Few social issues have received more public attention and scholarly debate than the death penalty. While the abolitionist movement has made a successful stride in recent decades, a small number of countries remain committed to the death penalty and impose it with a relatively high frequency. In this regard, the People's Republic of China no doubt leads the world in both numbers of death sentences and executions. Despite being the largest user of the death penalty, China has never conducted a national poll on citizens' opinions toward capital punishment, while claiming "overwhelming public support" as a major justification for its retention and use. Chinese Netizens' Opinions on Death Sentences: An Empirical Examination uses a forum of public comments to explore and examine Chinese netizens' opinions on the death penalty. Based on a content analysis of 38,512 comments collected from 63 cases in 2015, this study examines the diversity and rationales of netizens' opinions, netizens' interactions, and their evaluation of China's criminal justice system. In addition, the book discusses China's social, systemic, and structural problems and critically examines the rationality of netizens' opinions based on Habermas's communicative rationality framework. Readers will be able to contextualize Chinese netizens' discussions and draw conclusions about commonalities and uniqueness of China's death penalty practice.

The Detective's Handbook details the vital information law enforcement officers need to know to become better detectives. Since all essential aspects of detective work cannot be covered in a single volume, the editors have selected 20 of the most critical issues detectives face in their day-to-day work and present them in separate chapters.Using a unique format and style, this essential handbook draws on the expertise of contributors with police and academic backgrounds to provide both new and seasoned detectives with invaluable insights. It covers a wide range of detective procedures and practices employed in the United States and can be read as a whole or used as a reference for conducting various types of investigations and interrogations.The book highlights common mistakes and outlines best practices to help readers avoid making the same mistakes in the field. It provides the tools and understanding to conduct the range of investigations that today's detectives will most likely have to conduct, including those involving sexual predators, healthcare and financial fraud, cyber crime, gangs, cults, personal violence, and property.The text concludes with a section on all-purpose practices and lessons for investigations. In this section, readers will learn the practical aspects of interviewing and interrogating witnesses, including how to interview and communicate with special populations, such as those with mental and physical disabilities.Sharing the most effective investigative practices and procedures in use today, this book is a must-have for police, sheriffs, and other government agencies that are responsible for protecting the public.

As unrest over officer-involved shootings and deaths in custody takes center stage in conversations about policing and the criminal justice system, Guidelines for Investigating Officer-Involved Shootings, Arrest-Related Deaths, and Deaths in Custody addresses critical investigation components from an expert witness perspective, providing the insights necessary to ensure a complete investigation. Investigating a custodial death or an officer involved in a shooting presents unique and complex issues: estate, community, judicial, agency, involved officer, and public policy interests are all at stake. These types of deaths present various emerging medical, psychological, legal and liability, technical, and investigatory issues that must be addressed through a comprehensive investigation. This book is ideal for students in criminal investigation, death investigation, crime scene investigation, and special topic courses in custodial deaths and officer-involved shootings, as well as for death investigators, law enforcement officers, police administrators, and attorneys.

This volume assembles hundreds of cases and studies to provide the most accurate and comprehensive picture of the status of pornography in the criminal justice system. Presenting high-level research in an accessible and organized manner, it explores a range of topics, including investigating and prosecuting a case, arguments favoring and opposing decriminalization of pornography, and relationships between pornography, mental disorders, and crime. It also examines criminal justice responses and international laws, policies, attitudes, and definitions of pornography in comparison to those of the United States.

This book provides specific guidance for architects, planners, and housing managers on designing to deter crime. While every estate and neighbourhood has different problems which require unique solutions, the process which leads to the solutions will be the same. This book provides specific guidance for architects, planners, and housing managers on designing to deter crime. While every estate and neighbourhood has different problems which require unique solutions, the process which leads to the solutions will be the same.The first three chapters review the various theories of crime prevention through design, and abstract from them a series of six key principles which can be applied to all housing projects. The remaining five chapters outline the practical application of these principles in the assessment, design and construction processes.The text of this book has been compiled and updated from two educational packages produced by the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies and the Safe Neighbourhoods Unit. These were Safe as Houses (1988) and Safer Neighbourhoods (1989). Videos produced as part of those educational packages are available for use with this book.

This edited collection addresses the topic of prison governance which is crucial to our understanding of contemporary prisons in Latin America. It presents social research from Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay and Argentina to examine the practices of governance by the prisoners themselves in each unique setting in detail. High levels of variation in the governance practices are found to exist, not only between countries but also within the same country, between prisons and within the same prison, and between different areas. The chapters make important contributions to the theoretical concepts and arguments that can be used to interpret the emergence, dynamics and effects of these practices in the institutions of confinement of the region. The book also addresses the complex task of explaining why these types of practices of governance happen in Latin American prisons as some of them appear to be a legacy of a remote past but others have arisen more recently. It makes a vital contribution to the fundamental debate for prison policies in Latin America about the alternatives that can be promoted.

The Routledge Handbook on Crime and International Migration is concerned with the various relationships between migration, crime and victimization that have informed a wide criminological scholarship often driven by some of the original lines of inquiry of the Chicago School. Historically, migration and crime came to be the device by which Criminology and cognate fields sought to tackle issues of race and ethnicity, often in highly problematic ways. However, in the contemporary period this body of scholarship is inspiring scholars to produce significant evidence that speaks to some of the biggest public policy questions and debunks many dominant mythologies around the criminality of migrants. The Routledge Handbook on Crime and International Migration is also concerned with the theoretical, empirical and policy knots found in the relationship between regular and irregular migration, offending and victimization, the processes and impact of criminalization, and the changing role of criminal justice systems in the regulation and enforcement of international mobility and borders. The Handbook is focused on the migratory 'fault lines' between the Global North and Global South, which have produced new or accelerated sites of state control, constructed irregular migration as a crime and security problem, and mobilized ideological and coercive powers usually reserved for criminal or military threats. Offering a strong international focus and comprehensive coverage of a wide range of border, criminal justice and migration-related issues, this book is an important contribution to criminology and migration studies and will be essential reading for academics, students and practitioners interested in this field.

Over the last few years intensive community programmes for both young and adult offenders have become established in the UK as an important new component of penal policy - the ISSP (Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme) for persistent and serious young offenders, and the ICCP (Intensive Control and Change Programme) for adult offenders. Expectations of these programmes have been high, but the evidence relating to their effectiveness is mixed, and a number of critical concerns have emerged. This book seeks to address these issues, providing a timely review of the current literature, and presents findings of a recent national evaluation of ISSP. Emerging lessons for future penal policy are presented, and set within a wider theoretical context. The book concludes by stressing the need for greater realism and further evidential support if such programmes are to gain long-term credibility, and also to consider the appropriateness of differing forms of targeting as well as the emphasis placed on the various methods of surveillance.

Imprisonment has become big business in the United States. Using a "history of ideas" approach, this book examines the cultural underpinnings of prisons in the United States and explores how shared ideas about imprisonment evolve into a complex, loosely connected nationwide system of prisons that keeps enough persons to populate a small nation behind bars, razor wire and electrified fences. Tracing both the history of the prison and the very idea of imprisonment in the United States, this book provides students with a critical overview of American prisons and considers their past, their present and directions for the future. Topics covered include: * a history of imprisonment in America from 1600 to the present day; * the twentieth-century prison building binge; * the relationship between U.S. prisons and the private sector; * a critical account of capital punishment; * less-visible prison minorities, including women, children and the elderly; and * sex, violence and disease in prison. This comprehensive book is essential reading for advanced courses on corrections and correctional management and offers a compelling and provocative analysis of the realities of American penal culture from past to present. It is perfect reading for students of criminal justice, corrections, penology and the sociology of punishment.

The early 21st century saw better prison conditions and a lower imprisonment rate however public worry over supposed increasing violent crime as perpetuated by the media in the 1930's led to a return to harsher sentences and fuller prisons. Originally published in 1933, The Lawbreaker analyses British penal methods of the time and of the past to discover the most effective ways to treat prisoners and reduce crime as well as identifying where more research is needed to obtain a balance between punishment and rehabilitation. This title will be of interest to students of Criminology and Sociology.

Digul was an internment colony for political prisoners that was established in 1926 in West Papua. This book argues that Digul is the key to understanding Indonesia's colonial governance between the failed communist rebellion of late 1926 and the declaration of independence in 1945, a time when the Dutch regime attempted to impose what they called "rust en orde," or peace and order, on the Indonesian people via the suppression of politics by the police. The political policing regime the Dutch Indies state created, Takashi Shiraishi shows, was simultaneously a success and a failure. While unrest was to some degree put down, the native terrain was never completely pacified, as activists linked up with each other in fluid networks that cut across spatial and ideational boundaries. How did the government deploy political policing to achieve its policy objectives? What were the consequences and challenges for Indonesian activists? How was the government able to fashion its policing apparatus as the most potent instrument to achieve peace and order when the Great Depression hit the Indies, nationalist and communist forces were gaining strength in other places of the world, and war was coming both in Europe and Asia? This book answers those questions and more, breaking new ground for our understanding of the history of the Dutch Indies state in the early part of the twentieth century.

This book is a reflection on the nature of confinement, experienced by prison inmates as everyday life. It explores the meanings, purposes, and consequences involved with spending every day inside prison. Female Imprisonment results from an ethnographic study carried out in a small prison facility located in the south of Portugal, and Frois uses the data to analyze how incarcerated women talk about their lives, crimes, and expectations. Crucially, this work examines how these women consider prison: rather than primarily being a place of confinement designed to inflict punishment, it can equally be a place of transformation that enables them to regain a sense of selfhood. From in-depth ethnographic research involving close interaction with the prison population, in which inmates present their life histories marked by poverty, violence, and abuse (whether as victims, as agents, or both), Frois observes that the traditional idea of "doing time", in the sense of a strenuous, repressive, or restrictive experience, is paradoxically transformed into "having time" - an experience of expanded self-awareness, identity reconstruction, or even of deliverance. Ultimately, this engaging and compassionate study questions and defies customary accounts of the impact of prisons on those subjected to incarceration, and as such it will be of great interest for scholars and students of penology and the criminal justice system.

The first comprehensive examination of the US Constitution's Ex Post Facto Clause, surveying its history and the critical role it can and should play in combatting the punitive tendencies of American legislatures. The Ex Post Facto Clause, one of the few civil liberty protections found in the body of the US Constitution, reflects the Framers' acute concern over the tendency of legislatures to enact burdensome retroactive laws targeting unpopular individuals. Over time, a broad array of Americans have invoked the protective cloak of the Clause, including Confederate sympathizers in the late 1860s; immigrants in the early 1900s; Communist Party members in the 1950s; and, since the 1990s, convicted sex offenders. Although the Supreme Court enforced the Clause with vigor during the first several decades of the nation's history, of late the justices have been less than zealous defenders of the security it was intended to provide. And, even more problematic, they have done so amid major changes in the nation's social, political, and institutional life that have made the protections of the Ex Post Facto Clause all the more important. The Ex Post Facto Clause provides the first book-length examination of the history of the Clause and its potential for tempering the punitive impulses of modern American legislatures. Wayne A. Logan chronicles and critiques the evolving treatment of ex post facto claims by the Supreme Court, which has created a body of law that is both at odds with the Framers' intent and ill-suited to the unforgiving and harshly punitive nation that America has become. Drawing on Framing Era history, seminal Supreme Court decisions, and the global embrace of the values underlying the Ex Post Facto Clause, Logan provides a blueprint for how the Clause can play a reinvigorated and more robust role in guarding against the penal populism besetting modern American legislatures.

This study, first published in 1987, focuses on Victorian approaches to the moral reformation of prisoners, and aims to emphasise the ways in which the human value and social inclusion of prisoners were pursued. The author begins by discussing the evangelical view of social problems and human value in early-industrial Britain as well as the 'associationist' psychological analysis of human attitude developed by theorists from John Locke to Jeremy Bentham. The workings of these two theoretical frameworks in the practice of British prisons are then analyses, arguing that by 1860 both theories were basic to the approach to the incarceration of wrongdoers. After 1860 the picture changed radically to an unambiguous deterrent severity. This was linked to a more 'scientific' and evolutionist analysis of human conduct and attitude; theological objections to reformism were also brought into play. In the last forty years of the nineteenth century prisoners came to be seen as constitutionally inferior beings for whom no hope of reform could be generally entertained. This title will be of interest to students of history and of criminology.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This edited collection provides a comprehensive analysis of the differences and similarities between civil legal aid schemes in the Nordic countries whilst outlining recent legal aid transformations in their respective welfare states. Based on in-depth studies of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland, the authors compare these cases with legal aid in Europe and the US to examine whether a single, unique Nordic model exists. Contextualizing Nordic legal aid in relation to welfare ideology and human rights, Hammerslev and Halvorsen Ronning consider whether flaws in the welfare state exist, and how legal aid affects disadvantaged citizens. Concluding that the five countries all have very different legal aid schemes, the authors explore an important general trend: welfare states increasingly outsourcing legal aid to the market and the third sector through both membership organizations and smaller voluntary organizations. A methodical and compassionate text, this book will be of special interest to scholars and students of the criminal justice, the welfare state, and the legal aid system.

While most western democracies have renounced the death penalty, capital punishment enjoys vast and growing support in the United States. A significant and vocal minority, however, continues to oppose it. Against Capital Punishment is the first full account of anti-death penalty activism in America during the years since the ten-year moratorium on executions ended.

Building on in-depth interviews with movement leaders and the records of key abolitionist organizations, this work traces the struggle against the pro-death penalty backlash that has steadily gained momentum since the 1970s. It reviews the conservative turn in the courts which, over the last two decades, has forced death penalty opponents to rely less on the litigation strategies that once served them well. It describes their efforts to mount a broad-based educational and political assault on what they see as the most cruel, racist, ineffective, and expensive manifestation of a criminal justice system gone wrong.

Despite the efforts of death-penalty opponents, executions in the United States are on the increase. Against Capital Punishment diagnoses the reasons for the failure to mobilize widespread opposition to executions, and assesses the prospects for opposition to capital punishment in the future of the United States.

This fifth edition of the first true textbook on the death penalty engages the reader with a full account of the arguments and issues surrounding capital punishment. The book begins with the history of the death penalty from colonial to modern times, and then examines the moral and legal arguments for and against capital punishment. It also provides an overview of major Supreme Court decisions and describes the legal process behind the death penalty. In addressing these issues, the author reviews recent developments in death penalty law and procedure, including ramifications of newer case law, such as that regarding using lethal injection as a method of execution. The author's motivation has been to understand what motivates the "deathquest" of the American people, leading a large percentage of the public to support the death penalty. The book educates readers so that whatever their death penalty positions are, they are informed opinions.

This book explores the pros and cons of the death penalty and the history of capital punishment. In this context, it puts a special emphasis on the situation in Hungary, where, amongst its neighbors, in recent years the demand for the reestablishment of the death penalty has received the strongest political support from many pro-government politicians. Toth presents tendencies toward abolition of the death penalty and analyzes the arguments by which the death penalty can, in principle, be criticized or even defended. The book presents the main issues of the death penalty, arguments of both abolitionists and retentionists, and reviews the modern history of this sanction. It does not seek to convince the reader of the correctness or wrongness of the death penalty, but it presents both sides of the argument and their standpoints, and leaves the reader to decide. It encourages informed debate and discussion.

This collection includes a kaleidoscope of voices and perspectives from prisoners, former prisoners, scholars, and activists to examine the extraordinarily invisible and closed system of incarceration that characterizes the massive U.S. prison industry. The book explores in multiple ways, the role of writing in carceral settings, including material realities, ethics, and social justice. It is a book about the power of writing as well as its limits. It is a book that celebrates and critiques, challenges, and reveals. It is a book that, like the writing of incarcerated women, repays careful reading.

Corrections officials faced with rising populations and shrinking budgets have increasingly welcomed "faith-based" providers offering services at no cost to help meet the needs of inmates. Drawing from three years of on-site research, this book utilizes survey analysis along with life-history interviews of inmates and staff to explore the history, purpose, and functioning of the Inmate Minister program at Louisiana State Penitentiary (aka "Angola"), America's largest maximum-security prison. This book takes seriously attributions from inmates that faith is helpful for "surviving prison" and explores the implications of religious programming for an American corrections system in crisis, featuring high recidivism, dehumanizing violence, and often draconian punishments. A first-of-its-kind prototype in a quickly expanding policy arena, Angola's unique Inmate Minister program deploys trained graduates of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in bi-vocational pastoral service roles throughout the prison. Inmates lead their own congregations and serve in lay-ministry capacities in hospice, cell block visitation, delivery of familial death notifications to fellow inmates, "sidewalk counseling" and tier ministry, officiating inmate funerals, and delivering "care packages" to indigent prisoners. Life-history interviews uncover deep-level change in self-identity corresponding with a growing body of research on identity change and religiously motivated desistance. The concluding chapter addresses concerns regarding the First Amendment, the dysfunctional state of U.S. corrections, and directions for future research.

Slavery, lynching and capital punishment were interwoven in the United States and by the mid-twentieth century these connections gave rise to a small but well-focused reform movement. Biased and perfunctory procedures were replaced by prolonged trials and appeals, which some found messy and meaningless; DNA profiling clearly established innocent persons had been sentenced to death. The debate over taking life to protect life continues; this book is based on a hugely popular undergraduate course taught at the University of Texas, and is ideal for those interested in criminal justice, social problems, social inequality, and social movements. This book is an excerpt from a larger text, Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides?, http://www.routledge.com/9780415892476/

Policing is in a profound period of change, the result of recent government reform, a renewed drive for professionalism as well as the need to adapt to a rapidly changing society. This book provides a highly readable and up to date introduction to the work of the police, exploring what this currently involved and the directions it may be going in. It is designed for student police officers starting their probation and training, students studying public or uniformed service courses in colleges, students taking undergraduate courses in policing and criminal justice, and anybody else who wants to know about policing today. The book describes all the key elements of policing work. The first two parts look at how the police functions as an organization, with chapters devoted to important new areas of crime reduction partnerships and forensic support in investigation and enforcement. The third section covers key aspects of practical police work, with coverage of such challenging areas as anti-social behaviour and terrorism. The book contains a wide range of practical tasks and activities, and links are made throughout to the new Initial Police Learning and Development Programme and National Occupational Standards in Policing.

This book aims to provide a critical analysis of both political and professional developments in policy and practice relating to non-custodial penalties, taking full account of recent developments and the creation of a National Probation Service in 2002. Its aim is to unravel the complex institutional goals (the role of community punishment in the criminal justice system), professional goals (what can be achieved by community punishment) and political goals (the packaging and 'sale' of community punishment to the law-abiding public). The central focus is on principles and politics of community punishment, and on the changing role of the probation service.

A LETHAL STORM. THE MOST DEADLY PRISON. WHO WILL SURVIVE THE NIGHT? 'This is a stylish, heart-pounding thriller that would make one hell of a good film.' CRIME REVIEW Jack Constantine - a former cop who killed one of his wife's murderers in an act of vengeance - is serving his time in Ravenhill penitentiary, a notorious 'supermax' home to the most dangerous convicts in the country. When an apocalyptic superstorm wreaks havoc across the USA, the correctional officers flee the prison...but not before opening every cell door. The inmates must fend for themselves as lethal floodwaters rise and violent anarchy is unleashed. Teaming up with Kiera Sawyer, a Correctional Officer left behind on her first day of work, Constantine has one chance of survival - he must break out of a maximum security prison. But with the building on the verge of collapse, and deadly chaos around him, time is running out... Breathless, exhilarating and brilliantly original, this high-octane thriller is perfect for fans of Gregg Hurwitz, Lee Child and David Baldacci - and blockbuster action movies like John Wick.