This riveting memoir tells of the fate of a Soviet dissident, Alexander Shatravka, who tried to escape from the Soviet Union in the 1974, only to be caught and returned to twelve years of imprisonment in Soviet psychiatric hospitals and labor camps. Released in 1986, just in time for the momentous changes of glasnost and perestroika, Shatravka eventually made his way to the West. Saturated with tales and memoirs from the other side of the Iron Curtain, Shatravka's memoir of his escape, which he wrote for underground circulation, languished in obscurity and archives - until now. In a stunning translation from the original Russian by Shatravka's ex-wife Catherine Fitzpatrick, his story of dashed hopes and ultimate fulfillment is as fresh as ever. With the ranks of the once-vibrant Soviet dissident movement depleted by death and old age, we find each account valuable in a world where Soviet crimes against humanity never had their Nuremberg, and where the perpetrators were never brought to justice. With the return of the abuse of psychiatry under Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime, Shatravka's tale is a timely warning about threats to freedoms so dear and yet so fragile. Shatravka's account also contributes a rare and invaluable look at Soviet provincial life, often overlooked in a field of literature dominated by urban elite dissidents, and captures the hopes and dreams of scores of ordinary people caught in the net of oppression.

Solitary is the unforgettable life story of a man who served more than four decades in solitary confinement―in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell, 23 hours a day, in notorious Angola prison in Louisiana―all for a crime he did not commit. That Albert Woodfox survived was, in itself, a feat of extraordinary endurance against the violence and deprivation he faced daily. That he was able to emerge whole from his odyssey within America’s prison and judicial systems is a triumph of the human spirit, and makes his book a clarion call to reform the inhumanity of solitary confinement in the U.S. and around the world.

Arrested often as a teenager in New Orleans, inspired behind bars in his early twenties to join the Black Panther Party because of its social commitment and code of living, Albert was serving a 50-year sentence in Angola for armed robbery when on April 17, 1972, a white guard was killed. Albert and another member of the Panthers were accused of the crime and immediately put in solitary confinement by the warden. Without a shred of actual evidence against them, their trial was a sham of justice that gave them life sentences in solitary. Decades passed before Albert gained a lawyer of consequence; even so, sixteen more years and multiple appeals were needed before he was finally released in February 2016.

Remarkably self-aware that anger or bitterness would have destroyed him in solitary confinement, sustained by the shared solidarity of two fellow Panthers, Albert turned his anger into activism and resistance. The Angola 3, as they became known, resolved never to be broken by the grinding inhumanity and corruption that effectively held them for decades as political prisoners. He survived to give us Solitary, a chronicle of rare power and humanity that proves the better spirits of our nature can thrive against any odds.

This open access book provides a comparative perspective on capital punishment in Japan and the United States. Alongside the US, Japan is one of only a few developed democracies in the world which retains capital punishment and continues to carry out executions on a regular basis. There are some similarities between the two systems of capital punishment but there are also many striking differences. These include differences in capital jurisprudence, execution method, the nature and extent of secrecy surrounding death penalty deliberations and executions, institutional capacities to prevent and discover wrongful convictions, orientations to lay participation and to victim participation, and orientations to "democracy" and governance. Johnson also explores several fundamental issues about the ultimate criminal penalty, such as the proper role of citizen preferences in governing a system of punishment and the relevance of the feelings of victims and survivors.

The central theme of this book is the nexus between the self, the social, and the sacred in conversion and recovery. The contributions explore the complex interactions that occur between the person, the sacred, and various recovery situations, which can include prisons, substance abuse recovery settings and domestic violence shelters. With an interdisciplinary approach to the study of conversion, the collection provides an opportunity for a better understanding of lived religion, guilt, shame, hope, forgiveness, narrative identity reconstruction, religious coping, religious conversion and spiritual transformation. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students of lived religion, religious conversion, recovery, homelessness, and substance dependence.

This book is an interdisciplinary collection of essays on Le Groupe d'information sur les prisons (The Prisons Information Group, or GIP). The GIP was a radical activist group, extant between 1970 and 1973, in which Michel Foucault was heavily involved. It aimed to facilitate the circulation of information about living conditions in French prisons and, over time, it catalyzed several revolts and instigated minor reforms. In Foucault's words, the GIP sought to identify what was 'intolerable' about the prison system and then to produce 'an active intolerance' of that same intolerable reality. To do this, the GIP 'gave prisoners the floor,' so as to hear from them about what to resist and how. The essays collected here explore the GIP's resources both for Foucault studies and for prison activism today.

Carceral Space, Prisoners and Animals explores resonances across human and nonhuman carceral geographies. The work proposes an analysis of the carceral from a broader vantage point than has yet been done, developing a 'trans-species carceral geography' that includes spaces of nonhuman captivity, confinement, and enclosure alongside that of the human. The linkages across prisoner and animal carcerality that are placed into conversation draw from a number of institutional domains, based on their form, operation, and effect. These include: the prison death row/ execution chamber and the animal slaughterhouse; sites of laboratory testing of pharmaceutical and other products on incarcerated humans and captive animals; sites of exploited prisoner and animal labor; and the prison solitary confinement cell and the zoo cage. The relationships to which I draw attention across these sites are at once structural, operational, technological, legal, and experiential / embodied. The forms of violence that span species boundaries at these sites are all a part of ordinary, everyday, industrialized violence in the United States and elsewhere, and thus this 'carceral comparison' amongst them is appropriate and timely.

The prison is a recent invention, hardly more than two centuries old, yet it has become the universal system of punishment. How can we understand the place that the correctional system occupies in contemporary societies? What are the experiences of those who are incarcerated as well as those who work there? To answer these questions, Didier Fassin conducted a four-year-long study in a French short-stay prison, following inmates from their trial to their release. He shows how the widespread use of imprisonment has reinforced social and racial inequalities and how advances in civil rights clash with the rationales and practices used to maintain security and order. He also analyzes the concerns and compromises of the correctional staff, the hardships and resistance of the inmates, and the ways in which life on the inside intersects with life on the outside. In the end, the carceral condition appears to be irreducible to other forms of penalty both because of the chain of privations it entails and because of the experience of meaninglessness it comprises. Examined through ethnographic lenses, prison worlds are thus both a reflection of society and its mirror. At a time when many countries have begun to realize the impasse of mass incarceration and question the consequences of the punitive turn, this book will provide empirical and theoretical tools to reflect on the meaning of punishment in contemporary societies.

The threat of terrorism, if not adequately managed, is likely to increase exponentially. As terrorist groups' influence and networks spread globally, a concerted effort in counterterrorism strategy is critical to mitigating the threat they present. Governments facing the threat of terrorism are typically strengthening their law enforcement, military and intelligence capabilities, but more complex initiatives such as deradicalisation and terrorist rehabilitation are more time-consuming and less attention-grabbing and so tend to be neglected. It is all too easy to 'do' rehabilitation ineffectively or to simply ignore it altogether. This is unfortunate, as an effective rehabilitation strategy can yield dividends over the longer term. Every committed terrorist is a potential recruiter, whether in prison or at liberty, for more terrorists. Even in death, they can potentially be presented as martyrs. Conversely, successfully rehabilitated terrorists can be valuable assets in the public relations theatre of battle. There is no single, simple solution to the challenges of deradicalisation and rehabilitation, but this book places examples of best practice within a robust, but flexible, conceptual framework. It gives guidelines for establishing and implementing a successful deradicalisation or rehabilitation programme, derived from a series of empirical case studies of successful projects around the world. It sets out both the necessary and desirable facets of such a programme, identifying which areas to prioritise and where budgets can be best spent if resources are tight. The authors provide detailed case studies of each step to illustrate an approach that has worked and how best to replicate this success.

Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions: Counternarratives of Black Family Resilience offers a unique perspective on the complexities of being a Black mother addicted to crack, powder cocaine, heroin, and crank. Qualitative interviews provide rich narratives from five Black mothers challenging negative controlled images and stereotypes of Black motherhood and drug addiction. Using Black Feminist Thought, Critical Race Feminism, and Resilience as conceptual frameworks, this book confronts hegemonic constructions of Black mothers and their children within the context of drug addictions. Particular attention is focused on using the mothers' self-definitions of struggles and family resilience to dismantle the negative controlled images of the junkie and the crack ho' and her crack baby. The mothers in this book speak truth to their experiences with motherhood and addictions to some of the most powerful street drugs that explicitly defy the junkie, crack ho', and crack baby images. The book also addresses tensions existing within researcher-participant relationships and nuances unique to research with Black mothers in recovery. Personal lessons learned and challenges experienced during the research process are highlighted as Tivis shares dilemmas of self-reflections of positionality, accountability and use of language. Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions contains important implications for research and practice in education and across other disciplines concentrating on mothers and children from racially diverse backgrounds. This book will be relevant for both undergraduate and graduate students and academics within these disciplines. Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions will be of interest to advanced pre-service teachers and other disciplines engaging in clinical and professional practice with addiction and with families.

Hip-Hop and Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline was created for K-12 students in hopes that they find tangible strategies for creating affirming communities where students, parents, advocates and community members collaborate to compose liberating and just frameworks that effectively define the school-to-prison pipeline and identify the nefarious ways it adversely affects their lives. This book is for educators, activists, community organizers, teachers, scholars, politicians, and administrators who we hope will join us in challenging the predominant preconceived notion held by many educators that Hip-Hop has no redeemable value. Lastly, the authors/editors argue against the understanding of Hip-Hop studies as primarily an academic endeavor situated solely in the academy. They understand the fact that people on streets, blocks, avenues, have been living and theorizing about Hip-Hop since its inception. This important critical book is an honest, thorough, powerful, and robust examination of the ingenious and inventive ways people who have an allegiance to Hip-Hop work tirelessly, in various capacities, to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline.

Predictive Sentencing addresses the role of risk assessment in contemporary sentencing practices. Predictive sentencing has become so deeply ingrained in Western criminal justice decision-making that despite early ethical discussions about selective incapacitation, it currently attracts little critique. Nor has it been subjected to a thorough normative and empirical scrutiny. This is problematic since much current policy and practice concerning risk predictions is inconsistent with mainstream theories of punishment. Moreover, predictive sentencing exacerbates discrimination and disparity in sentencing. Although structured risk assessments may have replaced 'gut feelings', and have now been systematically implemented in Western justice systems, the fundamental issues and questions that surround the use of risk assessment instruments at sentencing remain unresolved. This volume critically evaluates these issues and will be of great interest to scholars of criminal justice and criminology.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence. This book analyses the different types of post-execution punishments and other aggravated execution practices, the reasons why they were advocated, and the decision, enshrined in the Murder Act of 1752, to make two post-execution punishments, dissection and gibbeting, an integral part of sentences for murder. It traces the origins of the Act, and then explores the ways in which Act was actually put into practice. After identifying the dominance of penal dissection throughout the period, it looks at the abandonment of burning at the stake in the 1790s, the rapid decline of hanging in chains just after 1800, and the final abandonment of both dissection and gibbeting in 1832 and 1834. It concludes that the Act, by creating differentiation in levels of penalty, played an important role within the broader capital punishment system well into the nineteenth century. While eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century historians have extensively studied the 'Bloody Code' and the resulting interactions around the 'Hanging Tree', they have largely ignored an important dimension of the capital punishment system - the courts extensive use of aggravated and post-execution punishments. With this book, Peter King aims to rectify this neglected historical phenomenon.

This book brings together Foucault's writings on crime and delinquency, on the one hand, and sexuality, on the other, to argue for an anti-carceral feminist Foucauldian approach to sex crimes. The author expands on Foucault's writings through intersectional explorations of the critical race, decolonial, critical disability, queer and critical trans studies literatures on the prison that have emerged since the publication of Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality. Drawing on Foucault's insights from his genealogical period, the book argues that those labeled as sex offenders will today be constructed to re-offend twice over, once in virtue of the delinquency with which they are inculcated through criminological discourses and in the criminal punishment system, and second in virtue of the manners in which their sexual offense is taken up as an identity through psychological and sexological discourses. The book includes a discussion of non-retributive responses to crime, including preventative, redistributive, restorative, and transformative justice. It concludes with two appendixes: the original 19th-century medico-legal report on Charles Jouy and its English translation by the author. Foucault, Feminism, and Sex Crimes will be of interest to feminist philosophers, Continental philosophers, Women's and Gender Studies scholars, social and political theorists, as well as social scientists and social justice activists.

VOLUME 27, NUMBER 1 (2018) is a general issue featuring several articles examining aging, suffering and death behind the walls. This edition of the journal also features a section dedicated to "Continuing the Dialogue on Canada's Federal Penitentiary System" edited by Jarrod Shook, along with Prisoners' Struggles pieces and a book review. This book is published in English.

With a fresh set of interviews exploring cross-cultural differences and similarities, Volume Three of this book includes lessons from practitioners in a diverse array of countries including Honduras, Japan, Lithuania, the Philippines, Thailand, the Slovak Republic, South Africa, and the United States. This book series is based on the premise that comparing countries around the world and getting 'inside' information about each country's correctional system can be best derived by having people who are seasoned practitioners in each country share their views, experiences, philosophies and ideas. Since most correctional practitioners do not have the time or inclination to encapsulate their experiences into a book chapter, the insight of the practitioner can be best captured by a revealing interview with a researcher given the questions and interview guidelines associated with each chapter. Researchers selected are scholars in corrections, will possibly have conducted original research on the topic, and will have access to the corrections officials in his or her country. Additionally, the researcher exhibits a deep understanding and knowledge of his or her country's correctional system, and questions will be derived specifically from the laws and conditions present. Any current crises or solutions will be able to have focused questions crafted by each researcher, while still having each interviewer stay within the topic areas that the general questions probe. Each researcher explains any esoteric or unusual terminology used by the corrections official, and defines any current issues necessary for the reader's knowledge. While there are many books written on corrections management, ethics, and practices, there is great value in approaching international corrections practices and policies from this unique vantage point and as a result this book will be of interest to academics, researchers, practitioners and both undergraduate and postgraduate students with an interest in corrections and comparative criminal justice studies.

The age-old debate about what constitutes just punishment has become deadlocked. Retributivists continue to privilege desert over all else, and consequentialists continue to privilege punishment's expected positive consequences, such as deterrence or rehabilitation, over all else. In this important intervention into the debate, Leo Zaibert argues that despite some obvious differences, these traditional positions are structurally very similar, and that the deadlock between them stems from the fact they both oversimplify the problem of punishment. Proponents of these positions pay insufficient attention to the conflicts of values that punishment, even when justified, generates. Mobilizing recent developments in moral philosophy, Zaibert offers a properly pluralistic justification of punishment that is necessarily more complex than its traditional counterparts. An understanding of this complexity should promote a more cautious approach to inflicting punishment on individual wrongdoers and to developing punitive policies and institutions.

"Corrections: Exploring Crime, Punishment, and Justice in America "provides a thorough introduction to the topic of corrections in America. In addition to providing complete coverage of the history and structure of corrections, it offers a balanced account of the issues facing the field so that readers can arrive at informed opinions regarding the process of corrections in America. The third edition introduces new content and fully updated information on America s correctional system in a lively, colorful, readable textbook

Increased emphasis on evidence-based decisionmaking in correctionsNew author team, new title, and more engaging and reader-friendly contentHighly visual full-color interior at a very affordable price pointA completely new chapter brings together all aspects of correctional administration"

This special issue of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, titled "Dialogue on Canada's Federal Penitentiary System and the Need for Change", features dozens of contributions written by criminalized men and women currently incarcerated in Correctional Service Canada (CSC) institutions. The writings document the counterproductive changes to federal imprisonment made by the previous federal government. These incarcerated writers seek to contribute to the reflections of Justice Canada as it conducts a review of the penal system and to the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights as it engages in a study about the treatment of prisoners in CSC penitentiaries. Individual prisoners and Inmate Committees from CSC institutions in the Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario, Prairie and Pacific regions who participated in this dialogue collectively express hope that the Government of Canada will move away from the punitive laws, policies, and practices. To this end, the issue includes several recommendations to be enacted in the short-term to improve the lives of those who are imprisoned and who work in federal penitentiaries while also benefitting Canadian society by contributing to public safety.

The death penalty landscape has changed considerably since the first edition of this book was published in 1998. For example, five states that had the death penalty in 1998 - Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York - no longer impose the punishment. Some of the changes set out in this second edition involve discussions of all of the significant cases decided by the United States Supreme Court after 1998, including Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005); Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002); Schriro v. Smith, 126 S.Ct. 7 (2005); Harbison v. Bell, 129 S.Ct. 1481 (2009); Holmes v. South Carolina, 126 S.Ct. 1727 (2006); Kansas v. Marsh, 126 S.Ct. 2516 (2006); Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002); Sattazahn v. Pennsylvania, 537 U.S. 101 (2003). This new edition includes 13 new chapters. Areas covered by some of the new chapters include Capital felon's defense team; Habeas corpus, coram nobis and section 1983 proceedings; the Innocence protection act and post-conviction DNA testing; Challenging the death sentence under racial justice acts; Inhabited American territories and capital punishment; and the Costs of capital punishment.

Drawing on autobiographical writings, oral histories, interrogation protocols, and cell spy reports, If the Walls Could Speak focuses on the lives of women in prison in postwar communist Poland. Some were jailed for their alleged collaboration with the Nazis during the war, some for postwar activities in various civil as well as quasi-military groups, still others for allegedly dubious activities on the basis of their relationships with those already imprisoned. In some cases, there was some evidence of their anti-state activities; in many others, the accusations were absurd and based on cumbersome definitions of "anti-state." Anna Muller shows how these women struggled to resist identifying themselves as "prisoners" and regain their voices through a dialogue between the "self," a hostile prison world, and the world outside, which, as time passed, became increasingly menacing. The prison system in postwar Poland functioned as a tool to subjugate society and silence or destroy enemies-anti-communists, but also committed communists. Arrests, trials, and prison sentences directly and indirectly affected tens of thousands of people. Imprisonment stigmatized both prisoners and their families, inspiring fear and insecurity. Out of fear, worry for their loved ones, or a need to act, women prisoners took on different roles and personalities to protect themselves and create a semblance of normality, despite abuses and prison confinement. They used words to (re)create themselves during an interrogation; they used their senses to orient themselves in the spatial organization of the prison and to create a feeling of security; they used their physicality as a confirmation of their gender identity and a means of exerting pressure on the authorities; and they attempted to build a communal cultural, social, religious, and educational life by drawing on patterns they had acquired in their lives outside of prison. Following the trajectory of women's life stories-from the moment of interrogation, through the attempt to create themselves in a cell, to the post-prison reordering of their old lives-this book reveals how the prison cell in postwar Poland became a laboratory of human heterogeneity, of reconstruction, and reinvention of the self, and how life in a Stalinist prison adds to our understanding of coercion and resistance under totalitarian regimes.

Mass incarceration is one of the greatest social problems facing the United States today. America incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other country and is one of only two countries that requires arrested individuals to pay bail to be released from jail while awaiting trial. After arrest, the bail decision is the single most important cause of mass incarceration, yet this decision is often neglected since it is made in less than two minutes. Shima Baradaran Baughman draws on constitutional rights and new empirical research to show how we can reform bail in America. Tracing the history of bail, she demonstrates how it has become an oppressive tool of the courts that disadvantages minority and poor defendants and shows how we can reform bail to alleviate mass incarceration. By implementing these reforms, she argues, we can restore constitutional rights and release more defendants, while lowering crime rates.

Contributors explore how educating oneself behind bars, particularly through peer and independent learning, has liberatory and transformative potential.

Restorative Justice: Critical Issues brings together key international writings that trace the development of restorative justice from its diverse beginnings to current global policies and practices.The collection is constructed around the following themes:the theoretical origins of restorative justice; the key principles and substantive practices associated with restorative justice; controversial issues and debates; and future directions and possibilities. A substantial editorial introduction will provide readers with an authorative guide to the critical issues facing restorative justice at the beginning of the 21st century.

In the final decades of the 20th century, a confluence of factors precipitated a policy change in the criminal justice arena that led to unprecedented growth. This growth translated into the criminalization, sentencing and incarceration of tens of thousands of marginalized people in the United States. These factors are considered in Behind American Prison Policy and Population Growth: An Inside Account. Tales are told of the increased prison population that necessitated a continuous unfolding of prison construction projects, rehabbing abandoned state hospitals and private prisons, all with the aim of more and more secure accommodations. During this time, the author was a participant/observer at all correctional security levels, treatment and medical facilities and personnel training in this system. His roles over the years included increased responsibility and regular direct contact with incarcerated individuals in on-the-line or line supervisor positions. The narrative is enhanced by the author's background as social science scholar. This is a unique perspective, documenting a historic upturn in long-term detention addressing crime and disorder. These overarching realities produced struggle across all participants, including clients, staff, consultants and visitors. Their stories of being swept up in the constant demand for increasing capacity offer compelling background to the consequences of visceral responses guiding criminal justice.

An eye-opening look at how incarcerated people, health professionals, and others behind and beyond bars came together to problem-solve incarceration. Raising the Living Dead is a history of Puerto Rico's carceral rehabilitation system that brings to life the interactions of incarcerated people, their wider social networks, and health care professionals. Alberto Ortiz Diaz describes the ways that multiple communities of care came together both inside and outside of prisons to imagine and enact solution-oriented cultures of rehabilitation from the 1930s to the 1960s. Scientific and humanistic approaches to well-being were deliberately fused to raise the "living dead," an expression that reemerged in the modern Caribbean to refer to prisoners. These reform groups sought to raise incarcerated people physically, mentally, socially, spiritually, and civically. The book is based on deep, original archival research into the Oso Blanco (White Bear) penitentiary in Puerto Rico, yet it situates its study within Puerto Rico's broader carceral archipelago and other Caribbean prisons. The agents of this history include not only physical health professionals, but also psychologists and psychiatrists, social workers, spiritual and religious practitioners, and, of course, the prisoners and their families. By following all these groups and emphasizing the interpersonal exercise of power, Ortiz Diaz tells a story that goes beyond debates about structural and social control. The book addresses key issues in the history of prisons and the histories of medicine and belief, including how prisoners' different racial, class, and cultural identities shaped their incarceration and how professionals living in a colonial society dealt with the challenge of rehabilitating prisoners for citizenship. Raising the Living Dead is not just about convicts, their immediate interlocutors, and their contexts, however, but about how together these open a window into the history of social uplift projects within the (neo)colonial societies of the Caribbean. There is no book like this in Caribbean historiography; few examine these themes in the larger literature on the history of prisons.