"Call me what you want--corrections officer, C.O., guard, jailcop, turnkey--I helped keep people there against their will. For this, the jail rewarded me with food." When Ben Langston took a job at the State Correctional Institute at Rockview, it was because there were few other options. At his previous job--putting labels on water bottles--he did not have cups of human waste thrown in his face. He did not have to finger sweaty armpits in search of weapons. There were no threats against his life. But the jail paid better. Jail Speak is a memoir written from a guard's perspective. It's about the grind, about dehumanization, drama, punishment, and the cycles of harm perpetrated by the prison industry. It's about masculinity and conformity and emotional detachment. It's a look at the inside that you didn't want to know about, and it's for mature audiences only. Know your limits.

This is the story of Robert Rice Howard (1832-1906), the man known as Nosey Bob. It is also an important chapter in the story of the changing attitudes towards capital punishment in Australia, as the country transformed from generally enthusiastic spectators at executions into campaigners for the abolition of the death penalty. These interconnected stories are told through the men, and the one woman, who met Nosey Bob under the worst possible circumstances between his first employment by the Department of Justice in 1876 and his retirement as the executioner for New South Wales in 1904. Once a household name, Nosey Bob was the most infamous public servant in Sydney: a noseless hangman who sparked fear and fascination everywhere he went. Howard has only ever been cast as an extra in someone else's play, making frightening appearances in a felon's final scene on the gallows. Here, for the first time, he has taken the lead.

Volume 20, Number 2 is dedicated to the life and contributions of Liz Elliott, who was an active member of the JPP Editorial Board in the formative years of the Journal, and a passionate advocate for prisoners' rights, restorative and social justice. The general section includes a number of articles that highlight the socio-politics and experiences of incarceration in the United States. It also includes two short special sections - one based on the discussions arising from the June 2010 13th International Conference on Penal Abolition (ICOPA) in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and one on 'summit detention' and the mass arrests that occurred during the June 2010 G-20 protests in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

For over 100 years, at least one concentration camp has existed somewhere on Earth. First used as battlefield strategy, camps have evolved with each passing decade, in the scope of their effects and the savage practicality with which governments have employed them. Even in the twenty-first century, as we continue to reckon with the magnitude and horror of the Holocaust, history tells us we have broken our own solemn promise of "never again." In this harrowing work based on archival records and interviews during travel to four continents, Andrea Pitzer reveals for the first time the chronological and geopolitical history of concentration camps. Beginning with 1890s Cuba, she pinpoints concentration camps around the world and across decades. From the Philippines and Southern Africa in the early twentieth century to the Soviet Gulag and detention camps in China and North Korea during the Cold War, camp systems have been used as tools for civilian relocation and political repression. Often justified as a measure to protect a nation, or even the interned groups themselves, camps have instead served as brutal and dehumanizing sites that have claimed the lives of millions. Drawing from exclusive testimony, landmark historical scholarship, and stunning research, Andrea Pitzer unearths the roots of this appalling phenomenon, exploring and exposing the staggering toll of the camps: our greatest atrocities, the extraordinary survivors, and even the intimate, quiet moments that have also been part of camp life during the past century.

For over 800 years Newgate was the grimy axle around which British society slowly twisted. This is where such legendary outlaws as Robin Hood and Captain Kidd met their fates, where the rapier-wielding playwrights Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe sharpened their quills, and where flamboyant highwaymen like Claude Duval and James Maclaine made legions of women swoon. While London's theatres came and went, the gaol endured as Londons unofficial stage. From the Peasants Revolt to the Great Fire, it was at Newgate that England's greatest dramas unfolded. By piecing together the lives of forgotten figures as well as re-examining the prison's links with more famous individuals, from Dick Whittington to Charles Dickens, this thrilling history goes in search of a ghostly place, erased by time, which has inspired more poems and plays, paintings and novels, than any other structure in British history.

Volume 18(1&2) is a special double issue of the "Journal of Prisoners on Prisons." Edited by Mike Larsen and Justin Pich?, and dedicated to the memory of Louk Hulsman, the articles examine a range of topics, including how language structures relations in prison, the incarceration of veterans in the USA, life without parole sentences for both adults and juveniles, three strikes policies and legal self-representation, the psychological impact of solitary confinement, prisoners' families, and post-release adjustment. Running themes include reflections on the relationship between life and death in carceral settings, as well as critiques of policies that produce 'disposable' human beings. The issue continues with a revived Dialogues section featuring five articles discussing the scholarly merits, limitations, and ethics of prison ethnography and carceral tours. An extended Prisoners' Struggles section includes material on a variety of resources, organizations and events of interest, including reports by the MTL Trans Support Group, the UN Special Rapporteur on Education, and Julia Sudbury of Critical Resistance. The issue closes with Book Reviews of works by Deena Rhymes, Elizabeth Comack and Loic Wacquant.

Punishment is a complex human institution. It has normative, political, social, psychological, and legal dimensions, and ways of thinking about each of them change over time. For this reader on punishment, Michael Tonry, a leading authority in the field, has composed a comprehensive collection of 28 essays ranging from classic and contemporary writings on normative theories by philosophers and penal theorists to writings on restorative justice, on how people think about punishment, and on social theories about the functions punishment performs in human societies. This volume includes an accessible, non-technical introduction on the development of punishment theory, as well as an introduction and annotated bibliography for each section. The readings cover foundational traditions of punishment theory such as consequentialism, retributivism, and functionalism, new approaches like restorative, communitarian, and therapeutic justice, as well as mixed approaches that attempt to link theory and policy. It follows the evolution and development of thinking about punishment spanning from writings by classical theorists such as Kant and Hegel to recent developments in the behavioral and medical sciences for thinking about punishment. The result is a collection of empirically-informed efforts to explain what punishment does that should spark contemplation and debate about why and how punishment is carried out.

Restorative justice has made significant progress in recent years and now plays an increasingly important role in and alongside the criminal justice systems of a number of countries in different parts of the world. In many cases, however, successes and failures, strengths and weaknesses have not been evaluated sufficiently systematically and comprehensively, and it has been difficult to gain an accurate picture of its implementation and the lessons to be drawn from this. Restorative Justice in Practice addresses this need, analyzing the results of the implementation of three restorative justice schemes in England and Wales in the largest and most complete trial of restorative justice with adult offenders worldwide. It aims to bring out the practicalities of setting up and running restorative justice schemes in connection with criminal justice, the costs of doing so and the key professional and ethical issues involved. At the same time the book situates these findings within the growing international academic and policy debates about restorative justice, addressing a number of key issues for criminal justice and penology, including: how far victim expectations of justice are and can be met by restorative justice aligned with criminal justice whether 'community' is involved in restorative justice for adult offenders and how this relates to social capital how far restorative justice events relate to processes of desistance (giving up crime), promote reductions in reoffending and link to resettlement what stages of criminal justice may be most suitable for restorative justice and how this relates to victim and offender needs the usefulness of conferencing and mediation as forms of restorative justice with adults. Restorative Justice in Practice will be essential reading for both students and practitioners, and a key contribution to the restorative justice debate.

For 25 years, the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons (JPP) has been a prisoner written, academically oriented and peer reviewed, non-profit journal, based on the tradition of the penal press. It brings the knowledge produced by prison writers together with academic arguments to enlighten public discourse about the current state of carceral institutions.

This book is a thoroughly updated version of the popular first edition of The Prison Officer. It incorporates the significant increase in knowledge about the work of prison officer since the first edition was published and provides a live account of prison work and ways of understanding the role of the prison officer in the late-modern context.

Few detailed narratives exist of prison work and the sort of role the prison officer occupies; this book addresses the gap. Using a range of quantitative and qualitative data and drawing on available theoretical literature it explores the role of the prison officer in an appreciative way, taking into account the little-discussed issues of power and discretion.

It provides a single accessible guide to the world and work of the prison officer, looking in detail at the present role of the prison officer in Britain and demonstrating the centrality of staff-prisoner relationships to every operation carried out by officers.

This book will be of relevance to anyone with an interest in the work of a prison officer; students and others looking for an introductory survey of the literature and essential reading for any established and aspiring officers.

This new and important title explores one of the most contentious and sensitive topics in criminal justice: the release and resettlement of life-sentenced offenders. Life after Life Imprisonment provides an in-depth analysis of the post-prison experiences of 138 discretionary life-sentenced offenders, all of whom were released from prison across England and Wales during the mid-1990s. Using accessible and engaging data the book examines key legal developments within the criminal justice system for discretionary life-sentenced offenders, explores the frontline experiences of criminal justice practitioners charged with the responsibility of supervising life-sentenced offenders and analyses the 'stories' or life narratives of a group of individuals who have committed some of the most serious crimes. The book also examines the process of recall for life-sentenced prisoners and explores key factors associated with failure in the community. This work therefore contributes to a variety of different areas of theoretical concern to legal scholars and criminologists as well as to applied areas of interest to practitioners in the field. Significantly, the book offers a major insight into how societies respond to serious crimes and identifies important elements of successful reintegration for released life-sentenced offenders.

Abolitionism is not only a strategy or a set of demands, aimed at the reduction (or suppression) of custody, it is also a perspective, a philosophy, an approach which challenges conventional definitions of crime. This book examines the origin, philosophy and achievements of abolitionism and reviews the literature on penal abolitionism from the 1960s to the 1980s.
By collecting and discussing the key abolitionist arguments, the author critically analyzes the views expressed by its leading proponents; Nils Christie, Louk Hulsman, Thomas Mathiesen and Herman Bianchi, examining in particular how their views took shape, their philosophical foundations, and the social and political context of abolitionist ideas and perspectives. Policies, such as the virtual abolition of custody for young offenders in Italy, are presented and the area of informal justice is also addressed, with an overview of mediation and compensation practices, and an assessment of the degree of their effectiveness and desirability.
Through assessment of these achievements and experiments of specific abolitionist ideas, the author attempts to identify the legacy of abolitionism from a European perspective, while bringing into focus more recent contributions concerning the study of terrorism and war.

The Soviet Gulag was one of the largest, most complex, and deadliest systems of incarceration in the 20th century. What lessons can we learn from its network of labor camps and prisons and exile settlements, which stretched across vast geographic expanses, included varied institutions, and brought together inmates from all the Soviet Union's ethnicities, professions, and social classes? Drawing on a massive body of documentary evidence, Rethinking the Gulag: Identities, Sources, Legacies explores the Soviet penal system from various disciplinary perspectives. Divided into three sections, the collection first considers "identities"-the lived experiences of contingents of detainees who have rarely figured in Gulag histories to date, such as common criminals and clerics. The second section surveys "sources" to explore the ways new research methods can revolutionize our understanding of the system. The third section studies "legacies" to reveal the aftermath of the Gulag, including the folk beliefs and traditions it has inspired and the museums built to memorialize it. While all the chapters respond to one another, each section also concludes with a reaction by a leading researcher: geographer Judith Pallot, historian Lynne Viola, and cultural historian and literary scholar Alexander Etkind. Moving away from grand metaphorical or theoretical models, Rethinking the Gulag instead unearths the complexities and nuances of experience that represent a primary focus in the new wave of Gulag studies.

In 1971, Eddie Conway, Lieutenant of Security for the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party, was convicted of murdering a police officer and sentenced to life plus thirty years behind bars. Paul Coates was a community worker at the time and didn't know Eddie well -- the little he knew, he didn't much like. But Paul was dead certain that Eddie's charges were bogus. He vowed never to leave Eddie -- and in so doing, changed the course of both their lives. For over forty-three years, as he raised a family and started a business, Paul visited Eddie in prison, often taking his kids with him. He and Eddie shared their lives and worked together on dozens of legal campaigns in hopes of gaining Eddie's release. Paul's founding of the Black Classic Press in 1978 was originally a way to get books to Eddie in prison. When, in 2014, Eddie finally walked out onto the streets of Baltimore, Paul Coates was there to greet him. Today, these two men remain rock-solid comrades and friends -- each, the other's chosen brother. When Eddie and Paul met in the Baltimore Panther Party, they were in their early twenties. They are now into their seventies. This book is a record of their lives and their relationship, told in their own voices. Paul and Eddie talk about their individual stories, their work, their politics, and their immeasurable bond.

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.

Edited by Bell Gale Chevigny, this issue of the JPP features non-fiction pieces by winners of the annual PEN American Center's Prison Writing Contest that address issues of punishment and creative resistance. Many contributors describe punishment that extends beyond the loss of liberty, and the issue features articles on three strikes policies, death row, the AIDS epidemic, murderous violence, suicide, incarceration of prisoners with mental health needs, as well as the maddening absurdity of contraband laws. Others describe creative resistance directly, focusing on proposed non-prisoner involvement in promoting critical thinking among prisoners, teaching English as a Second Language, the community model of prison, and Michigan's Prison Creative Arts Project (described both by its founder and a female prisoner transformed by PCAP). The issue also features articles from three documentary film-makers who describe their efforts to break through prison walls. In the Prisoners' Struggles section, two former prisoners, an artist and a writer, detail their activism in fighting the Rockefeller drug laws and felon disenfranchisement in Rhode Island. A prisoner and two prison justice activists describe an online magazine written by activists on both sides of the wall. Another advocate lays out the large objectives and achievements of the Coalition for Women Prisoners in New York. The writers welcome this opportunity to reach an international audience and the PEN Prison Writing Program members hope that these pieces will stimulate an exchange with people elsewhere who participate in - or are interested in developing - similar writing programs.

Volume 17, Number 1 of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons focuses on the theme of education inside American and Canadian prisons. Edited by Justin Pich?, the articles focus on a number of topics including the barriers to education faced by prisoners, the obstacles faced by those who wish to develop scholarly knowledge on imprisonment and the vital role prison writing plays in knowing inside in the contemporary context.? The "Response "to the issue by Jon Marc Taylor, who earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees while behind bars through correspondence courses, encourages prisoners and fellow travellers to continue to "fight the good fight" through prison writing. The "Prisoners' Struggles" and "Book Reviews" sections include resources for prisoners, along with contributions from individuals and groups working towards expanding knowledge inside including Seth Ferranti, Eugene Dey, books2prisoners Ottawa and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Education.

This book highlights the myriad factors that can impact the children of incarcerated parents. It is no secret that the United States continues to be the leading nation for the incarceration of men and women, and this this large prison population includes approximately 120,000 incarcerated mothers and 1.1 million incarcerated fathers. Incarceration of a parent is recognized as an 'adverse childhood experience', an acute or chronic situation that for most people is stressful and potentially traumatic. Children of incarcerated parents may experience other adverse childhood experiences such as poverty, homelessness, parental substance abuse and other mental health problems, and family violence. The chapters in this book document some of the challenges as well as some promising ways that can help parents and families begin to meet these challenges. It is our hope that the compendium of chapters presented in this book will be a resource for practitioners, policy makers, educators, researchers, and advocates in their work to ensure that the children of incarcerated parents, their caregivers, and their mothers and fathers, are provided the support they need to address the challenges they face during and after parental incarceration. This book was originally published as a special issue of Smith College Studies in Social Work.

Volume 17, Number 2 of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons is a special collection based on the theme "Abolition and the Universal Carceral." Edited by Mike Larsen, many of the included articles were presented in London, England in late July 2008 at the Colloquium on the Universal Carceral - part of the 12th International Conference on Penal Abolition (ICOPA XII). The Colloquium focused on the "proliferation of new forms of carceral control" (Gaucher, 2007) and on those aspects of the carceral experience that seem to remain constant across geography and time. Unified by a "politics of hope and a] rejection of the position that imprisonment need be viewed as a normal and inevitable part of our future" (Larsen, 2008), the articles included in JPP 17(2) cover a variety of topics and represent a range of voices, from around the world. Major themes include critical reflections on health and mental heath 'services' in prisons, immigration and security certificate detention, and political imprisonment. The issue concludes with a "Response "piece on "The Abolitionist Stance" by Thomas Mathiesen, which offers both a call to action and a theoretical grounding for a renewed spirit of penal abolitionism.

Now in its Sixth Edition, this book remains the most comprehensive and authoritative on the penal system, providing students with an incisive, critical account of the punitive, managerial and humanitarian approaches to criminal justice. Fully updated to cover the most recent changes in the Criminal Justice System, the new edition: Outlines contemporary policy debates on sentencing, staffing, youth custody and overcrowding. Explores growing inequalities in the criminal justice system including issues of race, religion, gender and sexuality, with new content on faith, and transgender prisoners. Considers the impact of privatisation on the probation service. Discusses the most recent debates around the parole process, including high-profile cases and attempts at reform. The book is supported by online resources for lecturers and students, including chapter PowerPoints, sample syllabus, summaries of key legislative acts, bills and official reports, a list of recommended further reading for each chapter, and links to important Penal Agencies and Organisations, Law Reform Organisations, and other useful academic sites. Essential reading for students of criminal justice and criminology, studying penology, punishments and the penal system.

Between 1850 and 1950, at least 115 women were lynched by mobs in the United States. The majority of these women were black. This book examines the phenomenon of the lynching of women, which was a much more rare experience than the lynching of men. Over the same hundred-year period covered in this text, more than 1,000 white men were lynched, while thousands of black men were murdered by mobs. Of particular importance in this examination is the role of race in lynching, particularly the increase in the number of black lynchings as the century progressed. Details are provided--when available--for the lynchings in an attempt to shine a light on this form of mob violence.

The recent Boumediene v. Bush decision, which tossed aside the dysfunctional military court system envisioned by the Bush administration and upheld the right of habeas corpus for detainees, promises to throw national security law into chaos, and will also probably lead to the closing of Guantanamo. In this timely and much-needed book, Glenn Sulmasy, one of America's leading experts on national security law, opens with a much-needed history of America's long and complicated experience with such courts since the early days of the Republic. After tracing their evolution in the contemporary era, Sulmasy argues for a more a sensible approach to the global war on terror's unique set of prisoners. He proposes a reasonable "third way" solution that avoids even more extreme measures, on the one hand, and a complete shuttering of the court system, on the other. Instead, he advocates creating a separate standing judicial system, overseen by civilian judges, that allows for habeas corpus appeals and which focuses exclusively on existing war-on-terror cases as well as the inevitable cases to come. For all those who want to explore the crucial legal issues behind the headlines about Gitmo and the rights of detainees, The National Security Court System offers a clear-headed assessment of where we are and where we ought to be going.