One of the Guys: Girls, Gangs, and Gender examines the causes, nature, and meaning of female gang involvement. Miller situates the study of female gang membership in the context of current directions in feminist scholarship and research on both gangs and female criminal offenders. Unique in its approach, this book is a comparative study that examines both gang members and nongang members to provide an accurate picture of the nature of gang life. The author draws on interviews from two contrasting cities, St. Louis, Missouri and Columbus, Ohio. While both cities have relatively new gang histories, their socioeconomic conditions are notably different. The book opens with a foreword written by Malcolm W. Klein, a leading authority on youth gangs. Miller examines how and why girls join gangs; the nature of girls' involvement in gangs; how gang involvement shapes girls' participation in delinquency and their risk of victimization; and the ways in which gender affects their gang experience. Miller concludes by drawing out implications for gender and crime and the study of female lawbreaking. Written in a lively and personal style, One of the Guys: Girls, Gangs, and Gender includes rich, extensive interviews offering fascinating excerpts from the girls themselves. Miller examines these dialogues in order to explore gender identities within gangs. One of the Guys: Girls, Gangs, and Gender is an ideal text for courses which focus on juvenile delinquency, women and crime, gang activity, and female lawbreaking.

The Routledge Handbook of Graffiti and Street Art integrates and reviews current scholarship in the field of graffiti and street art. Thirty-seven original contributions are organized around four sections: History, Types, and Writers/Artists of Graffiti and Street Art; Theoretical Explanations of Graffiti and Street Art/Causes of Graffiti and Street Art; Regional/Municipal Variations/Differences of Graffiti and Street Art; and, Effects of Graffiti and Street Art. Chapters are written by experts from different countries throughout the world and their expertise spans the fields of American Studies, Art Theory, Criminology, Criminal justice, Ethnography, Photography, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, and Visual Communication. The Handbook will be of interest to researchers, instructors, advanced students, libraries, and art gallery and museum curators. This book is also accessible to practitioners and policy makers in the fields of criminal justice, law enforcement, art history, museum studies, tourism studies, and urban studies as well as members of the news media. The Handbook includes 70 images, a glossary, a chronology, and the electronic edition will be widely hyperlinked.

This powerful book reveals how modern strategies of punishment--and, by all accounts, their failure--relate to political and economic transformations in society at large. Jonathan Simon uses the practice of parole in California as a window to the changing historical understanding of what a corrections system does and how it works. Because California is representative of policies and practices on a national level, Simon explicitly presents his findings within a national framework.
When parole first emerged as a corrections strategy in the nineteenth century, work was supposed to keep ex-prisoners out of trouble. This strategy foundered in the changing economy after World War II. What followed was a rehabilitative strategy, where the clinical expertise of the parole agent replaced the discipline of the industrial labor market in defining and controlling criminal deviance. Today, Simon argues, as drastic changes in the economy have virtually locked out an entire class, rehabilitation has given way to mere management. The effect is isolation of the offender, either in jail or in an underclass community; the result is an escalating cycle of imprisonment, destabilization, and insecurity.
No significant improvement in the current penal crisis can be expected until we better understand the relationship between punishment and social order, a relationship which this book explores in theoretical, historical, and practical detail.

The last few years have seen a marked change in attitudes to the rehabilitation and management of offenders. It is now impossible to ignore evidence which demonstrates the possibilities for reducing reoffending. This book assembles and consolidates that evidence, and indicates the implications for both practice and research. Professionals in probation, parole and law, as well as in forensic psychology, psychiatry, nursing, and prison management and policy, will find this book of direct relevance to their work and thinking. It will be of interest and value to practitioners, academics and researchers across the whole field of adult and juvenile criminal justice. A key emphasis of the book is the relationship between research and practice: the evidence presented here constitutes a significant advancement in knowledge in the social sciences generally, and the findings are of considerable practical importance, in providing guidelines of relevance to practitioners and policy-makers throughout the criminal justice system.

""Delinquency in a Birth Cohort "is a turning point in criminological research in the United States," writes Norval Morris in his foreword. "What has been completely lacking until this book is an analysis of delinquency in a substantial cohort of youths, the cohort being defined other than by their contact with any part of the criminal justice system."
This study of a birth cohort was not originally meant to be etiological or predictive. Yet the data bearing on this cohort of nearly ten thousand boys born in 1945 and living in Philadelphia gave rise to a model for prediction of delinquency, and thus to the possibility for more efficient planning of programs for intervention. It is expert research yielding significant applications and, though largely statistical, the analysis is accessible to readers without mathematical training.
"No serious scholar of the methods of preventing and treating juvenile delinquency can properly ignore this book."--LeRoy L. Lamborn, "Law Library Journal"
"The magnitude of [this] study is awesome. . . . It should be a useful guide for anyone interested in the intricacies of cohort analysis."--Gary F. Jensen, "American Journal of Sociology"
"A book the student of juvenile delinquency will find invaluable."--"Criminologist
"

Why I Chase Comedians and Other Bipolar Tales is written with self-observational humour and a comical self-deprecating irony. Frankie Owens takes the reader inside the turbulent mind of someone afflicted by hypermania. He deals with the extremities of the bipolar condition - highs, lows, in-betweens - allowing readers to understand its overwhelming nature. Written in the style of his acclaimed Little Book of Prison, this new work follows a relapse when the author (founder of the Read and Grow Society and by now a respected, law-abiding exponent of Criminology and Literacy) found himself back in prison following a manic episode. The book shows how he struggled with booming ideas, breathtaking feats of imagination, coming down to Earth and dealing with the wreckage. It contrasts the out-and-out ability of this well-respected expert in criminology and literacy with bizarre behaviour as he serves time a second time around and rebuilds his life once more. A rare journey into the bipolar mind which 'opens-up' on mental health. A raw, challenging, humorous account.

In Literacy Experiences of Formerly Incarcerated Women: Sentences and Sponsors, Melanie N. Burdick uses narrative research to elucidate the literacy experiences of formerly incarcerated women and how literacy has affected their lives, both while incarcerated and while transitioning back into society. Using Deborah Brandt's theory of literacy sponsorship (1998), Burdick explores both the mass incarceration of women and their access to literacy as feminist and social justice issues. While reading and writing in prison is often romanticized through caricatures of incarcerated people who become enlightened and reformed, Burdick targets these romanticized views and criticizes their controlling and harmful effects. This book shines a light on the personal and political ramifications of literacy experiences in women's lives as they grow up in families and schools, move through the prison system, and transition back into society and higher education, arguing that literacy is politically situated and that transitioning out of prison is a complex process marked by literate acts that are dependent upon constructive literacy sponsorship.

Human trafficking has emerged as one of the top international and domestic policy concerns, and is well covered and often sensationalized by the media. The nature of the topic combined with various international pressures has resulted in an array of government-led mandates to combat the issue. The Domestication of Human Trafficking examines Canada's criminal justice approaches to human trafficking, with a particular focus on the ways in which the intersecting factors of race, class, gender, and sexuality impact practice. Using a wide range of qualitative and empirically grounded research methods, including extensive analysis of court documents, trial transcripts, and interviews with criminal justice actors, this book contributes to much-needed research that examines, specifies, and sometimes complicates the narratives of how trafficking works as a criminal offence. The Domestication of Human Trafficking turns our attention to the ways in which the offence of human trafficking is made on the front lines of criminal justice efforts in Canada.

This informative and entertaining book, peppered with personal anecdotes and rich in case studies, adopts a unique approach to studying the causes of crime. Rather than relying on one theoretical position, Boyanowsky borrows from a range of theories to explain criminal behavior and answer questions central to the field of criminology. Crime and Criminality employs case studies, both notorious and lesser known, to bring theories to life and offer insight into vital contemporary issues, such as domestic violence, child pornography, genocide, the effect of climate change on crime, and the evolution of cybercrime. Engaging, accessible, and comparative in scope, this book is ideal for students and general readers interested in understanding the varied causes of crime. Introductions and summaries in each chapter make this an ideal text for criminology courses.

The most comprehensive and authoritative textbook on youth crime and youth justice. Extensively updated to reflect changes in the youth justice system and contemporary debates around youth crime, this fifth edition of Youth and Crime: Includes new chapters on developmental and life course theories, and punitive justice strategies. Has been significantly expanded with new sections on the politicisation of youth crime, knife crime and gangs, child refugees, climate justice, child-on-child homicide, and localised criminal exploitation. Features increased coverage of policing strategies, including sections on policing public space and rethinking youth justice. Complete with a new two colour design, chapter outlines, summary boxes, study questions, further reading lists, useful website lists, and a glossary, this textbook expertly guides students through their studies in youth and crime.

In this jaw-dropping classic of prison escape literature (originally poublished in 1987 and now a major movie starring Daniel Radcliffe), Tim Jenkin tells of how he, Stephen Lee and Alexander Moumbaris, using a series of hand-made wooden keys, got through nine locked doors inside Pretoria Central, taking them to Mozambique and finally to London.

This fast-paced thriller begins with Jenkin’s Cape Town childhood and the growth of his political awareness, his university days and his friendship with Stephen Lee. Both men left South Africa after university for London to join the African National Congress. Jenkin and Lee, after training in London, became expert pamphlet bombers in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and it was after several successful years of raising awareness about apartheid and the ANC that they were caught and eventually sentenced to 12 years in jail. It is after Lee’s father visits his son in prison, bringing him a copy of another escape classic, Papillon, that Jenkin begins to seriously form an escape plan. Months and months of planning, testing, failing, testing again and lucky breaks meant that, finally, the escape was on.

The recently late Denis Goldberg was a friend and supporter of the men, and kept a warder busy as they began their escape. Apart from locking the doors behind them, they never looked back…

What is a just response to persons seeking to desist from criminal behavior? In America, over the last several decades mass incarceration has emerged as the prevailing policy response to crime and reoffending. The majority of those who are imprisoned will be released, and those that are released tend to return to communities challenged by high rates of violence, crime, unemployment, and poverty. In these conditions, without some type of intervention, persons with criminal histories are likely to reoffend. April Bernard, through compelling interviews and field research with formerly gang affiliated women, illuminates how through community support and their active engagement in peacemaking work in distressed neighborhoods throughout Chicago they were able to desist from crime, rebuild their lives, and become meaningful contributors to their communities. This book explores the role of community in facilitating the commitment to desist from crime, by offering critical support and opportunities for stewardship. Bernard provides a timely analysis of the transformative potential of a new perspective on criminal justice which incorporates stewardship and community engagement as a fundamental principal in the response to persons seeking to desist from criminal behavior, particularly women. The book combines moving personal narratives with concrete practical evidence to call for an alternative to ideology that supports the existing punitive policies and practices of the criminal justice system and the corresponding lack of interventions and opportunities for persons seeking to desist from crime. This deeply informed, and perceptive analysis concludes with suggestions for alternatives that fit within a transformative justice paradigm.

As recently as five years ago mass incarceration was widely considered to be a central, permanent feature of the political and social landscape. The number of people in U.S. prisons is still without historic parallel anywhere in the world or in U.S. history. But in the last few years, the population has decreased, in some states by almost a third. A broad consensus is emerging to reduce prison rolls. Politicians have called for repealing the harshest sentencing laws of the war on drugs, abolishing mandatory minimums and closing correctional facilities. Does the decrease in the prison population herald the dismantling of mass incarceration? This book provides an answer. Drawing on original research from across New York State, the contributors argue that while massive decarceration is taking place, the outcome to date is not the one wished for by reformers, namely a more just system. While drug law reform is clearly upon us, for example, a moral panic about heroin addiction and phantom meth labs has recently reached a fever pitch. As the penitentiary population drops and prisons close, the number of people in jail has swelled. New intelligence-led policing, and the rise of a reentry industry together have led to more surveillance and less social justice. Together these developments lead to justice disinvestment as the state sheds direct responsibility for the criminal justice system to the private and non-profit sector, while it extends its reach through new forms of community-based supervision, surveillance and policing into poor neighborhoods and communities of color. Celebration may be premature, in other words. Having endowed a group that is already disproportionately poor and people of color with the stigma of criminality, the state has left the formerly incarcerated and their communities to their fate. The future we face appears to be neither emancipatory reform nor simply the continuation of past mass incarceration. The challenge of freedom, on a scale not seen since the Reconstruction, remains before us.

The California youth corrections system is undergoing the most sweeping transformation in its 154-year history. The extraordinary nature of this change is revealed by the striking decline in the state's youth incarceration rate. In 1996, with 10,000 youth confined in 11 state-run correctional facilities, California boasted the nation's third highest youth incarceration rate. Now, with only 800 youth remaining in a system comprised of just three institutions, California has one of the nation's lowest youth incarceration rate. How did such unprecedented changes occur and what were the crucial conditions that produced them? Daniel E. Macallair answers these questions through an examination of the California youth corrections system's origins and evolution, and the patterns and practices that ultimately led to its demise. Beginning in the 19th century, California followed national juvenile justice trends by consigning abused, neglected, and delinquent youth to congregate care institutions known as reform schools. These institutions were characterized by their emphasis on regimentation, rigid structure, and harsh discipline. Behind the walls of these institutions, children and youth, who ranged in age from eight to 21, were subjected to unspeakable cruelties. Despite frequent public outcry, life in California reform schools changed little from the opening of the San Francisco Industrial School in 1859 to the dissolution of the California Youth Authority (CYA) in 2005. By embracing popular national trends at various times, California encapsulates much of the history of youth corrections in the United States. The California story is exceptional since the state often assumed a leadership role in adopting innovative policies intended to improve institutional treatment. The California juvenile justice system stands at the threshold of a new era as it transitions from a 19th century state-centered institutional model to a decentralized structure built around localized services delivered at the county level. After the Doors Were Locked is the first to chronicle the unique history of youth corrections and institutional care in California and analyze the origins of today's reform efforts. This book offers valuable information and guidance to current and future generations of policy makers, administrators, judges, advocates, students and scholars.

For years, criminologists have studied the relationship between crime and below-average intelligence, concluding that offenders possess IQ scores 8-10 points below those of non-offenders. 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, this book describes the nature of high-IQ crime while shedding light on a population of offenders often ignored in research and sensationalized in media.

From 2003 through 2009, a total of 4,813 deaths were reported to the Bureau of Justice Statistics' (BJS) Arrest-Related Deaths (ARD) program. The ARD program is a national collection of persons who die in the custody or under the restraint of state or local law enforcement personnel. Deaths are reportable to the program without considering whether physical custody had been established or whether a formal arrest process had been initiated prior to the time of death. The ARD collection also includes the deaths of persons attempting to elude law enforcement during the course of apprehension. This book examines statistics and coverage assessments of arrest-related deaths.

In 2015 the landmark suicide of the 100th woman to kill herself in prison custody passed largely unnoticed. This book by two experts set out to redress the balance by examining all aspects of the history, present practices, causes and prevention prospects connected to this tragic chain of events. A long overdue analysis of a subject that is at last beginning to receive enhanced scrutiny. Focuses on both women and adolescent girls in custody. Looks at psychological, demographic, environmental and clinical factors. The first book of its kind.

A new paradigm for supervising offenders in the community Environmental Corrections is an innovative guide filled with rich insights and strategies for probation and parole officers to effectively integrate offenders back into the community and reduce recidivism. Authors Lacey Schaefer, Francis T. Cullen, and John E. Eck move beyond traditional models for interventions and build directly on the applied focus of environmental criminology theories. Using this approach, the authors answer the question of what officers can do to decrease opportunities for an offender to commit a crime. Readers will learn how to recognize and assess specific criminal opportunities in an offender's past and gain the tools and strategies they need to design an individualized supervision plan that channels offenders away from these criminogenic situations.

This handbook promotes a comprehensive strategy founded on evidence-based programming for juvenile justice systems to adopt or enhance their current system. The comprehensive strategy is supported strongly by the broad research base that is now available. This strategy recognizes, first, that a relatively small proportion of the juveniles who initially enter the juvenile justice system will prove to be serious, violent, or chronic offenders, but that group accounts for a large proportion of the overall amount of delinquency. An important component of a comprehensive evidence-based juvenile justice system, therefore, is distinguishing these offenders from others and focusing attention and resources on that smaller group. Second, a comprehensive strategy recognizes that serious, violent, or chronic delinquency emerges along developmental pathways that progress from less to more serious profiles of offending. Priority must be given to interrupting these offender careers by calibrating the level of supervision and control of the juveniles' behavior to their level of risk. The third major component of a comprehensive strategy, therefore, is effective intervention programs that are capable of reducing the recidivism of those juveniles at risk for further delinquency. The Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders is an administrative framework that supports a continuum of services that parallel the development of offender careers. This framework emphasizes evidence-based programming specifically on recidivism reduction, and supports protocols for developing comprehensive treatment plans that match effective services with offender treatment needs along the life-course of delinquent careers, as they move from intake onward, to probation, community programs, confinement, and reentry. Juvenile justice systems will benefit from incorporation of a comprehensive strategy as provided in the handbook.

Written by experts with first-hand experience working with troubled mothers, this is the first book taking motherhood as a focus for criminal/social justice interventions. Covers the entire sequence affecting mothers caught up in such processes. A workbook for course providers and students across a range of disciplines.For practitioners by practitioners this highly informed collection will be of great value to course providers across a range of disciplines and groups dealing with women's issues. Approximately 12,000 women every year experience 'maternal incarceration', whilst many more are engaged in community-based supervision, support or interventions from public, private and voluntary services. Working with mothers who understandably already might feel challenged and vulnerable can be as demanding and difficult as it is rewarding and inspiring. The book aims to make this task more effective, purposeful and rewarding.Drawing on many years of practitioner experience of both the editor and chapter authors, who include a barrister, prosecutor, police officer, prison officer, probation officer, drugs worker, social worker and psychotherapist, the book aims to facilitate and develop understanding in relation to effective practice when engaging professionally with mothers, their lives, challenges, emotions and (ordinarily) their pre-occupations with their families.

Letters to a Lifer provides a rare insight into life without parole (LWOP) for juveniles in the USA. A true story from Pennsylvania, it is a compelling tale of faith and redemption. Cindy Sanford tells how a chance correspondence with Ken, a prisoner artist, began to change her entrenched ideas about offenders. Her book now adds voice to the work of the USA's National Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth and will also be of interest to students of restorative justice. In 1999, America's Most Wanted broadcast details of a notorious crime. Twelve years later Cindy was introduced to Ken, one of the two boys convicted, through his remarkable wildlife art. By then a young man, Ken had spent half his life in prison. Initially wary, Cindy was surprised to find him humble, polite and deeply grateful for her interest. Gradually she and her family were able to look beyond his crime to the person he had become. Despite a hardening of attitudes generally towards offenders in the USA and other parts of the western world, Letters to a Lifer shows why the campaign against LWOP sentences for juveniles is nonetheless gaining momentum.

Mi Rinconcito en el Cielo (My Little Corner of the Sky) tells the remarkable story of Alberto "Beto" Gonzales, who overcame a childhood of poverty, addiction, bigotry, and violence and went on to change the lives of thousands of children and adults as a mentor and gang prevention specialist. The book explores themes of family relationships, neighborhood segregation, the impacts of drug abuse and crime, and the racism and bigotry that children endure without the benefits of adult protectors. Beto's story is one of pain, recovery, and hope, and one that has the power to change lives.

Youth Justice in America, Second Edition engages students in an exciting, informed discussion of the U.S. juvenile justice system and fills a pressing need to make legal issues personally meaningful to young people. Written in a straightforward style, the book addresses tough, important issues that directly affect today's youth, including the rights of accused juveniles, search and seizure, self-incrimination and confession, right to appeal, and the death penalty for juveniles. Focusing on cases that relate to the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the subject matter comes alive through a wide variety of in-book learning aids.

Having gained unique access to California prisoners and corrections officials and to thousands of prisoners' written grievances and institutional responses, Kitty Calavita and Valerie Jenness take us inside one of the most significant, yet largely invisible, institutions in the United States. Drawing on sometimes startlingly candid interviews with prisoners and prison staff, as well as on official records, the authors walk us through the byzantine grievance process, which begins with prisoners filing claims and ends after four levels of review, with corrections officials usually denying requests for remedies. Appealing to Justice is both an unprecedented study of disputing in an extremely asymmetrical setting and a rare glimpse of daily life inside this most closed of institutions. Quoting extensively from their interviews with prisoners and officials, the authors give voice to those who are almost never heard from. These voices unsettle conventional wisdoms within the sociological literature for example, about the reluctance of vulnerable and/or stigmatized populations to name injuries and file claims, and about the relentlessly adversarial subjectivities of prisoners and correctional officials and they do so with striking poignancy. Ultimately, Appealing to Justice reveals a system fraught with impediments and dilemmas, which delivers neither justice, nor efficiency, nor constitutional conditions of confinement.