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 explores the origins of the so-called 'punitive turn' in penal policy across Western nations over the past two decades. It demonstrates how the context of neoliberalism has informed penal policy-making and argues that it is ultimately neoliberalism which has led to the recent intensification of punishment.

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.

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.

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.

This handbook provides a unique overview of rehabilitation as practiced internationally in criminal justice. Through the contributions of a diverse group that includes, among others, academics (some of whom are former practitioners), research students, a judge, and a probation chief, it reflects common features of criminal justice in different countries and documents their diversity and celebrates their vitality. In recent times the idea of 'law and order' has been expropriated by populist, authoritarian and doctrinaire regimes, almost always and nearly everywhere in the service of arbitrary and unjust rule. By and large this handbook does not include such regimes. But 'law' itself also has the capacity to constrain rulers, and 'order' in the form of social peace is a universally approved civic asset. In part, the book provides a counter-narrative demonstrating that although criminal justice dispositions such as probation, prisons, and parole can be represented as a 'via dolorosa', rehabilitation as illustrated in these pages can become a journey that leads by degrees towards the possibility of a better life. The handbook will be of interest to students, academics, practitioners, managers, policy makers and all those who wish to gain insight into the why and the how of rehabilitation in criminal justice systems across the world.

Prisons and the multiple ways that Latino/as have developed to combat the pervasive inhumane acts visited on them are the core of this anthology. Its combination of scholarly presentations, interviews, poetry, visual arts, and narratives of the inmates' lived experiences situates the realities of prison and its aftermath in the discussion about the ideals of individual freedom and rights. The authors highlight the attempts to normalize the systematic dehumanization of incarcerated Latino/as by "walling off" and sanitizing the urgent problems their very presence inevitably poses. This book argues for the societal responsibility to uphold the dignity of all peoples, irrespective of their histories and status in their respective societies.

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.

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.

Considering the question of how levels of security allow state power to be increased to the point at which it infringes essential civil liberties, this book explores the creeping power of the executive and the unfeasibility of widespread use of the Human Rights Act as a bulwark against the oppressive use of state power.

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.

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.

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.

n Many people across the world know Antonio Negri as an internationally renowned political thinker whose book, Empire, co-authored with Michael Hardt, is an international bestseller.

Much less well known is the fact that, up until 1979, Negri was a university professor teaching in Paris and Padova. On April 7th, 1979 he was arrested, charged with the murder of Italian politician Aldo Moro, accused of 17 other murders, of being the head of the Red Brigades and of fomenting insurrection against the state. He has since been absolved of all these accusations, but thanks to the emergency laws in Italy at the time, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Then, in July 1983, he was elected as a member of parliament, which meant that he was released from prison after four and a half years of preventive detention. After months of debate, the Lower House decided to strip him of his parliamentary immunity o by 300 votes in favour and 293 against. At that point he left Italy for exile in France where he remained until 1997 and continued to maintain his innocence of all the crimes of which he was accused.

This book is Negri's diary in which he tells of his imprisonment, trial, the elections, and his escape to and exile in France. Both personal and political, it recounts a little known aspect of Negri's life and will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the work of this enormously influential political thinker.

This book explores the identity of Texas as a state with a large and severe penal system. It does so by assessing the narratives at work in Texas museums and tourist sites associated with prisons and punishment. In such cultural institutions, complex narratives are presented, which show celebratory stories of Texan toughness in the penal sphere, as well as poignant stories about the witnessing of executions, comical stories that normalize the harsher aspects of Texan punishment, and presentations about prison officers who have lost their lives in the war on crime. In analysing these representations, the book shows that Texan history plays an important role in the production of Texan self-identity, and that to understand the Texan commitment to harsh punishment we must be prepared to focus on Texan myths and memories. Prisons and Punishment in Texas draws on diverse interdisciplinary work, including criminology, cultural studies about Southern values, as well as research on cultural memory and dark tourism. Museums are shown to be under-researched sites of criminological significance, which offer rich evidence through which penal imaginaries and the cultural role of punishment can be explored. The book will be of great interest to criminologists as well as scholars of sociology, cultural studies, museum studies and politics.

Limited critical evaluation on the societal effect of rising incarceration rates and construction of new facilities has been available. Crime is not at an alltime high in America or uniquely an American problem, yet no other country relies on incarceration as much as the United States. In this book, knowledgeable professionals show how current policy can create more violence instead of reducing it. The consensus of 26 contributors, disciplines including correctional administrators, physicians, criminologists, lawyers, and volunteers, is that mass incarceration propagates the violent subculture of prison on the streets. Editor John P. May, a practicing physician and leading expert in correctional health care, suggests that perhaps the best service people can do for some caught in the criminal justice system is to get them out as soon as possible, and the best service for society is to incarcerate fewer. Building Violence urges readers to rethink the incarceration policy, especially as it intersects with race, social class, gender, morality, technology, the media, profiteering, and legislated messages of prejudice, fear, and violence. This crisply written book is ideal for interdisciplinary study and reference in the fields of criminal justice, criminology, corrections, sociology, mental health, human rights, education, law, and administration.

Today, two-thirds of the world's nations have abolished the death penalty, either officially or in practice, due mainly to the campaign to end state executions led by Western European nations. Will this success spread to Asia, where over 95 percent of executions now occur? Do Asian values and traditions support capital punishment, or will development and democratization end executions in the world's most rapidly developing region?
David T. Johnson, an expert on law and society in Asia, and Franklin E. Zimring, a senior authority on capital punishment, combine detailed case studies of the death penalty in Asian nations with cross-national comparisons to identify the critical factors for the future of Asian death penalty policy. The clear trend is away from reliance on state execution and many nations with death penalties in their criminal codes rarely use it. Only the hard-line authoritarian regimes of China, Vietnam, Singapore, and North Korea execute with any frequency, and when authoritarian states experience democratic reforms, the rate of executions drops sharply, as in Taiwan and South Korea. Debunking the myth of "Asian values," Johnson and Zimring demonstrate that politics, rather than culture or tradition, is the major obstacle to the end of executions. Carefully researched and full of valuable lessons, The Next Frontier is the authoritative resource on the death penalty in Asia for scholars, policymakers, and advocates around the world.

Rectifying the fact that little criminological attention has been paid to the notion that the security of flows increasingly embodies concerns at the heart of contemporary policing practices, this book makes a significant contribution to knowledge about the policing and security governance of flows. The book focuses on how the growing centrality of flows affects both contemporary 'risks' and the policing organisations in charge of managing them. The contributors analyse flows such as event security; border controls and migration; the movement of animal parts; security-related intelligence; and organisational flows. The emerging criminology of these, as well as flows of money, information and numerous commodities, from pharmaceuticals to minerals or malicious software, is leading to critical advances in the understanding of the changing harm landscapes and the practices that have developed to manage them. Taken as a whole, the book opens up the conversation, and encourages the invention of new conceptual, theoretical and methodological tools to help criminology tackle and better understand the mobile world in which we live. This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Crime.

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.

Since 1996, death sentences in America have declined by more than 60 percent, reversing a generation-long trend toward greater acceptance of capital punishment. In theory, most Americans continue to support the death penalty. But it is no longer seen as a theoretical matter. Prosecutors, judges, and juries across the country have moved in large numbers to give much greater credence to the possibility of mistakes - mistakes that in this arena are potentially fatal. The discovery of innocence, documented in this book through painstaking analyses of media coverage and with newly developed methods, has led to historic shifts in public opinion and to a sharp decline in use of the death penalty by juries across the country. A social cascade, starting with legal clinics and innocence projects, has snowballed into a national phenomenon that may spell the end of the death penalty in America.

Despite the fact that 160,000 people are locked up in our federal correctional facilities, practical information about the federal prison system remains difficult to locate. While some information may be found scattered on the Internet, in directions given at court, or through shared personal experience, there is no single source available that is a collection of all available information. The U.S. Federal Prison System is the first comprehensive reference work that includes official prison policies, first-person accounts from prisoners, and information about each federal facility.

The book is organized into two parts. Part I is an introduction to federal prison facilities, including key statistics and "views from inside" provided by inmates of federal prisons. Part II is a look at the Federal Bureau of Prisons policies on various matters such as discipline, education, visits, and religious practices. The book also contains valuable Appendices that give a thorough listing and description of all Federal prison facilities, as well as the services and charities available to prisoners and their families. With the publication of this book there will finally be an up-to-date, comprehensive reference on the U.S. federal prisons that will prove to be of lasting value to families of inmates, researchers, and the general public.

• Comprehensive and up-to-date information?with a thorough overview of both prison policies and the federal facilities themselves
• Photos of selected prisons
• Part II is consistently organized with historical background information leading up to an account of the current policies. The specific federal rules and regulations governing the policies conclude each topical discussion.
• Appendix A is the first comprehensive listing of every Federal prison in the U.S., complete with facility details and service information
• Commentary from prisoners?first-person accounts take the reader behind the walls

The expansion and intensification of coercive powers is a global phenomenon, reflecting the fragility of social order and the authority of ruling elites in the 21st century.Relationships of domination, powerlessness and resistance, still characterize the carceral experience.