religious coping, religious conversion and spiritual transformation. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students of lived religion, religious conversion, recovery, homelessness, and substance dependence.

The death penalty is a highly emotive subject which leaves few people unaffected and has been written about extensively. However, in spite of this, there has been no even-handed and comprehensive theory of the issue until now. Determinants of the Death Penalty seeks to explain the phenomenon of capital punishment - without recourse to value judgements - by identifying those characteristics common to countries that use the death penalty and those that mark countries which do not. This global study uses statistical analysis to relate the popularity of the death penalty to physical, cultural, social, economical, institutional, actor oriented and historical factors. Separate studies are conducted for democracies and non-democracies and within four regional contexts. The book also contains an in-depth investigation into determinants of the death penalty in the USA. This book is an important reference for those studying the death penalty across political science, sociology and legal studies.

Handbook on Punishment Decisions: Locations of Disparity provides a comprehensive assessment of the current knowledge on sites of disparity in punishment decision-making. This collection of essays and reports of original research defines disparity broadly to include the intersection of race/ethnicity, gender, age, citizenship/immigration status, and socioeconomic status, and it examines dimensions such as how pretrial or guilty plea processes shape exposure to punishment, how different types of sentencing decisions and/or policy structures (sentencing guidelines, mandatory minimums, risk assessment tools) might shape and condition disparity, and how post-sentencing decisions involving probation and parole contribute to inequalities. The sixteen contributions pull together what we know and what we don't about punishment decision-making and plow new ground for further advances in the field. The ASC Division on Corrections & Sentencing Handbook Series publishes volumes on topics ranging from violence risk assessment to specialty courts for drug users, veterans, or people with mental illness. Each thematic volume focuses on a single topical issue that intersects with corrections and sentencing research.

This open access book provides a comparative perspective on capital punishment in Japan and the United States. Alongside the US, Japan is one of only a few developed democracies in the world which retains capital punishment and continues to carry out executions on a regular basis. There are some similarities between the two systems of capital punishment but there are also many striking differences. These include differences in capital jurisprudence, execution method, the nature and extent of secrecy surrounding death penalty deliberations and executions, institutional capacities to prevent and discover wrongful convictions, orientations to lay participation and to victim participation, and orientations to "democracy" and governance. Johnson also explores several fundamental issues about the ultimate criminal penalty, such as the proper role of citizen preferences in governing a system of punishment and the relevance of the feelings of victims and survivors.

This title was first published in 2000: Between 1900 and 1950 130 women were sentenced to death for murder in England and Wales. Only 12 of these women were actually executed. Thus, 91 per cent of women murderers had their sentence commuted, whereas if we examine the corresponding figures for men, only 39 per cent had their sentence commuted. It would appear that state servants working within the criminal justice system were far more reluctant to hang women than men. However, this text argues that a closer examination of this apparent discrepancy reveals it to be a misconception which has come about as a result of the statistics regarding infanticide. That is to say - unlike men - the vast majority of women murderers have killed their own child or children. Once this is taken into account we find that women who had murdered an adult had less hope of a reprieve than men. Thus, the author shows that the large proportion of women murderers as killers of their own children has created a false impression of how female murderers fared inside the criminal justice system.

In recent years there has been massively increased demand for the services of the private security industry, which has now assumed a far greater role in policing areas that were once the sphere of the police --for example, shopping malls, leisure parks and transportation terminals. This book provides a detailed account of the developments in urban planning, public policy and the commercial world which have promoted the development of private security, and provides a unique examination of security teams in operation in three very different environments --a shopping mall, a retail and leisure complex, and an arts centre. The study is set within a broader context that considers changes in retail and leisure patterns that have promoted the development of large, multi-purpose developments, shifts in town centre planning to create more secure high street retail and leisure facilities, and the promotion of CCTV and security patrols. Finally, the book considers the ethical issues that arise with the massively increased use of private security, and the broader policy issues which arise.

This book provides an overview of recent government initiatives in the field of crime and punishment, reviewing both the policies themselves, the perceived problems and issues they seek to address, and the broader social and political context in which this is taking place. The underlying theme of the book is that a qualitative change has taken place in the politics of crime control in the UK since the early 1990s. Although crime has stabilized, imprisonment rates continue to climb, there is a new mood of punitiveness, and crime has become a central policy issue for the government, no longer just a technical matter of law enforcement. At the same time the politics of crime control have taken on a pronounced gender, race and age preoccupation. There are many parallels with the changing nature of crime control in the USA, and the contributors draw on international comparisons in their respective chapters. The book brings together a team of contributors based at Middlesex University, one o

This book provides an overview of recent government initiatives in the field of crime and punishment, reviewing both the policies themselves, the perceived problems and issues they seek to address, and the broader social and political context in which this is taking place. The underlying theme of the book is that a qualitative change has taken place in the politics of crime control in the UK since the early 1990s. Although crime has stabilized, imprisonment rates continue to climb, there is a new mood of punitiveness, and crime has become a central policy issue for the government, no longer just a technical matter of law enforcement. At the same time the politics of crime control have taken on a pronounced gender, race and age preoccupation. There are many parallels with the changing nature of crime control in the USA, and the contributors draw on international comparisons in their respective chapters. The book brings together a team of contributors based at Middlesex University, one o

This book brings together a selection of papers originally presented and discussed at the fourth international restorative justice conference, held at the University of TA1/4bingen. The contributors include many of the leading authorities in the burgeoning field of restorative justice, and they provide a comprehensive review of developing international practice and directions, and the context in which restorative justice practices are developing. Restorative Justice in Context moves beyond a focus on restorative justice for juveniles to a broader concern with the application of restorative justice in such areas as corporate crime, family violence and the application of restorative justice in cases of extreme violent crimes. The contexts examined are drawn from Europe, North America, Australasia and Japan. leading world authorities analyse international case studies reflecting the growth of restorative justice worldwiderapidly expanding area of interest

This book is a study of the workings of the Discretionary Lifer Panels of the Parole Board, the body charged with the responsibility for making decisions on the release of discretionary life sentence prisoners. It traces the origins and development of the Discretionary Lifer Panels following the landmark Weeks and Thynne decisions of the European Court of Human Rights which led to the establishment of DLPs, and examines the way in which the DLPs developed subsequently - often rather differently to what was originally envisaged as necessary to comply with the decision of the ECHR. This book provides a fascinating case study of a little-known part of the criminal justice system, and explores at the same time the wider issues that have arisen - in particular the impact of the ECHR and the Human Rights Act on the criminal justice system; the relationship between the Parole Board and the Prison and Probation Services; the differences between release procedures for different categories of life sentence prisoner, and those detained compulsorily under the Mental Health Act;the broader social, legal and political context in which DLPs operate, and the nature of discretionary decision-making in the criminal justice system field. the first detailed study - from a leading authority in the field - of the way decisions are reached on discretionary life sentence prisoners explores the impact of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and the Human Rights Act on the working of the criminal justice system of interest to practitioners and academics concerned with the criminal justice system.

This important and original new book reports on a major investigation of the outcomes of probation supervision, is concerned with the key question of what works in probation, and comes at an important moment of change and development for the probation service in the UK. Unlike previous studies which have relied mostly on official data, this book makes use of over 200 interviews with men and women on probation, and their supervising Probation Officers. Rethinking What Works with Offenders has the following objectives: to understand probation work from the perspectives of those who deliver it and those to whom it is delivered to study probation intervention as a whole (in particular the probation order) rather than specific aspects to locate probation work in the wider social contexts of those on probation to analyse how probation works, and to reconceptualise probation outcomes in terms of degrees of success rather than as 'successful' or 'unsuccessful' to assess the policy implications of these conclusions This book presents an important and challenging range of findings on 'what works' in probation and with offenders, and will be essential reading for anybody professionally concerned with the present and future of probation. raises central issues at a critical time for the reorganised National Probation Servicebased on extensive research, including 200+ interviewsessential reading for anybody interested in 'what works' in probation

In this book a group of leading authorities in the field address the key issues surrounding the future of sentencing in Britain, in the light particularly of the highly influential Halliday Report. These proposals for reform amount to the single most ambitious and comprehensive set of proposals for reconstituting the sentencing system of a common-law country, and include proposals to replace existing sentencing statutes, the establishment of a sentencing commission and sentencing guidelines, and the creation of a sentence review function in the judiciary. As well as addressing the major issues of the Halliday Report the chapters in this book go beyond this to explore the broader set of policy problems and implications which are raised, drawing upon experiences of reform in other jurisdictions and contexts, particularly that of the USA. This book will be essential reading for anybody with an interest in the future of sentencing or the future direction of the criminal justice system as a whole.

Can the criminal justice system achieve justice based on its ability to determine the truth? Drawing on a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, this book investigates the concept of truth - its complexities and nuances - and scrutinizes how well the criminal justice process facilitates truth-finding. From allegation to sentencing, the chapters take the reader on a journey through the criminal justice system, exposing the marginalization of truth-finding in favour of other jurisprudential or systemic values, such as expediency, procedural fairness and the presumption of innocence. This important work bridges the gap between what people expect from the criminal justice system and what it can legitimately deliver.