The mentally disordered criminal is a public nightmare, and the management of these offenders can be driven as much by political and economic concerns as by scientific evidence and professional judgement within the fields of mental health and correction services. This book aims to provide a critical and focused review of knowledge and best practice in this field for mental health and correction professionals and for those concerned with policy and management of services for these offenders.

Mentally disordered offenders include offenders who suffer from schizophrenia, major affective disorders, personality disorders (including psychopathy), brain damage, and mental retardation. The topic is of increasing importance because of the growth of community psychiatry, and the growing community programmes for offenders, and also because of the growing pressures on those institutions which deal with offenders and care for the mentally disordered or disabled. Professionals in these fields will welcome this book which:

• Provides a review of approaches to treatment, accessible to a wide mental health and forensic readership
• Relates treatment approaches to specific mental problems, and reviews evidence of effectiveness
• features a truly international group of authors bringing together a wide variety of approaches, scientific research, and practical experience of important programmes for treatment and prevention

Alex Alexandrowicz spent 22 years in custody protesting his innocence. This book explains how something which began with a plea bargain in the belief that he would serve a 'short' sentence turned into a Kafkaesque nightmare. His 'Prison Chronicles' are placed in perspective by Professor David Wilson. The Longest Injustice contains the full story of Anthony Alexandrovich - known universally as 'Alex'. Principally, the book is about his 29-year fight against his conviction as a seventeen-year-old for aggravated burglary, wounding with intent, and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Twenty-two of these years were spent in prison where Alex was a discretionary life sentenced prisoner, and where he steadfastly maintained his innocence. He continues to do so after release, and is taking his case through the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which was set up in 1995 to investigate alleged miscarriages of justice. Alex's own recollections are supplemented by analysis of the dilemma facing people in British prisons who are determined to maintain their innocence, and the book highlights the considerable disincentives and disadvantages to them of doing so. Authors Alex Alexandrowicz spent 22 years in some of Britain's most notorious gaols much of this time as a Category A high security prisoner. His Prison Chronicles are a first hand account in which he explains why he believes he was wrongly convicted (a matter currently with the Criminal Cases Review Commission) and vividly recreates his experiences of the early years following his arrest. Institutionalised by the system and apprehensive of the outside world he now lives alone in Milton Keynes where he continues the long fight to clear his name from a flat which has grown to resemble a prison cell. David Wilson is professor of criminology at the Centre for Criminal Justice Policy and Research at the University of Central England in Birmingham. A former prison governor, he is editor of the Howard Journal and a well-known author, broadcaster and presenter for TV and radio, including for the BBC, C4 and Sky Television. He has written three other books for Waterside Press: Prison(er) Education: Stories of Change and Transformation (with Ann Reuss) (2000) , Images of Incarceration: Representations of Prison in Film and Television Drama (with Sean O'Sullivan) (2004), and Serial Killers: Hunting Britons and Their Victims (2007).

This bestselling book has become a staple of every serious true crime book collector's library. One of the most reliable concise sources of information available about serial killers and their crimes, this book offers a psychological and sociological analysis of this most frightening yet fascinating criminal. Psychologist David Lester, recognized worldwide as a leading authority on death-both in the fields of suicide and homicide-offers a much-needed assessment of whether or not there is a dependable and useable psychological profile of the serial killer. Separating the facts from the myths by combining documented case histories of notable serial killers with behavioral research, Serial Killers: The Insatiable Passion has been welcomed and applauded as an important addition to the literature on serial killers by criminologists, psychologists, sociologists, law enforcement and true crime buffs alike.

White-collar criminals are often assumed to be wealthy and powerful individuals who receive lenient treatment from the courts. This book-a major study of convicted white-collar offenders in America-provides a radically different portrait of these criminals and their punishments. Weisburd, Wheeler, Waring, and bode argue that the majority of white-collar criminals come from the middle classes and that judges often punish wrongdoers of higher status more harshly than less socially privileged criminals. Drawing from a large research project that had special access to confidential federal pre-sentence investigations, the authors are able to give a particularly rich and detailed view of white-collar crime-from securities fraud and anti-trust violations to embezzlement and tax fraud. Following offenders from their crimes through conviction and sentencing, their book provides a fresh look at a number of questions that have become central research and policy concerns. Fro example, they find that the most important factor that makes it possible to commit costly and damaging white-collar crimes is use of organizational resources. They state that, when sentencing white-collar criminals, judges consider the blameworthiness of defendants and the harm they inflict upon the community. The authors argue that the vast middle of our increasingly bureaucratic society has both more opportunities for financial wrongdoing and more susceptibility to it. They predict that white-collar crimes committed by these Americans will grow in significance as the nation approaches the twenty-first century.

A chilling exploration of the criminal mind--from juvenile delinquency to cold-blooded murder. Drawing on studies of offenders and victims, self-reports and autobiographies, narratve reconstructions of crime scenes, and famous cases, this brilliant and shocking book will forever revolutionize the way we think about crime.

In 1976 and 1977, over the course of a thirteen-month period, two boys and two girls, ages ten through twelve, were brutally murdered in Michigan's Oakland County. Their violent deaths triggered the largest murder investigation the state had seen. In Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, Tommy McIntyre provides a compelling and detailed account of the search for the Oakland County child killer. This is a story of tragedy and grief, dead-ends and disappointments.

This comprehensive and engaging textbook provides a fresh and sociologically-grounded examination of how deviance is constructed and defined and what it means to be classed a deviant. * Covers an array of deviances, including sexual, physical, mental, and criminal, as well as deviances often overlooked in the literature, such as elite deviance, cyber-deviance, and deviant occupations * Examines the popular notions and pseudoscientific explanations upon which the most pervasive myths surrounding deviance and deviants are founded * Features an analytical through-line assessing the complex and multifaceted relationship between deviance and the media * Enhanced with extensive pedagogical features, including a glossary of key terms, lists of specific learning outcomes in each chapter, and critical thinking questions designed to assess those outcomes * Comprehensive instructor ancillaries include PowerPoint slides, a test bank for each chapter, instructor outlines, and sample activities and projects; a student study guide also is available

Bridget Donnelly. Charlotte Reveille. Kate Slattery. Emily Boyle. Until now, these were nothing but names marked down in the admittance registers and punishment reports of Kingston Penitentiary, Canada's most notorious prison. In this shocking and heartbreaking book, Ted McCoy tells these women's stories of incarceration and resistance in poignant detail. The four women served sentences at different times over a century, but the inhumanity they suffered was consistent. Locked away in dark basement wards, they experienced starvation and corporal punishment, sexual abuse and neglect - profoundly disturbing evidence of the hidden costs of isolation, punishment, and mass incarceration.

An authoritative, interdisciplinary book which outlines how solution focused practice is particularly effective in addressing violent behaviour in clients and service users, encompassing work with both adults and children. Solution focused approaches have been used successfully with a range of violent behaviours from school-based bullying to severe domestic violence, as well as with victims of violence. Solution focused approaches hold people accountable for building solutions to their violent behaviour. The book shows how to engage clients in solution talk as opposed to problem talk, set useful goals and help clients to develop new behaviours. It outlines the practice principles and working techniques that make up solution focused practice with physical, emotional and sexual violence. Illustrative case studies and practice activities are provided. This book is suitable for anyone working to help reduce violent behaviour, including social workers, counsellors, therapists, nurses, probation workers and youth offending teams.

The law relating to fitness to plead is an increasingly important area of the criminal law. While criminalization may be justified whenever an offender commits a sufficiently serious moral wrong requiring that he or she be called to account, the doctrine of fitness to plead calls this principle into question in the case of a person who lacks the capacity or ability to participate meaningfully in a criminal trial. In light of the emerging focus on capacity-based approaches to decision-making and the international human rights requirement that the law should treat defendants fairly, this volume offers a benchmark for the theory and practice of fitness to plead, providing readers with a unique opportunity to consider differing perspectives and debate on the future development and direction of a doctrine which has up till now been under-discussed and under-researched. The fitness to plead rules stand as an exception to notions of public accountability for criminal wrongdoing yet, despite the doctrine's long-standing function in criminal procedure, it has proven complex to apply in practice and has given rise to many varied legislative models and considerable litigation in different jurisdictions. Particularly troublesome is the question of what is to be done with someone who has been found unfit to stand trial. Here the law is required to balance the need to protect those defendants who are unable to participate effectively in their own trial, whether permanently or for a defined period, and the need to protect the public from people who may have caused serious social harm as a result of their antisocial behaviour. The challenge for law reformers, legislators, and judges, is to create rules that ensure that everyone who can properly be tried is tried, while seeking to preserve confidence in the fairness of the legal system by ensuring that people who cannot properly engage in the criminal trial process are not forced to endure it.

A Closer Look at Prisons and Prison Inmates first explores how inmates perceive prisons in general, as well as particular aspects of the facilities where they serve time. In that sense, and after reviewing the literature regarding prison conditions and inmates' perceptions about prisons, a Prison Perception Scale is developed and assessed. Additionally, the authors examine how popular depictions of women in prison both interrupt and reinforce damaging stereotypes of incarcerated women. A content analysis of the popular Netflix series "Orange is the New Black" is provided in order to examine the hypothesis that incarcerated women are rarely presented as survivors in media. The closing chapter discusses some cause of recidivism if inmates such as lack of socialization, lack of job training, inability to adjust to social pressure, inability to reintegrate into the society after incarceration, lack of social support, mal-adjustment, lack of education, substance abuse, stigmatization and abuse.

This book challenges the widely held view that inmates create prison gangs to promote racism and violence. On the contrary, gangs form to create order. Most people assume that violent inmates left to themselves will descend into a chaotic anarchy, but that's not necessarily the case. This book studies the hidden order of the prison underworld to understand how order arises among outlaws. It uses economics to explore the secret world of the convict culture, inmate hierarchy, and prison gang politics. Inmates engaged in illegal activity cannot rely entirely on state-based governance institutions, such as courts of law and the police, to create order. Correctional officers will not resolve a dispute over a heroin deal gone wrong or help kill a predatory rapist. Yet, the inmate social system is relatively orderly and underground markets flourish. In today's prisons, gangs play a pivotal role in protecting inmates and facilitating illicit commerce. They have sophisticated internal structures and often rely on elaborate written constitutions. To maintain social order, gangs adjudicate conflicts and orchestrate strategic acts of violence to negotiate the competing demands of inmates, gang members, and correctional officers. This book uses economics to explain why prison gangs form, how formal institutions affect them, and why they have a powerful influence even over crime beyond prison walls. Economics explains the seemingly irrational, truly astonishing, and often tragic world of life among the society of captives.

What characterizes women s and girls pathways to crime?Girls, Women, and Crime: Selected Readings, Second Edition" "is a compilation of journal articles on the female offender written by leading researchers in the fields of criminology and women s studies. The contributors reveal the complex worlds females in the criminal justice system must often negotiate worlds that are frequently riddled with violence, victimization, discrimination, and economic marginalization. This in-depth collection leaves readers with a greater understanding of the complexities and nuances of the realtionship between girls and women and crime."

Sex is usually assumed to be a closely guarded secret of prison life. But it has long been the subject of intense scrutiny by both prison administrators and reformers--as well as a source of fascination and anxiety for the American public. Historically, sex behind bars has evoked radically different responses from professionals and the public alike. In "Criminal Intimacy," Regina Kunzel tracks these varying interpretations and reveals their foundational influence on modern thinking about sexuality and identity. Historians have held the fusion of sexual desire and identity to be the defining marker of sexual modernity, but sex behind bars, often involving otherwise heterosexual prisoners, calls those assumptions into question. By exploring the sexual lives of prisoners and the sexual culture of prisons over the past two centuries--along with the impact of a range of issues, including race, class, and gender; sexual violence; prisoners' rights activism; and the HIV epidemic--Kunzel discovers a world whose surprising plurality and mutability reveals the fissures and fault lines beneath modern sexuality itself. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including physicians, psychiatrists, sociologists, correctional administrators, journalists, and prisoners themselves--as well as depictions of prison life in popular culture--Kunzel argues for the importance of the prison to the history of sexuality and for the centrality of ideas about sex and sexuality to the modern prison. In the process, she deepens and complicates our understanding of sexuality in America.

"Interrupted Life" is a gripping collection of writings by and about imprisoned women in the United States, a country that jails a larger percentage of its population than any other nation in the world. This eye-opening work brings together scores of voices from both inside and outside the prison system including incarcerated and previously incarcerated women, their advocates and allies, abolitionists, academics, and other analysts. In vivid, often highly personal essays, poems, stories, reports, and manifestos, they offer an unprecedented view of the realities of women's experiences as they try to sustain relations with children and family on the outside, struggle for healthcare, fight to define and achieve basic rights, deal with irrational sentencing systems, remake life after prison; and more. Together, these powerful writings are an intense and visceral examination of life behind bars for women, and, taken together, they underscore the failures of imagination and policy that have too often underwritten our current prison system.

On 10 July 2014, the New York Advisory Committee held a briefing on New York's use of solitary confinement (or extreme isolation, as it is sometimes termed) of youth inmates. The expert presenters included representatives from various state and city agencies and institutions in the State of New York as well as advocates and former inmates. The Committee examined the extent of the use of solitary confinement of youth in the State of New York and the City of New York, and, in particular, the disproportionate assignment of racial minorities to solitary confinement. Based on the briefing, the book discusses the history of solitary confinement within the United States; the conditions of solitary confinement in New York jails; the mental, physical and developmental effects of solitary confinement on youth in New York jails; the primary legal protections related to solitary confinement of youth inmates; and the pending legislative, judicial and executive efforts to eliminate or limit the solitary confinement of youth.

This volume delivers a comprehensive study of banditry in Latin America and of its cultural representation. In its scope across the continent, looking closely at nations where bandit culture has manifested itself forcefully - Mexico (the subject of the case study), the Hispanic south-west of the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba - it imagines a 'Golden Age' of banditry in Latin America from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1940s when so-called 'social bandits', an idea first proposed by Eric Hobsbawm and further developed here, flourished. In its content, this work offers the most detailed and wide-ranging study of its kind currently available. Contents Introduction: The Idea of a Golden Age of Latin American Banditry 1850-1950 1. The Figure of the Bandit in History, Culture and Social Theory 2. Mexico: The Myth of the Bandit Nation 3. Mexico's Classic Bandit Narrative: Los de abajo 4. Beyond Mexico I: Bandit Cultures in Latin America 5. Beyond Mexico II: Chicano Bandit Cultures Conclusion

Experience has shown that if a jail does not meet the basic human needs of inmates, the inmates will find a way to satisfy their needs in ways that may be unfavorable to the orderly operation of the jail. Understanding what motivates human behavior provides jail administrators with a very useful tool for managing inmates since it helps explain both good inmate behavior and bad. This book not only provides guidance to jail practitioners as they implement this element, but it also provides self-assessment checklists to determine how well the jail is doing in the delivery of basic needs and suggestions for area of improvement. Violence, vandalism, and unsanitary conditions prevail in many jails na tionwide, frustrating jail practitioners who must ensure the safety and security of inmates, staff, and the public. These conditions often result from insufficient attention to inmate behavior management. Thankfully, over the past 25 years, important lessons about managing and controlling inmate behavior have emerged. One lesson is that a jail cannot control inmate be havior by focusing primarily on physical containment. A jail must actively manage inmate behavior to achieve a safe, clean, and secure environment, and this book provides tools for managing inmate behavior in this manner.

Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, brings his inimitable vision, exhaustive research, and mesmerizing prose to this timely book that dissects violence and offers new solutions to the age old problem of why people kill.

Lonnie Athens was raised by a brutally domineering father.  Defying all odds, Athens became a groundbreaking criminologist who turned his scholar's eye to the problem of why people become violent.  After a decade of interviewing several hundred violent convicts--men and women of varied background and ethnicity, he discovered "violentization," the four-stage process by which almost any human being can evolve into someone who will assault, rape, or murder another human being.  Why They Kill is a riveting biography of Athens and a judicious critique of his seminal work, as well as an unflinching investigation into the history of violence.

The United States witnessed increased attention to sex offender management policy at the federal, state and local levels beginning in the 1990s. As a result, laws have been enacted which impose a variety of post-incarceration controls on sex offenders, including but not limited to registration and community notification requirements, civil commitment, global positioning system (GPS) monitoring and tracking, as well as residency restriction. This book provides background information and examines relevant case law, with a particular focus on registration requirements and residency restrictions.

For years, criminologists have studied the relationship between crime and below-average intelligence, concluding that offenders usually possess IQ scores of 8 to 10 points below those of nonoffenders. Little, however, is known about the criminal behavior of those with above-average IQ scores. This book provides some of the first empirical information about the self-reported crimes of people with genius-level IQ scores. Combining quantitative data from 72 different offenses with qualitative data from 44 follow-up interviews, James C. Oleson describes the nature of crime by offenders of high IQ thereby shedding light on a population often ignored in research and yet sensationalized by media.

This work compiles experiences and lessons learned in meeting the unique needs of women and children regarding crime prevention and criminal justice, in particular the treatment and social reintegration of offenders, and serves a as a cross-disciplinary work for academic and policy-making analyses and follow-up in developing and developed countries. Furthermore, it argues for a more humane and effective approach to countering delinquency and crime among future generations. In a world where development positively depends on the rule of law and the related investment security, two global trends may chart the course of development: urbanization and education. Urbanization will globalize the concepts of "justice" and "fairness"; education will be dominated by the urban mindset and digital service economy, just as a culture of lawfulness will. This work looks at crime prevention education as an investment in the sustainable quality of life of succeeding generations, and at those who pursue such crime prevention as the providers of much-needed skills in the educational portfolio. Adopting a reformist approach, this work collects articles with findings and recommendations that may be relevant to domestic and international policymaking, including the United Nations Studies and their educational value for the welfare of coming generations. The books address the relevant United Nations ideas by combining them with academic approaches. Guided by the Editors' respective fields of expertise, and in full recognition of academic freedom and "organized scepticism", it includes contributions by lawyers, criminologists, sociologists and other eminent experts seeking to bridge the gap between academic and policy perspectives, as appropriate, against the international background, including the United Nations developments. The first volume opens with a foreword by Marta Santos Pais, the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, and a general introduction by the editors. Part I provides an overview of United Nations principles for crime prevention and the treatment of women and children. Part II concentrates on education and the social learning of children and adolescents. The importance of quality education is stressed as is its impact on the behaviour of children of all ages. It also includes a discussion of the factors that still hinder access to good schooling in many parts of the world. Part III presents international research findings on children, juveniles and women both as victims and offenders. Statistics show overwhelmingly that these groups are more often victims than offenders.

In an abridged translation that retains the grace and passion of the original, Klots and Ufberg present the stunning memoir of a young woman who became an actress in the Gulag. Tamara Petkevich had a relatively privileged childhood in the beautiful, impoverished Petrograd of the Soviet regime's early years, but when her father-a fervent believer in the Communist ideal-was arrested, 17-year-old Tamara was branded a "daughter of the enemy of the people." She kept up a search for her father while struggling to support her mother and two sisters, finish school, and enter university. Shortly before the Russian outbreak of World War II, Petkevich was forced to quit school and, against her better judgment, she married an exiled man whom she had met in the lines at the information bureau of the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs). Her mother and one sister perished in the Nazi siege of Leningrad, and Petkevich was herself arrested. With cinematic detail, Petkevich relates her attempts to defend herself against absurd charges of having a connection to the Leningrad terrorist center, counter-revolutionary propaganda, and anti-Semitism that resulted in a sentence of seven years' hard labor in the Gulag. While Petkevich became a professional actress in her own right years after her release from the Gulag, she learned her craft on the stages of the camps scattered across the northern Komi Republic. The existence of prisoner theaters and troupes of political prisoners such as the one Petkevich joined is a little-known fact of Gulag life. Petkevich's depiction not only provides a unique firsthand account of this world within a world but also testifies to the power of art to literally save lives. As Petkevich moves from one form of hardship to another she retains her desire to live and her ability to love. More than a firsthand record of atrocities committed in Stalinist Russia, Memoir of a Gulag Actress is an invaluable source of information on the daily life and culture of the Soviet Union at the time. Russian literature about the Gulag remains vastly underepresented in the United States, and Petkevich's unforgettable memoir will go a long way toward filling this gap. Supplemented with photographs from the author's personal archive, Petkevich's story will be of great interest to general readers, while providing an important resource for historians, political scientists, and students of Russian culture and history.

Two true-crime thrillers as seen on Discovery's Murder is Forever TV series.

MURDER, INTERRUPTED:
Rich, cheating financier Frank Howard wants his wife dead, and he's willing to pay Billie Earl Johnson whatever it takes, to the tune of $750,000. When his bullet misses the mark, Billie Earl and Frank will turn on each other in a fight for their lives...

MOTHER OF ALL MURDERS:
Dee Dee Blancharde is a local celebrity. Television reports praise her as a single mother who tirelessly cares for her wheelchair-bound, chronically ill daughter. But when the teenaged Gypsy Rose realises she isn't actually sick and Dee Dee has lied all these years, Gypsy Rose exacts her revenge...