Drawing on a range of research and media sources to provide an international perspective on the topic of prison violence, this book focuses on the impact of such violence on the individual both while he or she is incarcerated and upon his or her release from prison, as well as on society as a whole. With a special emphasis on comparisons of violence among incarcerated populations in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, Prison Violence: Causes, Consequences and Solutions explores the various systems that exist to combat the problem, whilst also considering public perceptions of offenders and punishment, as influenced by media and coverage of high-profile cases. Providing a comprehensive analysis of prison violence on national and international levels, this book examines the extent of the problem, theoretical understandings of the issue and concrete solutions designed to prevent and handle such violence. As such, it will be of interest to policy makers as well as scholars of sociology, criminology and penology.

In 2003, the US Senate and Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), prompting a number of research projects that cumulatively began to broaden and deepen our understanding of this complex aspect of prison life. Risk Markers for Sexual Victimization and Predation in Prison contains the results of Dr. Warren and Dr. Jackson's study, and it extends the literature on prison rape in important and distinct ways. Their research, which encompasses the full continuum of sexual behavior among incarcerated individuals, succeeds in identifying multi-layered predictive models for different types of sexual behavior across and within genders. The process by which the authors came to their study design, their experiences while implementing it, and the nature and significance of their findings, represent the content of this book.

In recent years, the lifecourse perspective has become a popular theoretical orientation toward crime. Yet despite its growing importance in the field of criminology, most textbooks give it only cursory treatment. Crime and the Lifecourse: An Introduction by Michael L. Benson provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary research and theory on the life-course approach to crime. The book emphasizes a conceptual understanding of this approach. A special feature is the integration of qualitative and quantitative research on criminal life histories. This book:

• provides an overview of the life course approach and describes the major concepts and issues in lifecourse theory as it applies to criminology
• reviews evidence on biological and genetic influences on crime
• reviews research on the role of the family in crime and juvenile delinquency
• provides a detailed discussion of the criminological lifecourse theories of Moffitt, Hagan, Sampson and Laub, and others
• discusses the connections between youthful crime and adult outcomes in education, occupation, and marriage
• presents an application of the lifecourse approach to white-collar crime
• discusses how macro sociological and historical developments have influenced the shape of the lifecourse in American society as it relates to patterns in crime.

In contrast to the widespread focus on ethnicity in relation to engagement in offending, the question of whether or not processes associated with desistance that is the cessation and curtailment of offending behaviour vary by ethnicity has received less attention. This is despite known ethnic differences in factors identified as affecting disengagement from offending, such as employment, place of residence, religious affiliation and family structure, providing good reasons for believing differences would exist. This book seeks to address this oversight. Using data obtained from in-depth qualitative interviews it investigates the processes associated with desistance from crime among offenders drawn from some of the principal minority ethnic groups in the United Kingdom.

Cultures of Desistance explores how structural (families, friends, peer groups, employment, social capital) and cultural (religion, values, recognition) ethnic differences affected the environment in which their desistance took place. For Indians and Bangladeshis, desistance was characterised as a collective experience involving their families actively intervening in their lives. In contrast, Black and dual heritage offenders desistance was a much more individualistic endeavour. The book suggests a need for a research agenda and justice policy that are sensitive to desisters structural location, and for a wider culture which promotes and supports desisters efforts.

This book is the only comprehensive analysis of contemporary prison labor in the United States. In it, the author makes the provocative claim that prison labor is best understood as a form of slavery, in which the labor-power of each inmate (though not their person) is owned by the Department of Corrections, and this enslavement is used to extract surplus labor from the inmates, for which no compensation is provided. Other authors have claimed that prison labor is slavery, but no previous study has made a rigorous argument based on a systematic analysis of the flows of surplus labor which take place in the various ways prison slavery is organized in the US prison system, nor has another study systematically examined 'prison household' production, in which inmates produce the goods and services necessary to run the prison, nor does another work discuss state welfare in prisons, and how this affects prison labor. The study is based on empirical findings gathered by the author's direct observation of prison factories in 28 prisons across the country. This book offers new insights into the practice of prison labor, and should be read by all serious students of American society.

This ground-breaking text is the first to provide a detailed overview of Investigative Psychology, from the earliest work through to recent studies, including descriptions of previously unpublished internal reports. Crucially it provides a framework for students to explore this exciting terrain, combining Narrative Theory and an Action Systems framework. It includes empirically tested models for Offender Profiling and guidance for investigations, as well as an agenda for research in Investigative Psychology.

"Investigative Psychology" features: The full range of crimes from fraud to terrorism, including burglary, serial killing, arson, rape, and organised crimeImportant methodologies including multi-dimensional scaling and the "Radex" approach as well as Social Network AnalysisGeographical Offender Profiling, supported by detailed analysis of the underlying psychological processes that make this such a valuable investigative decision support toolThe full range of investigative activities, including effective information collection, detecting deception and the development of decision support systems.

In effect, this text introduces an exciting new paradigm for a wide range of psychological contributions to all forms of investigation within and outside of law enforcement. Each chapter has actual cases and quotations from offenders and ends with questions for discussion and research, making this a valuable text for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Applied and Forensic Psychology, Criminology, Socio-Legal Studies and related disciplines.

It is imperative that educators, parents, and potential victims be aware of sexual predators, the danger they pose in our society, and the resources available to help prevent this growing epidemic. Written from a police perspective, Sexual Predators Amongst Us examines the problem of sexual predation, how the Internet has contributed to its growth, and how we can protect children and the general public from these offenders.

The book begins by identifying traits and characteristics associated with sexual predation and explaining how the predator "grooms" his victims by gaining their trust. Chapters cover a range of topics related to sexual predation, including child abuse, incest, pedophilia in the clergy, sex trafficking, female sex offenders, and child pornography. The author explains how the Internet through social networking sites provides ample opportunities for sexual predators to entice their victims. He examines rehabilitation issues, describes legislation that has been passed in response to various tragic cases, and discusses sex offender registration.

Maintaining a user-friendly style, the book follows a consistent format, with each chapter containing:

• Quotes from actual victims and predators
• Key words associated with the chapter material and their definitions
• In My Opinion segments, where experts in the fields of health, psychology, law, government, criminal justice, and academia voice their honest and objective opinions regarding sexual predators
• Profiles of male and female sex offenders to help readers identify common traits

The book concludes with recommendations to parents for keeping children safe from online predators. Thought-provoking and direct, it is suitable as a university text as well as a reference for police academies, parents, and schools conducting awareness training courses.

Francesca Biagi-Chai 's book - a translation from the French of Le Cas Landru - tackles the issue of criminal responsibility in the case of serial killers, and other 'mad' people who are nonetheless deemed to be answerable before the law. The author, a Lacanian psychoanalyst and senior psychiatrist in France, with extensive experience working in institutional settings, analyses the logic informing the crimes of famous serial killers. Addressing the Landru case (which was the inspiration for Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux), as well as those of Pierre Rivi re and Donato Bilancia, Biagi-Chai casts light on the confusion that pervades forensic psychiatry and criminal law as to the distinction between mental illness and madness . She then elaborates the consequences of her argument in a sustained critique of the insanity defence. The book includes a Foreword by the renowned psychoanalyst, Jacques-Alain Miller, and an introduction by the translators on the question of insanity before the law in the US and in the UK, which considers the pertinence of Biagi-Chai 's argument for forensic psychiatry, for criminal law, and for the increasing contemporary focus on the assessment of dangerousness and risk-management strategies in crime control practices.

Little of what we know about prison comes from the mouths of prisoners, and very few academic accounts of prison life manage to convey some of its most profound and important features: its daily pressures and frustrations, the culture of the wings and landings, and the relationships which shape the everyday experience of being imprisoned. The Prisoner aims to redress this by foregrounding prisoners' own accounts of prison life in what is an original and penetrating edited collection. Each of its chapters explores a particular prisoner sub-group or an important aspect of prisoners' lives, and each is divided into two sections: extended extracts from interviews with prisoners, followed by academic commentary and analysis written by a leading scholar or practitioner. This structure allows prisoners' voices to speak for themselves, while situating what they say in a wider discussion of research, policy and practice. The result is a rich and evocative portrayal of the lived reality of imprisonment and a poignant insight into prisoners' lives. The book aims to bring to life key penological issues and to provide an accessible text for anyone interested in prisons, including students, practitioners and a general audience. It seeks to represent and humanize a group which is often silent in discussions of imprisonment, and to shine a light on a world which is generally hidden from view.

This book seeks to track the origins of sex offender registers, their purpose and the law and policy that underpins them in various parts of the world.

Sex offender registers are not really registers at all but a set of legal requirements that fall automatically on a person convicted or cautioned for a designated sexual offence; the term register is a form of shorthand for these requirements, designed to be a contribution to greater public protection and community safety.

This book provides the first serious and detailed narrative of the conception and implementation of the sex offender registers. It seeks to do so in a clear and easy-to-follow text that will be both informed and critical and will also serve as a resource book for those wanting to make further study of the process of registration and monitoring.

It looks in detail at the practice of implementing registers and considers questions about their effectiveness in monitoring sex offenders and the implications of someone being on a sex offender register. The book examines the legal challenges to registers and monitoring and the position of registrants in the context of human rights and seeks to place registers and monitoring in the wider context of what is being called the surveillance society.

The Registration and Monitoring of Sex Offenders will be key reading for students of criminology and criminal justice, surveillance and human rights and practitioners in criminal justice fields of policing, probation, social work, children 's services, the judiciary, prison work and others.

This book seeks to track the origins of sex offender registers, their purpose and the law and policy that underpins them in various parts of the world.

Sex offender registers are not really registers at all but a set of legal requirements that fall automatically on a person convicted or cautioned for a designated sexual offence; the term register is a form of shorthand for these requirements, designed to be a contribution to greater public protection and community safety.

This book provides the first serious and detailed narrative of the conception and implementation of the sex offender registers. It seeks to do so in a clear and easy-to-follow text that will be both informed and critical and will also serve as a resource book for those wanting to make further study of the process of registration and monitoring.

It looks in detail at the practice of implementing registers and considers questions about their effectiveness in monitoring sex offenders and the implications of someone being on a sex offender register. The book examines the legal challenges to registers and monitoring and the position of registrants in the context of human rights and seeks to place registers and monitoring in the wider context of what is being called the surveillance society.

The Registration and Monitoring of Sex Offenders will be key reading for students of criminology and criminal justice, surveillance and human rights and practitioners in criminal justice fields of policing, probation, social work, children s services, the judiciary, prison work and others.

Prisoners' Rights: Principles and Practice considers prisoners' rights from socio-legal and philosophical perspectives, and assesses the advantages and problems of a rights-based approach to imprisonment. At a time of record levels of imprisonment and projected future expansion of the prison population, this work is timely. The discussion in this book is not confined to a formal legal analysis, although it does include discussion of the developing jurisprudence on prisoners' rights. It offers a socio-legal rather than a purely black letter approach, and focuses on the experience of imprisonment. It draws on perspectives from a range of disciplines to illuminate how prisoners' rights operate in practice. The text also contributes to debates on imprisonment and citizenship, the treatment of women prisoners, and social exclusion. This book will be of interest to both undergraduate and postgraduate students of penology and criminal justice, as well as professionals working within the penal system.

Dangerousness, Risk and the Governance of Serious Sexual and Violent Offenders is a fully up-to-date, comprehensive and user-friendly guide on those offenders who are often assessed as being dangerous. Outlining, evaluating and commenting on specific methods, regimes and strategies for dealing with dangerous offenders throughout each chapter, this book begins by considering what a dangerous offender is and providing a brief historical account of how the label has been used for different types of offender over the last three or four centuries. The book examines sentencing policy in addition to early and current dangerousness legislation, evaluating the available sentences specifically designed for dangerous offenders and assessing their use and appropriateness. The role of risk and risk assessment tools is discussed, considering what risk assessment is, the way in which it works and how over recent times it has become more reliable and valid. It looks at the practical realities of how serious sexual and violent offenders are dealt with by the penal system in England and Wales. Finally, specific offender groups are considered, including female offenders, children and young people and mentally disordered offenders. Each chapter considers whether there are any differences in terms of policy, assessment and management strategies when sentencing and managing each distinct group; and if not whether any such modifications are required. This book will be key reading for students of law, criminology, social policy, psychology and sociology and of interest to criminal justice professionals including the police, prison officers, probation officers, psychologists, lawyers and judges.

The Personality of a Child Molester argues two main points. The first is that dreams, without free associations or amplification or knowledge of the dreamer, can shed considerable light upon the essential character structure, psychodynamics, and psychosexual development of such individuals. The second is that the frequency of occurrence of a dream element or theme is a direct measure of the preoccupation with that topic in waking life.

Bell and Hall gather their evidence from a wide assortment of data. Such evidence helps increase our understanding of such people, whose life and self-revelations on first appearance seem to merit this special attention. Interestingly, their study involved little collaboration on the part of the authors. In fact, the authors only met each other two years after the project got underway. At that time they reached an understanding as to how the material would be presented.

They decided to demonstrate child molesters' dream content from a theoretical perspective. The theoretical base provided by Freudian theory was used in this particular study because it seemed to provide the kinds of constructs that could be useful in describing the dreamer's personality. The authors attempt to explain why the dreamer who is a child molester is the sort of person he is, and his dreams are the source of evidence for the explanation presented. This study presented here has been used by behavioral researchers for years in trying to understand the personality of a child molester. It remains as relevant today as when it was initially published.

This book provides a theoretically informed guide to the practice of working with offenders in different settings and for different purposes. It deals with topics such as offender rehabilitation, case management, worker-offender relationships, working with difficult clients and situations, collaboration, addressing complex needs, and processes of integration. The book offers a unique perspective on working with offenders in that it incorporates three key elements. As part of the latter, it provides different types of data, including descriptions of programs and selected statistics from each jurisdiction, and presents this information in easy-to-read formats. The chapters are structured around a dual focus of workers and their environments on the one hand, and the nature of the offenders with whom they work on the other. The condition and situation of workers is thus considered in the context of the condition and situation of offenders, and the relationship between the two. The book is intended to be relevant and familiar to those already working in the field, as well as to introduce contemporary principles and practices to those wishing to do so in the future. Each chapter concludes with two key features. The first, Further Reading, is oriented toward concepts and the 'why' questions of practice. The second, Key Resources, alerts readers to appropriate manuals and handbooks, and the 'how' questions of practice. This includes reference to evidence-based examples of good practice and specific intervention models.

Though many more women offenders are supervised in the community than in custody, much less is known about their needs and effective approaches to their supervision, support and treatment. Whilst there has been recent attention paid to responding to the needs of women in prison, negligible attention has been paid to women exiting prison, or on community based orders, and what is needed to work with them to reduce re-offending or entry into prison.
Contributions to this book challenge policy-makers and corrections systems to concentrate more on community provision for women offenders and resist popular calls for more punitive responses to all offenders, women included. Contributors come from a wide range of countries including Australia, Canada, UK and USA. They argue that the criminogenic lens applied to women s offending must be gender-responsive if systems are to be successful at addressing the disadvantage and risk associated with offending behaviour.
Working With Women Offenders in the Community builds on ideas presented in the editors previous book, What Works With Women Offenders (2007), extending the focus particularly on women offenders in the community rather than in prison. This book concentrates on women who have committed criminal offences and who may have been placed on probation or other community based court orders or who have been released from prison on parole. It discusses the work done by professional workers including probation officers, community corrections officers and specialist case managers in areas such as drug treatment, housing, mental health or employment programmes.
This book will be of interest to professional probation officers, case managers, drug treatment workers and others who work with women offenders. It will also be essential reading for students of criminology, social work, psychology, sociology and other disciplines who have an interest in women offenders.

Though many more women offenders are supervised in the community than in custody, much less is known about their needs and effective approaches to their supervision, support and treatment. Whilst there has been recent attention paid to responding to the needs of women in prison, negligible attention has been paid to women exiting prison, or on community based orders, and what is needed to work with them to reduce re-offending or entry into prison.
Contributions to this book challenge policy-makers and corrections systems to concentrate more on community provision for women offenders and resist popular calls for more punitive responses to all offenders, women included. Contributors come from a wide range of countries including Australia, Canada, UK and USA. They argue that the criminogenic lens applied to women's offending must be gender-responsive if systems are to be successful at addressing the disadvantage and risk associated with offending behaviour.
Working With Women Offenders in the Community builds on ideas presented in the editors? previous book, What Works With Women Offenders (2007), extending the focus particularly on women offenders in the community rather than in prison. This book concentrates on women who have committed criminal offences and who may have been placed on probation or other community based court orders or who have been released from prison on parole. It discusses the work done by professional workers including probation officers, community corrections officers and specialist case managers in areas such as drug treatment, housing, mental health or employment programmes.
This book will be of interest to professional probation officers, case managers, drug treatment workers and others who work with women offenders. It will also be essential reading for students of criminology, social work, psychology, sociology and other disciplines who have an interest in women offenders.

Our knowledge of crime is based on three types of sources: the criminal justice system, victims, and offenders. For technological and other reasons the criminal justice system produces an increasing stream of information on crime. The rise of the victimization survey has given the victims a much larger role in our study of crime. There is, however, no concomitant development regarding offenders. This is unfortunate because offenders are the experts when it comes to offending.In order to understand criminal behavior, we need their perspective. This is not always a straightforward process, however, and information from offenders is often unreliable. This book is about what we can do to maximise the validity of what offenders tell us about their offending. Renowned experts from various countries present their experiences and insights, with a clear focus on methodological issues of fieldwork among various types of offender populations. Each contribution deals with with a few central issues: * How can offenders be motivated to participate in research? * How can offenders be motivated to tell the truth on their offending? * How can the information that offenders provide be checked and validated? * What can we learn from offenders that cannot be accessed from other sources? * With the aim of obtaining valid and reliable information, how, where and under which conditions should we observe offenders and talk to them?

This book provides the first detailed examination of the role played by former loyalist and republican prisoners in grass roots conflict transformation work in the Northern Ireland peace process. It challenges the assumed passivity of former prisoners and ex-combatants. Instead, it suggests that such individuals and the groups which they formed have been key agents of conflict transformation. They have provided leadership in challenging cultures of violence, developed practical methods of resolving inter-communal conflict and found ways for communities to explore their troubled past. In analysing this, the authors challenge the sterile demonisation of former prisoners and the processes that maintain their exclusion from normal civic and social life. The book is a constructive reminder of the need for full participation of both former combatants and victims in post-conflict transformation. It also lays out a new agenda for reconciliation which suggests that conflict transformation can and should begin 'from the extremes'. The book will be of interest to students of criminology, peace and conflict studies, law and politics, geography and sociology as well as those with a particular interest in the Northern Ireland conflict.

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.

Conceived in the immediate aftermath of the humiliations and killings of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq, of the suicides and hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay and of the disappearances of detainees through extraordinary rendition, this book explores the connections between these shameful events and the inhumanity and degradation of domestic prisons within the 'allied' states, including the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK and Ireland.

The central theme is that the revelations of extreme brutality perpetrated by allied soldiers represent the inevitable end-product of domestic incarceration predicated on the use of extreme violence including lethal force. Exposing as fiction the claim to the political moral high ground made by western liberal democracies is critical because such claims animate and legitimate global actions such as the 'war on terror' and the indefinite detention of tens of thousands of people by the United States which accompanies it. The myth of moral virtue works to hide, silence, minimize and deny the brutal continuing history of violence and incarceration both within western countries and undertaken on behalf of western states beyond their national borders.

The growth of Islam both worldwide and particularly in the United States is especially notable among African-American inmates incarcerated in American state and federal penitentiaries. This growth poses a powerful challenge to American penal philosophy, structured on the ideal of rehabilitating offenders through penance and appropriate penal measures. Islam in American Prisons argues that prisoners converting to Islam seek an alternative form of redemption, one that poses a powerful epistemological as well as ideological challenge to American penology. Meanwhile, following the events of 9/11, some prison inmates have converted to radical anti-Western Islam and have become sympathetic to the goals and tactics of the Al-Qa'ida organization. This new study examines this multifaceted phenomenon and makes a powerful argument for the objective examination of the rehabilitative potentials of faith-based organizations in prisons, including the faith of those who convert to Islam.

The contents include: Introduction: Theorising Violence in Carceral Contexts by Jude Mcculloch and Phil Scraton; Part One: Contemporary Historical Contexts; Beating Political Prisoners: The H Blocks - Laurence Mckeown, Coiste, Belfast; Entombing Resistance: Institutional Power and Polarisation in the Jika Jika High-Security Unit - Bree Carlton, Monash University; Protests and 'Riots' in the Violent Institution - Phil Scraton; Part Two: Current Issues; Child Incarceration: The Politics of Punishment and the Practice of Abuse - Barry Goldson, University Of Liverpool; Incarceration and Strip Searching as Sexual Violence - Amanda George and Jude Mcculloch, Deakin University and Monash University; and Degradation, Harm and Survival in a Woman's Prison - Phil Scraton and Linda Moore, Northern Ireland, Human Rights Commission.It also includes: Beyond 'Violence Against Women': Rethinking Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex - Cassandra Shaylor; State Violence, Incarceration and the Refugee - Sharon Pickering, Monash University and Jude Mcculloch; the Imprisonment and Custody Deaths of Indigenous Peoples - Chris Cunneen, University Of Sydney; An Economy of Cruelty: Prisoner Accounts of the Psychological Violence of Everyday Life in Prison - Diana Medlicott, University of Buckingham; and A Reign Of Penal Terror: U. S. Statecraft and the Technology of Punishment and Capture - Dylan Rodriguez, Assistant Professor, Department Of Ethnic Studies, University Of California; Notes; Bibliography; and Index.

It is traditionally viewed that vulnerable inmates form captive audiences for violent terrorist offenders who, in turn, are destined to turn prisons into training grounds for militant activities; all the while forming alliances with more hardened criminals to produce an even greater threat. However, there is limited empirical grounding to underpin these assertions. Inmate Radicalisation and Recruitment in Prisons challenges existing perceptions about prison radicalisation. Whilst not downplaying the seriousness of the prison radicalisation threat, it seeks a more balanced interpretation of current discussion. Drawing on original research in the Philippines and case studies from Australia, the US, Canada, Indonesia, the UK, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, the authors posit an alternative view that suggests that the imprisonment of a terrorist may mark the beginning of physical disengagement and psychological de-radicalisation. Offering evidence-based insights to help determine how best to house terrorist offenders, this volume will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as Criminology and Criminal Justice, Terrorism, Prisons, and Organised Crime.