Examining works by some of the most famous prisoners from the early modern period including Thomas More, Lady Jane Grey and Thomas Wyatt, Ruth Ahnert presents the first major study of prison literature dating from this era. She argues that the English Reformation established the prison as an influential literary sphere. In the previous centuries we find only isolated examples of prison writings, but the religious and political instability of the Tudor reigns provided the conditions for the practice to thrive. This book shows the wide variety of genres that prisoners wrote, and it explores the subtle tricks they employed in order to appropriate the site of the prison for their own agendas. Ahnert charts the spreading influence of such works beyond the prison cell, tracing the textual communities they constructed, and the ways in which writings were smuggled out of prison and then disseminated through script and print.

In The Modern Prison Paradox, Amy E. Lerman examines the shift from rehabilitation to punitivism that has taken place in the politics and practice of American corrections. She argues that this punitive turn has had profoundly negative consequences for both crime control and American community life. Professor Lerman's research shows that spending time in America's increasingly violent and castigatory prisons strengthens inmates' criminal networks and fosters attitudes that increase the likelihood of criminal activity following parole. Additionally, Professor Lerman assesses whether America's more punitive prisons similarly shape the social attitudes and behaviors of correctional staff. Her analysis reveals that working in more punitive prisons causes correctional officers to develop an 'us against them' mentality while on the job, and that the stress and wariness officers acquire at work carries over into their personal lives, straining relationships with partners, children, and friends.

Prison studies has experienced a period of great creativity in recent years, and this collection draws together some of the field's most exciting and innovative contemporary critical writers in order to engage directly with one of the most profound questions in penology - why prison? In addressing this question, the authors connect contemporary penological thought with an enquiry that has received the attention of some of the greatest thinkers on punishment in the past. Through critical exploration of the theories, policies and practices of imprisonment, the authors analyse why prison persists and why prisoner populations are rapidly rising in many countries. Collectively, the chapters provide not only a sophisticated diagnosis and critique of global hyper-incarceration but also suggest principles and strategies that could be adopted to radically reduce our reliance upon imprisonment.

Kaneko Fumiko (1903-1926) wrote this memoir while in prison after being convicted of plotting to assassinate the Japanese emperor. Despite an early life of misery, deprivation, and hardship, she grew up to be a strong and independent young woman. When she moved to Tokyo in 1920, she gravitated to left-wing groups and eventually joined with the Korean nihilist Pak Yeol to form a two-person nihilist organization. Two days after the Great Tokyo Earthquake, in a general wave of anti-leftist and anti-Korean hysteria, the authorities arrested the pair and charged them with high treason. Defiant to the end (she hanged herself in prison on July 23, 1926), Kaneko Fumiko wrote this memoir as an indictment of the society that oppressed her, the family that abused and neglected her, and the imperial system that drove her to her death.

First published in 1777 by the philanthropist John Howard (1726-90), this work was intended for as wide a readership as possible. Based on research from more than 300 visits to at least 230 different penal institutions on his extensive travels around Great Britain, Ireland and continental Europe, The State of the Prisons was a vital early contribution to the cause of penal reform. It provided, for the first time, systematic evidence of poor management and degrading conditions in institutions at home and abroad. Although Howard saw only limited changes to prisons in his lifetime, his labours formed a crucial platform for subsequent movements, notably the Howard League for Penal Reform, founded in 1866. This reissue incorporates a substantial appendix, compiled in 1784, which presents updated findings from further visits to British institutions as well as those in Germany, France, Italy, Flanders and Scandinavia, among many other places.

Power on the Inside is the first book to examine the historical development of prison gangs worldwide, from those that emerged inside mid-nineteenth-century Neapolitan prisons to the new generation of younger inmates challenging the status quo within gang subcultures today. Historian-criminologist Mitchel P. Roth examines prison gangs throughout the world, from the Americas, Oceania, and South Africa to Southeast Asia, Europe, and beyond. The book examines the many variables that influence the evolution of prison subcultures, from colonialism and population demographics to prison architecture and staff-prisoner relations. Power on the Inside features eighty historical and contemporary images and will inform professionals in the field as well as general readers who want to know more about the realities of prison gangs today.

Curing systemic inequalities in the criminal justice system is the unfinished business of the Civil Rights movement. No part of that system highlights this truth more than the current implementation of the death penalty. At the Cross tells a story of the relationship between the death penalty and race in American politics that complicates the common belief that individual African Americans, especially poor African Americans, are more subject to the death penalty in criminal cases. The current death penalty regime operates quite differently than it did in the past. The findings of this research demonstrate the the racial inequity in the meting out of death sentences has legal and political externalities that move beyond individual defendants to larger numbers of African Americans. At the Cross looks at the meaning of the death penalty to and for African Americans by using various sites of analysis. Using various sites of analysis, Price shows the connection between criminal justice policies like the death penalty and the political and legal rights of African Americans who are tangentially connected to the criminal justice system through familial and social networks. Drawing on black politics, legal and political theory and narrative analysis, Price utilizes a mixed-method approach that incorporates analysis of media reports, capital jury selection and survey data, as well as original focus group data. As the rates of incarceration trend upward, Black politics scholars have focused on the impact of incarceration on the voting strength of the black community. Local, and even regional, narratives of African American politics and the death penalty expose the fractures in American democracy that foment perceptions of exclusion among blacks.

A quarter of century has passed since Margaret Thatcher launched one of her most controversial reforms, privately- run prisons, and the role of the private sector in delivering public services continues to be one of the big political issues of our time. This book, by a critical professional insider, re-assesses the benefits and failures of competition, how public and private prisons compare, the impact of competition on the public sector's performance, and how well Government has managed this peculiar 'quasi-market'. Drawing on first person interviews with key players, including Chief Executives and prison managers in both sectors and Chief Inspectors, Julian Le Vay uses his former role as Finance Director of the Prison Service to give a wholly new analysis of comparative costs and of the impact of constant changes in competition policy. He draws out lessons from the parallel stories of the SERCO/G4S billing scandal, privately run immigration detention and the more radical approach now being taken on outsourcing probation, and looks in detail at four prisons, publicly and privately run, that 'failed'. Concluding with a critique of the future shape of competition, he also draws some general conclusions on the way government works. This is vital reading for anyone interested in the role of competition in public services, implementation of public policy, or the state of our prisons.

The Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture will be an essential reference point, providing international coverage and thematic richness. The chapters examine the real and imagined spaces of the prison and, perhaps more importantly, dwell in the uncertain space between them. The modern fixation with 'seeing inside' prison from the outside has prompted a proliferation of media visions of incarceration, from high-minded and worthy to voyeuristic and unrealistic. In this handbook, the editors bring together a huge breadth of disparate issues including women in prison, the view from 'inside', prisons as a source of entertainment, the real worlds of prison, and issues of race and gender. The handbook will inform students and lecturers of media, film, popular culture, gender, and cultural studies, as well as scholars of criminology and justice.

Rethinking the American Prison Movement provides a short, accessible overview of the transformational and ongoing struggles against America's prison system. Dan Berger and Toussaint Losier show that prisoners have used strikes, lawsuits, uprisings, writings, and diverse coalitions with free-world allies to challenge prison conditions and other kinds of inequality. From the forced labor camps of the nineteenth century to the rebellious protests of the 1960s and 1970s to the rise of mass incarceration and its discontents, Rethinking the American Prison Movement is invaluable to anyone interested in the history of American prisons and the struggles for justice still echoing in the present day.

Published in 1844, this extraordinary book consists of the diaries of Robert Gully and Captain Denham, the Commander of the merchant vessel Ann, who were imprisoned in China in 1842, and notes exchanged between the two men (who were held captive in separate places). After some months of imprisonment, Gully was murdered, but Denham survived and was eventually released. The book, edited by 'a barrister', was designed to inform the British public of 'matters of which hitherto they have had slender but doubtful accounts', and to apply political and diplomatic pressure on the Chinese government, whose official account of the incident denied any wrong-doing by its representatives. Gully had distinguished himself in the taking of Ningpo during the Opium War of 1841-2, and later boarded the Ann to return to Macao. The vessel was subsequently wrecked off Formosa (Taiwan), where events related in the book occurred.

This book distills thirty years of research on the impacts of jail and prison environments. The research program began with evaluations of new jails that were created by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, which had a novel design intended to provide a nontraditional and safe environment for pretrial inmates, and documented the stunning success of these jails in reducing tension and violence. This book uses assessments of this new model as a basis for considering the nature of environment and behavior in correctional settings, and more broadly in all human settings. It provides a critical review of research on jail environments and of specific issues critical to the way they are experienced and places them in historical and theoretical context. It presents a contextual model for the way environment influences the chance of violence.

From a highly accredited criminal law professor at the University of North Carolina, a provocative and timely exploration of how plea bargaining prevents true criminal justice reform and how we can fix it When Americans think of the criminal justice system, the image that pops into their minds is a trial. They envision a standard courtroom scene with a defendant, attorneys, a judge, and most importantly, a jury. It's a fair assumption. The right to a trial by jury is enshrined in both the Constitution (Article III, Section 2) and the Bill of Rights (the Sixth Amendment). It's supposed to be an inalienable right that undergirds our entire justice system. But in Punishment Without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining is a Bad Deal, University of North Carolina law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick illustrates that the popular conception of a jury trial couldn't be further from reality. That bedrock constitutional right has all but disappeared thanks to the inexorable march of plea bargaining, which began to take hold during Prohibition and has skyrocketed since 1971, when it was affirmed as constitutional by the Supreme Court. In 2018, more than 97 percent of defendants pleaded guilty. The consequences are dire. Nearly every aspect of our criminal justice system is designed to encourage defendants-whether they're innocent or guilty-to take a plea deal. Punishment Without Trial showcases how plea bargaining has undermined justice at every turn and across socioeconomic and racial divides. It forces the hand of lawyers, judges, and defendants, turning our legal system into a ruthlessly efficient mass incarceration machine that is clogging our jails and punishing its citizens because it's the path of least resistance.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Hotel K - Bali's most notorious jail - is Hell in Paradise. Welcome to Hotel Kerobokan, or Hotel K, Bali's most notorious jail. Its walls touch paradise; sparkling oceans, surf beaches and palm trees on one side, while on the other it's a dark, bizarre and truly frightening underworld of sex, drugs, violence and squalor. Hotel K's filthy and disease ridden cells have been home to the infamous and the tragic: a Balinese King, Gordon Ramsay's brother, Muslim terror bombers, beautiful women tourists and surfers from across the globe. Petty thieves share cells with killers, rapists, and gangsters. Hardened drug traffickers sleep alongside unlucky tourists, who've seen their holiday turn from paradise to hell over one ecstasy pill. Hotel K is the shocking inside story of the jail and its inmates, revealing the wild 'sex nights' organised by corrupt guards for the prisoners who have cash to pay, the jail's ecstasy factory, the killings made to look like suicides, the days out at the beach, the escapes and the corruption that means anything is for sale - including a fully catered Italian jail wedding, or a luxury cell upgrade with a Bose sound system. The truth about the dark heart of Bali explodes off the page.

The American journalist George Kennan (1854-1924) spent many years travelling in and writing about Russia. After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, Kennan wanted to go to Siberia to examine the penal system and the punishment of political exiles. In this unflinching account, published in two volumes in 1891, Kennan gives vivid descriptions, accompanied by extensive illustrations of the prisons and labour camps and the harsh lives of the people forced to live there. This journey also led to a personal transformation for Kennan himself - he started out as a supporter of the tsarist government but when he returned to the United States, he had become an advocate of political revolution in Russia. In Volume 1, he inspects the overcrowded holding prison of Tyumen, where everyone banished to Siberia was forced to stay before redeployment, and he later speaks to some political exiles.

The American journalist George Kennan (1854-1924) spent many years travelling in and writing about Russia. After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, Kennan wanted to go to Siberia to examine the penal system and the punishment of political exiles. In this unflinching account, published in two volumes in 1891, Kennan gives vivid descriptions, accompanied by extensive illustrations of the prisons and labour camps and the harsh lives of the people forced to live there. This journey also led to a personal transformation for Kennan himself - he started out as a supporter of the tsarist government but when he returned to the United States, he had become an advocate of political revolution in Russia. In Volume 2, he travels to the infamous convict mines of the Trans-Baikal region, and also discusses the extensive police surveillance system he observed while in Russia.

Comics. Social Justice. Penology. One out of every hundred adults in the U.S. is in prison. This book provides a crash course in what drives mass incarceration, the human and community costs, and how to stop the numbers from going even higher. This volume collects the three comic books published by the Real Cost of Prisons Project. The stories and statistical information in each comic book is thoroughly researched and documented. "I cannot think of a better way to arouse the public to the cruelties of the prison system than to make this book widely available"--Howard Zinn.

This book addresses the problem of justifying the institution of criminal punishment. It examines the "paradox of retribution": the fact that we cannot seem to reject the intuition that punishment is morally required, and yet we cannot (even after two thousand years of philosophical debate) find a morally legitimate basis for inflicting harm on wrongdoers. The book comes at a time when a new "abolitionist" movement has arisen, a movement that argues that we should give up the search for justification and accept that punishment is morally unjustifiable and should be discontinued immediately. This book, however, proposes a new approach to the retributive theory of punishment, arguing that it should be understood in its traditional formulation that has been long forgotten or dismissed: that punishment is essentially a defense of the honor of the victim. Properly understood, this can give us the possibility of a legitimate moral justification for the institution of punishment.

"The Brother You Choose encompasses all that is embodied in the soul of Gwendolyn Brooks' words when she writes: "we are each others harvest; we are each others business; we are each others magnitude and bond." This unique friendship (i.e., brotherhood) born under the early idealism of the Black Panther Party within its stated goals and objectives bring smiles to one who has also struggled on the same streets as Paul Coates and Eddie Conway. Susie Day has provided us with an insight into two lives that have survived and developed within the deadly American history that challenges us daily. The relationship that develops between the pages of these brothers' lives is reflective of true heart and soul. The inimitable brotherhood chronicled here can only be measured by the depth of one's own sense of grace and humanity. Over a span of fifty years, Paul Coates and Marshall "Eddie" Conway have remained "rock-solid comrades" and extended family in the Black Empowerment struggle. Their friendship exemplified the early promise of the BPP and its core meaning as articulated in the Ten-Point Program illustrated through Day's poignant account of racial injustice, resistance and unyielding solidarity." -Haki R. Madhubuti, Poet, Founder of Third World Press/Third World Press Foundation, author of Taught By Women "Beautifully edited and narrated by Susie Day, The Brother You Choose allows us to eavesdrop on a humor-filled, heartwarming conversation between Eddie Conway and Paul Coates, whose love for each other and for their people carried them through revolutionary struggles and decades of wrongful imprisonment. An engaging read, these deeply personal perspectives on a common journey toward Black liberation encapsulate a history critical to movement-building today." -Natsu Taylor Saito, author of Settler Colonialism, Race, and the Law: Why Structural Racism Persists "By turns touching, enraging, moving, tough, and tender, always riveting and ultimately inspiring, The Brother You Choose underscores the essential truth embodied in Che Guevara's observation that "the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love." -Ward Churchill, author of Wielding Words Like Weapons "My beloved comrade brothers, Eddie Conway & Paul Coates both connected together like Siamese twins for over forty-three years both with unflinching self determination and unconditional brotherly love and appreciation for the others humanity. Eddie's confined in maximum security prison(s) while Paul navigates minimum security the world we all live in informing and educating the world to "FREE EDDIE CONWAY. What an amazing story of triumph over a system of wicked injustice behavior." -Emory Douglas, Revolutionary Artist & Minister of Culture, Black Panther Party 1967-1981 "With a dramatist's eye and a radical's heart, Susie Day has crafted a conversation between two titans about fighting the good fight, enduring the hard stuff, and living to tell about it. The Brother You Choose is smart, endearing, funny and inspiring. Paul Coates and Eddie Conway reflect on commitment to the world and to each other. Pull up a chair and have a listen." -Dan Berger, author of Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing on the Civil Rights Era

Volume 22, Number 2 of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons is a general issue edited by Professor Susan Nagelsen (New England College) and Charles Huckelbury, who is an award winning author and former prisoner.

James Neild (1744 1814), penal reformer and philanthropist, first became interested in the welfare of prisoners after visiting a friend jailed for debt. He went on to investigate prisons across Britain, France, Flanders, and Germany, fundraising to release those incarcerated for petty debt. In 1772 he helped establish the Society for the Relief and Discharge of Persons Imprisoned for Small Debts (the Thatched House Society), which succeeded in freeing over 16,000 debtors. Published in 1812, this work records the findings of Neild's thorough survey of debtors' prisons in Britain, and also discusses those imprisoned for other minor criminal offences. Neild exposes the harsh sentences assigned to debtors and petty criminals, using this evidence to support his campaign to improve the conditions of the prisoners and to stop imprisonment for debt. His efforts to improve the conditions of prisoners eventually influenced parliamentary reforms of the penal system.

Henry Mayhew (1812-87), social reformer and journalist, is well known for his classic work of research on the London poor (also reissued in this series) and as one of the co-founders of Punch magazine in 1841. While working as the metropolitan correspondent for the London Morning Chronicle, Mayhew initiated several investigations into London's poor and the state of the city's prisons. Sourcing his information from guards and from prisoners themselves, Mayhew's monumental study of London criminal life (co-written with John Binny and published in 1862) includes analyses of crime areas, crime classifications and the state of the different prisons connected to them, observations on juvenile delinquents, and methods of discipline and control of prisoners. The book also provides detailed police and criminal statistics. His survey ultimately concluded that all of London's prisons were lacking in basic human necessities and were greatly in need of reform.

Volume 23, Number 1 of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons is a general issue edited by Professor Justin Piche (University of Ottawa). In this issue of the JPP, readers will find these three kinds of contributions that, although in written form, offer alternative images that make visible that which takes place inside otherwise opaque prisons. This volume is the first issue of the JPP that will be fully available online as a free download on our website www.jpp.org. While readers are encouraged to continue purchasing subscriptions and hard copies of the journal where possible as sales sustain the publication, we encourage everyone to read and circulate the articles posted online widely.

Elizabeth Fry (nee Gurney, 1780-1845) was descended from two wealthy Quaker banking families. Her Quaker faith was crucial to her adult life and she became active in social reform. Despite having eleven children, she was active in community work, and became a Quaker minister. Persuaded to visit the women's wing in Newgate Prison in 1813, she was appalled at the conditions in which the prisoners, and their children, lived. She became a pioneer in seeking to improve the situation for women in prisons and on transportation ships. The British Ladies' Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners was probably the first national British women's society. Fry's ideas on the humane treatment of prisoners influenced international legal systems. This memoir, based on her letters and diaries, was edited by two of her daughters, and was first published in 1847. Volume 1 ends in 1825.

Elizabeth Fry (nee Gurney, 1780-1845) was descended from two wealthy Quaker banking families. Her Quaker faith was crucial to her adult life and she became active in social reform. Despite having eleven children, she was active in community work, and became a Quaker minister. Persuaded to visit the women's wing in Newgate Prison in 1813, she was appalled at the conditions in which the prisoners, and their children, lived. She became a pioneer in seeking to improve the situation for women in prisons and on transportation ships. The British Ladies' Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners was probably the first national British women's society. Fry's ideas on the humane treatment of prisoners influenced international legal systems. This memoir, based on her letters and diaries, was edited by two of her daughters, and was first published in 1847. Volume 2 covers the period from 1826 to 1845.