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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Crime & criminology > Offenders
Crime and the closely-related issues of youth culture and unemployment, are among the most important social concerns facing post-apartheid leadership in South Africa. This is a textured social history of African youth gangs in the Johannesburg/Soweto area from the emergence of a "juvenile delinquency crisis" in the 1930s through to the student-led uprising of 1976. The gang subculture emerged in a context of social deprivation and stunted mobility. Young urban men, out of school and unemployed, coalesced into gangs to create a world with its own rules, style and status structures. Drawing on powerful street and neighbourhood identities, gangs provided young males with companionship, a sense of security, and dignity. The book also depicts the relationship between political organizations and gang constituencies. Gangs were extremely difficult to mobilize on a formal level. Although in some respects politicized, and sympathetic to political campaigns, youth gangs found the respectable methods and intellectual discourse of political organizations alienating. While sensitive to the plight of black urban youth, the ANC recoiled from mobilizing the volatile and potentially violent gangs. Other liberation movements, such as the PAC and the Black Consciousness Movement, made concerted attempts to appeal to the gangs but, ultimately, they were forced to dissociate themselves.
In the late nineteenth century, prisoners in Alabama, the vast majority of them African Americans, were forced to work as coal miners under the most horrendous conditions imaginable. Black Prisoners and Their World draws on a variety of sources, including the reports and correspondence of prison inspectors and letters from prisoners and their families, to explore the history of the African American men and women whose labor made Alabama's prison system the most profitable in the nation. To coal companies and the state of Alabama, black prisoners provided, respectively, sources of cheap labor and state revenue. By 1883, a significant percentage of the workforce in the Birmingham coal industry was made up of convicts. But to the families and communities from which the prisoners came, the convict lease was a living symbol of the dashed hopes of Reconstruction. Indeed, the lease--the system under which the prisoners labored for the profit of the company and the state--demonstrated Alabama's reluctance to let go of slavery and its determination to pursue profitable prisons no matter what the human cost. Despite the efforts of prison officials, progressive reformers, and labor unions, the state refused to take prisoners out of the coal mines. In the course of her narrative, Mary Ellen Curtin describes how some prisoners died while others endured unspeakable conditions and survived. Curtin argues that black prisoners used their mining skills to influence prison policy, demand better treatment, and become wage-earning coal miners upon their release. Black Prisoners and Their World unearths new evidence about life under the most repressive institution in the New South. Curtin suggests disturbing parallels between the lease and today's burgeoning system of private incarceration.
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).
Going Straight is the flagship publication behind the launch of Unlock, the National Association of Ex-Offenders. It contains revealing interviews with people who have 'succeeded' after prison and in some cases a 'criminal career'. The book looks at a range of offenders who have changed their way of life. They include famous, notorious, creative and ordinary people who were prepared to talk about the turning point in their lives when they left crime behind. Their candid explanations about how they rebuilt their lives - often full of remorse for their victims and determined to repay something to their communities - are challenging, illuminating and a cause for optimism. They include ex-burglar John Bowers (later an editor of prison newspaper Inside Time), former violent criminal Frank Cook (a sculptor and author), ex drug-dealer Peter Cameron (a successful artist whose work features on the front cover), Great Train Robbery mastermind Bruce Reynolds, actor Stephen Fry, former armed gangster Bob Cummines (the first Chief Executive of Unlock) and Cameron Mackenzie (Glasgow villain turned minister of religion). Others include a self-made millionaire, a one-time compulsive gambler, an individual involved in The Troubles in Northern Ireland - and one or two who chose to use a pseudonym.
While arrests of celebrated college and professional athletes for
crimes against women escalate at an alarming rate, popular sports
figures routinely escape accountability for their offenses.
Shielded by a lucrative sports industry that fosters the athlete's
positive image as role model to the nation's youth, few players are
successfully prosecuted in the courts and they rarely face
sanctions on their eligibility to play.
This text is part of the Readings in Crime and Punishment series, a line of readers covering many aspects of the criminal justice, police, and correctional systems. In Readings in Juvenile Justice Administration, Barry C. Feld selects articles written by noted experts in the field, examining the juvenile justice system, focusing on juvenile courts, and the judicial, administrative, and correctional systems for the social control of criminal and non-criminal juvenile offenders. Feld considers legal and sociological aspects of juvenile justice administration, concentrating on causes of youth crime and development of juvenile offenders. Ideal for courses in the juvenile justice system and juvenile justice.
This work examines the links between educational failure and future offending behaviour. It contains the stories of inmates' schooldays told in their own words as they try to answer the question "could anything have been done to prevent you being in custody now?" The book ends with suggestions on action schools might take towards redressing social, cultural and educational disadvantage and intervening to help limit future offending behaviour.
Beginning with the story of Joe Arridy, certified as a "feeble-minded imbecile" who was executed in Colorado in 1939, Deadly Innocence? traces political and judicial handling of incidents involving persons with retardation; describes similar current cases; and offers suggestions for action on the part of the police, the courts, professionals who work in the field of developmental disabilities, and concerned citizens.
Tom was the only adult who gave me the attention and affection that I so badly needed. I loved his caresses and the times he comforted me. I loved talking to him because he was the only adult who listened and understood. - Neil's Story From Victim to Offender shows how victims of child sexual abuse become juvenile and adult offenders. The stories told by these offenders reveal the vulnerability of boys to paedophiles and pederasts who provide the male attention lacking in some children's home lives. They show how early sexualisation damages children's sexual development, their relationships and their adult lives. The story of a female offender reveals that this problem is not confined to boys. These stories highlight the inadequacy of current child protection programs for the protection of boys. The editor's introduction and the chapter from a psychologist who specialises in the treatment of offenders emphasise the need to improve child protection and treatment programs for offenders.From Victim to Offender offers unique insights into the experiences of victims and offenders of sexual abuse, and is essential reading for professionals who are concerned about child protection and those responsible for the rehabilitation of offenders.
'Breaking the law was a reflex in me. It wasn't something I thought about doing or not doing. It was something I simply did. Give me an opportunity -- when I was away from the carnivals -- and I wouldn't know how not to break the law.' A compulsive con turned compulsive crusader against crime. Tony McGilvary emerged from 22 years behind bars to turn his own life around and help other ex-cons get jobs, get straight, and stay off the street.
The working class in New York City was remade in the mid-nineteenth century. In the 1820s a substantial majority of city artisans were native-born; by the 1850s three-quarters of the city's laboring men and women were immigrants. How did the influx of this large group of young adults affect the city's working class? What determined the texture of working-class life during the antebellum period? Richard Stott addresses these questions as he explores the social and economic dimensions of working-class culture. Working-class culture, Stott maintains, is grounded in the material environment, and when work, population, consumption, and the uses of urban space change as rapidly as they did in the mid-nineteenth century, culture will be transformed. Using workers' first-person accounts-letters, diaries, and reminiscences-as evidence, and focusing on such diverse topics as neighborhoods, diet, saloons, and dialect, he traces the rise of a new, youth-oriented working-class culture. By illuminating the everyday experiences of city workers, he shows that the culture emerging in the 1850s was a culture clearly different from that of native-born artisans of an earlier period and from that of the middle class as well.
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.
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.
Miller's Children is a passionate and comprehensive look at the human consequences of the US Supreme Court's decision in the case of Miller v. Alabama, which outlaws mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile murderers. The decision to apply the law retroactively to other cases has provided hope to those convicted of murders as teenagers and had been incarcerated with the expectation that they would never leave prison until their own death as incarcerated adults. Psychological expert witness James Garbarino shares his fieldwork in more than forty resentencing cases of juveniles affected by the Miller decision. Providing a wide-ranging review of current research on human development in adolescence and early adulthood, he shows how studies reveal the adolescent mind's keen ability for malleability, suggesting the true potential for rehabilitation. Garbarino focuses on how and why some convicted teenage murderers have been able to accomplish dramatic rehabilitation and transformation, emphasizing the role of education, reflection, mentoring, and spiritual development. With a deft hand, he shows us the prisoners' world that is filled, first and foremost, with stories of hope amid despair, and moral and psychological recovery in the face of developmental insult and damage.
Canada is actively involved through various agencies in the domestic affairs of countries in the Global South. Over time, these practices - rationalized as a form of humanitarian assistance - have become increasingly focused on enhancing regimes of surveillance, policing, prisons, border control, and security governance. Drawing on an array of previously classified materials and interviews with security experts, Security Aid presents a critical analysis of the securitization of humanitarian aid. Jeffrey Monaghan demonstrates that, while Canadian humanitarian assistance may be framed around altruistic ideals, these ideals are subordinate to two overlapping objectives: the advancement of Canada's strategic interests and the development of security states in the "underdeveloped" world. Through case studies of the major aid programs in Haiti, Libya, and Southeast Asia, Security Aid provides a comprehensive analysis and reinterpretation of Canada's foreign policy agenda and its role in global affairs.
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.
In the context of two hundred years of American colonial control in the Pacific, Katherine Irwin and Karen Umemoto shed light on the experiences of today's inner city and rural girls and boys in Hawaii who face racism, sexism, poverty, and political neglect. Basing their book on nine years of ethnographic research, the authors highlight how legacies of injustice endure, prompting teens to fight for dignity and the chance to thrive in America, a nation that the youth describe as inherently "jacked up"-rigged-and "unjust." While the story begins with the youth battling multiple contingencies, it ends on a hopeful note with many of the teens overcoming numerous hardships, often with the guidance of steadfast, caring adults.
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.
Literary representations of British convicts exiled to Australia were the most likely way that the typical English reader would learn about the new colonies there. In Transported to Botany Bay, Dorice Williams Elliott examines how writers--from canonical ones such as Dickens and Trollope to others who were themselves convicts--used the figure of the felon exiled to Australia to construct class, race, and national identity as intertwined. Even as England's supposedly ancient social structure was preserved and venerated as the "true" England, the transportation of some 168,000 convicts facilitated the birth of a new nation with more fluid class relations for those who didn't fit into the prevailing national image. In analyzing novels, broadsides, and first-person accounts, Elliott demonstrates how Britain linked class, race, and national identity at a key historical moment when it was still negotiating its relationship with its empire. The events and incidents depicted as taking place literally on the other side of the world, she argues, deeply affected people's sense of their place in their own society, with transnational implications that are still relevant today.
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.
Exploring the experiences of both male clients and female sex workers, China's Commercial Sexscapes expands upon the complex dynamics of sex worker and client relationships, and places them within the wider implications of expanding globalization and capitalism. The book is based in large part upon interviews with sex workers and their clients the author conducted while undercover as a bartender in Dongguan, an important industrial city in Guangdong province and an explicit, complicated, and multidimensional setting for study. In the wake of the financial crisis, the purchasing of sex by single, young-adult males has become an increasingly socially acceptable way for men to perform and experience heteronormative masculinity. Investigating human rights, social policy, and the criminal justice system in China, this book applies the concept of "edgework" to the commercial sex industry in Dongguan to study how men and women interact within the changing global economy.
Understanding and Improving Prisoner Reentry Outcomes "Mass imprisonment and mass prisoner reentry are two faces of the same coin. In a comprehensive and penetrating analysis, Daniel Mears and Joshua Cochran unravel the causes of this pressing problem, detail the challenges confronting released prisoners, and provide an evidence-based blueprint for successfully reintegrating offenders into the community. Scholarly yet accessible, this volume is essential reading-whether by academics or students-for anyone wishing to understand the chief policy issue facing American corrections." Francis T. Cullen Distinguished Research Professor, University of Cincinnati Prisoner Reentry is an engaging and comprehensive examination of prisoner reentry and how to improve public safety, well-being, and justice in the "era of mass incarceration." Renowned authors Daniel P. Mears and Joshua C. Cochran investigate historical trends in incarceration and punishment policy, the salience of in-prison and post-prison contexts and experiences for reentry, and the importance of understanding group differences in offending, punishment, and social context. Using extensive reliance on both theory and empirical research, the authors identify how reentry reflects criminal justice policy in America and, at the same time, has profound implications for crime prevention and justice. Readers will develop a diverse foundation for current policies, identify the implications of reentry for families, community, and society at large, and gain a conceptual and empirical toolkit for analyzing and improving the lives of those released from prison.
This pocket-sized guide can be taken conveniently to meetings, interviews and visits, to be used as a quick reference point for information about the practical application of restorative justice. The book covers every stage of the process, from how a facilitator should prepare for taking on a new case, through initial contacts with victim and offender and facilitating meetings, to recording and evaluating a case. While acknowledging throughout the different possible ways of proceeding, the authors provide example prompts for steps such as writing to a victim for the first time, talking to the victim and offender ahead of their meeting, and initiating meetings. They use jargon-free language and provide helpful task checklists for speed and ease of reference. This is an invaluable companion for youth offending team workers, probation officers, prison staff, police, referral order volunteers, mediators and any professional needing to know about restorative justice. |
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