This book is a collection of essays by a unique group of authors about the political destruction of the probation service in England and Wales. All of them are probation officers turned academics, with a collective scholarly output that is both prodigious and distinguished. They address the history of probation, its underlying values and working methods, and the way it has been systematically dismantled by successive political administrations. The book offers essential reading for those interested in broadening their understanding of the probation service and its vital role in rehabilitation. In addition it makes a compelling case for the reinstatement of an evidence-based probation service as the primary criminal justice agency concerned with helping people who come before the courts to become contributing citizens. A lively and engrossing read, it is destined to be invaluable to policy makers, social science theorists and commentators, as well as scholars of criminology and the justice system, and all those who work in it.

This volume focuses on teaching Classics in carceral contexts in the US and offers an overview of the range of incarcerated adults, their circumstances, and the ways in which they are approaching and reinterpreting Greek and Roman texts. Classics and Prison Education in the US examines how different incarcerated adults - male, female, or gender non-conforming; young or old; serving long sentences or about to be released - are reading and discussing Classical texts, and what this may entail. Moreover, it provides a sophisticated examination of the best pedagogical practices for teaching in a prison setting and for preparing returning citizens, as well as a considered discussion of the possible dangers of engaging in such teaching - whether because of the potential complicity with the carceral state, or because of the historical position of Classics in elitist education. This edited volume will be a resource for those interested in Classics pedagogy, as well as the role that Classics can play in different areas of society and education, and the impact it can have.

This book charts the historical development of 'forensic objectivity' through an analysis of the ways in which objective knowledge of crimes, crime scenes, crime materials and criminals is achieved. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, with authors drawn from law, history, sociology and science and technology studies, this work shows how forensic objectivity is constructed through detailed crime history case studies, mainly in relation to murder, set in Scotland, England, Germany, Sweden, USA and Ireland. Starting from the mid-nineteenth century and continuing to the present day, the book argues that a number of developments were crucial. These include: the beginning of crime photography, the use of diagrams and models specially constructed for the courtroom so jurors could be 'virtual witnesses', probabilistic models of certainty, the professionalization of medical and scientific expert witnesses and their networks, ways of measuring, recording and developing criminal records and the role of the media, particularly newspapers in reporting on crime, criminals and legal proceedings and their part in the shaping of public opinion on crime. This essential title demonstrates the ways in which forensic objectivity has become a central concept in relation to criminal justice over a period spanning 170 years.

Prisons are everywhere. Yet they are not everywhere alike. How can we explain the differences in cross-national uses of incarceration? The Politics of Punishment explores this question by undertaking a comparative sociological analysis of penal politics and imprisonment in Ireland and Scotland. Using archives and oral history, this book shows that divergences in the uses of imprisonment result from the distinctive features of a nation's political culture: the different political ideas, cultural values and social anxieties that shape prison policymaking. Political culture thus connects large-scale social phenomena to actual carceral outcomes, illuminating the forces that support and perpetuate cross-national penal differences. The work therefore offers a new framework for the comparative study of penality. This is also an important work of sociology and history. By closely tracking how and why the politics of punishment evolved and adapted over time, we also yield rich and compelling new accounts of both Irish and Scottish penal cultures from 1970 to the 1990s. The Politics of Punishment will be essential reading for students and academics interested in the sociology of punishment, comparative penology, criminology, penal policymaking, law and social history.

This interdisciplinary volume presents a nuanced critique of the prison experience in diverse detention facilities across Africa. The book stresses the contingent, porous nature of African prisons, across both time and space. It draws on original long-term ethnographic research undertaken in both Francophone and Anglophone settings, which are grouped in four parts. The first part examines how the prison has imprinted itself on wider political and social imaginaries and, in turn, how structures of imprisonment carry the imprint of political action of various times. The second part stresses how particular forms of ordering emerge in African prisons. It is held that while these often involve coercion and neglect, they are better understood as the product of on-going negotiations and the search for meaning and value on the part of a multitude of actors. The third part is concerned with how prison life percolates beyond its physical perimeters into its urban and rural surroundings, and vice versa. It deals with the popular and contested nature of what prisons are about and what they do, especially in regard to bringing about moral subjects. The fourth and final part of the book examines how efforts of reforming and resisting the prison take shape at the intersection of globally circulating models of good governance and levels of self-organisation by prisoners. The book will be an essential reference for students, academics and policy-makers in Law, Criminology, Sociology and Politics.

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.

Norms and Illegality: Intimate Ethnographies and Politics explores liminal and illegal practices in relation to political control and cultural normativity. The contributors draw on years of ethnographic experiences in Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Italy, Madagascar, Mali, Philippines, and Thailand to study the contradictions of what is legal and illegal. They explore the production of illegal subjects by the state, the creation of illegal and normative values by liminal and illegal actors, and the mutual entanglements of legal and illegal in the public domains of markets and trade networks. This volume shows that criminalization policies are not necessarily oriented toward erasing crime. Instead, the contributors maintain that opaque spaces ensure the efficacy of control and outwardly conform to the rhetoric and ethics of global neoliberalism. Within these contexts, the contributors shed light on moral economies and frames of value entailed in systems of representation that have been set up by individuals who are deemed illegal, liminal, or deviant in their confrontations with the state.

It isn't enough to celebrate the death penalty's demise. We must learn from it. When Henry McCollum was condemned to death in 1984 in rural North Carolina, death sentences were commonplace. In 2014, DNA tests set McCollum free. By then, death sentences were as rare as lethal lightning strikes. To most observers this national trend came as a surprise. What changed? Brandon Garrett hand-collected and analyzed national data, looking for causes and implications of this turnaround. End of Its Rope explains what he found, and why the story of who killed the death penalty, and how, can be the catalyst for criminal justice reform. No single factor put the death penalty on the road to extinction, Garrett concludes. Death row exonerations fostered rising awareness of errors in death penalty cases, at the same time that a decline in murder rates eroded law-and-order arguments. Defense lawyers radically improved how they litigate death cases when given adequate resources. More troubling, many states replaced the death penalty with what amounts to a virtual death sentence-life without possibility of parole. Today, the death penalty hangs on in a few scattered counties where prosecutors cling to entrenched habits and patterns of racial bias. The failed death penalty experiment teaches us how inept lawyering, overzealous prosecution, race discrimination, wrongful convictions, and excessive punishments undermine the pursuit of justice. Garrett makes a strong closing case for what a future criminal justice system might look like if these injustices were remedied.

Bringing together an international group of authors, this book addresses the important issues lying at the intersection between urban space, on the one hand, and incivilities and urban harm, on the other. Progressive urbanisation not only influences people's living conditions, their well-being and health but may also generate social conflict and consequently fuel disorder and crime. Rooted in interdisciplinary scholarship, this book considers a range of urban issues, focussing specifically on their sensory, emotive, power and structural dimensions. The visual, audio and olfactory components that offend or harm are inspected, including how urban social control agencies respond to violations of imposed sensory regimes. Emotive dimensions examined include the consideration of people emotions and sensibilities in the perception of incivilities, in the shaping of social control to deviant phenomena, and their role in activating or suppressing people's resistance towards otherwise harmful everyday practices. Power and structural dimensions examine the agents who decide and define what anti-social and harmful is and the wider socio-economic and cultural setting in which urbanites and social control agents operate. Connecting with sensory and affective turns in other disciplines, the book offers an original, distinctive and nuanced approach to understanding the harms, disorder and social control in the city. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to those engaged with criminology, sociology, human geography, psychology, urban studies, socio-legal studies and all those interested in the relationship between urban space and urban harm.

Crime and Punishment in the Future Internet is an examination of the development and impact of digital frontier technologies (DFTs) such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of things, autonomous mobile robots, and blockchain on offending, crime control, the criminal justice system, and the discipline of criminology. It poses criminological, legal, ethical, and policy questions linked to such development and anticipates the impact of DFTs on crime and offending. It forestalls their wide-ranging consequences, including the proliferation of new types of vulnerability, policing and other mechanisms of social control, and the threat of pervasive and intrusive surveillance. Two key concerns lie at the heart of this volume. First, the book investigates the origins and development of emerging DFTs and their interactions with criminal behaviour, crime prevention, victimisation, and crime control. It also investigates the future advances and likely impact of such processes on a range of social actors: citizens, non-citizens, offenders, victims of crime, judiciary and law enforcement, media, NGOs. This book does not adopt technological determinism that suggests technology alone drives social development. Yet, while it is impossible to know where the emerging technologies are taking us, there is no doubt that DFTs will shape the way we engage with and experience criminal behaviour in the twenty-first century. As such, this book starts the conversation about a range of essential topics that this expansion brings to social sciences, and begins to decipher challenges we will be facing in the future. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to those engaged with criminology, sociology, politics, policymaking, and all those interested in the impact of DFTs on the criminal justice system.

Karen Duke explores the conflicts and contradictory pressures in the development of prison drug policies in Britain from 1980 to the present. Based on interviews with key policy actors and documentary analysis, it explores how policy networks around drug issues in prisons have attempted to contain the contradictions between treatment and punishment and how their activities have been shaped by the ways in which the drugs issue is framed, the roles of research, evidence and knowledge, and the impact of wider social, political, policy and institutional contexts.

Discussion of the histories, meanings, and assumptions of restorative justice have enriched the development of its theory, research, and practices. While some of this work has addressed the role of communication, the treatment of communication within restorative justice remains rather under-developed. Communication plays a central role in processes of restoration and justice and a constitutive role in making restorative justice what it is. In Creating Restorative Justice: A Communication Perspective of Justice, Restoration, and Community, Gregory D. Paul and Ian M. Borton argue that by centering communication in restorative justice as it occurs in various contexts (from families, to schools, to communities), we can simultaneously deepen our understanding, enrich our practice, and amplify our study of restoration and justice. From a communication perspective, restorative contexts both use and are created by the communication present. Any outcomes from restorative processes are thus the product of the communication both within and between restorative practices' participants. As the world addresses the challenges presented by injustice, inequality, and insecurity, it is incumbent we expand our understanding of restorative processes to account for the vital role of communication.

The process of judicial control over institutions is often described as growing socio-legal trend which impacts the development of modern societies. This is particularly the case for prisons and other penal institutions, as international bodies and the courts have tried to influence prison policies since the 1960s. This book addresses this dynamic situation by focusing on European monitoring as a major influence on penal and prison policies within, between and across nation states. Bringing together experts from around Europe, this book actively contributes to debates and analysis within penal and prison policy studies by shedding lights on the impacts of monitoring, and demonstrates how the study of penal and prison reform in different European countries can contribute to building a clearer and more precise picture of European legal systems. This book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of prisons, penology and punishment, as well as policymakers and professionals working for national Ministries of Justice and for prison department and national human rights institutions, as well as those working for INGOs and NGOs.

In recent times the question of private sector involvement in public affairs has become framed in altogether new terms. Across Europe, there has been a growth in various forms of public-private cooperation in building and maintaining (new) penal institutions and an increasing presence of private companies offering security services within penal institutions as well as delivering security goods such as electronic monitoring and other equipment to penal authorities. Such developments are part of a wider trend towards privatising and marketising security. Bringing together key scholars in criminology and penology from across Europe and beyond, this book maps and describes trends of privatising punishment throughout Europe, paying attention both to prisons and community sanctions. In doing so, it initiates a continent-wide dialogue among academics and key public and private actors on the future of privatisation in Europe. Debates on the privatisation of punishment in Europe are still underdeveloped and this book plays a pioneering and agenda-setting role in developing this dialogue.

This book examines what it means to be a family within the restrictive, disruptive, and often distressing context of imprisonment. Drawing on original qualitative data, it looks beyond traditional models of the family to examine the question of which relationships matter to individuals affected by imprisonment, and demonstrates how family relationships are actively constructed and maintained through family "practices" and "displays" such as visits, shared experiences and continuing family memories and traditions. It sheds new light not only on the true extent of who is impacted by the imposition of a prison sentence, but also the barriers to family life that these individuals encounter throughout its duration. This book also contributes to our understanding of wider issues such as poverty and social marginalisation, the role of family relationships on desistance from crime, and legitimacy. It argues that the act of supporting an individual in custody can bring families into regular contact with the criminal justice system in ways that can be both distressing and problematic, and therefore contends that the prison system should minimise the damage caused by imprisonment not only to family relationships, but also to the perceived legitimacy of the criminal justice system. Generating new conceptual insights into the harms of imprisonment and how perceptions of legitimacy and fairness are shaped by the criminal justice system, this book will be of much interest to students of criminology and sociology engaged in studies of criminal justice, prisons, gender, social work, and punishment. It will also be of interest to policy makers, penal-reformers, and activists.

It has long been acknowledged that the death penalty in the United States of America has been shaped by the country's history of slavery and racial violence, but this book considers the lesser-explored relationship between the two practices' respective abolitionist movements. The book explains how the historical and conceptual links between slavery and capital punishment have both helped and hindered efforts to end capital punishment. The comparative study also sheds light on the nature of such efforts, and offers lessons for how death penalty abolitionism should proceed in future. Using the history of slavery and abolition, it is argued that anti-death penalty efforts should be premised on the ideologies of the radical slavery abolitionists.

Recalibrating Juvenile Detention chronicles the lessons learned from the 2007 to 2015 landmark US District Court-ordered reform of the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) in Illinois, following years of litigation by the ACLU about egregious and unconstitutional conditions of confinement. In addition to explaining the implications of the Court's actions, the book includes an analysis of a major evaluation research report by the University of Chicago Crime Lab and explains for scholars, practitioners, administrators, policymakers, and advocates how and why this particular reform of conditions achieved successful outcomes when others failed. Maintaining that the Chicago Crime Lab findings are the "gold standard" evidence-based research (EBR) in pretrial detention, Roush holds that the observed "firsts" for juvenile detention may perhaps have the power to transform all custody practices. He shows that the findings validate a new model of institutional reform based on cognitive-behavioral programming (CBT), reveal statistically significant reductions in in-custody violence and recidivism, and demonstrate that at least one variation of short-term secure custody can influence positively certain life outcomes for Chicago's highest-risk and most disadvantaged youth. With the Quarterly Journal of Economics imprimatur and endorsement by the President's Council of Economic Advisors, the book is a reverse engineering of these once-in-a-lifetime events (recidivism reduction and EBR in pretrial detention) that explains the important and transformative implications for the future of juvenile justice practice. The book is essential reading for graduate students in juvenile justice, criminology, and corrections, as well as practitioners, judges, and policymakers.

Sentencing Policies and Practices in the 21st Century focuses on the evolution and consequences of sentencing policies and practices, with sentencing broadly defined to include plea bargaining, judicial and juror decision making, and alternatives to incarceration, including participation in problem-solving courts. This collection of essays and reports of original research explores how sentencing policies and practices, both in the United States and internationally, have evolved, explores important issues raised by guideline and non-guideline sentencing, and provides an overview of recent research on plea bargaining in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Other topics include the role of criminal history in sentencing, the past and future of capital punishment, strategies for reducing mass incarceration, problem-solving courts, and restorative justice practices. Each chapter summarizes what is known, identifies the gaps in the research, and discusses the theoretical, empirical, and policy implications of the research findings. The volume is grounded in current knowledge about the specific topics, but also presents new material that reflects the thinking of the leading minds in the field and that outlines a research agenda for the future. This is Volume 4 of the American Society of Criminology's Division on Corrections and Sentencing handbook series. Previous volumes focused on risk assessment, disparities in punishment, and the consequences of punishment decisions. The handbooks provide a comprehensive overview of these topics for scholars, students, practitioners, and policymakers.

The Routledge International Handbook of Penal Abolition provides an authoritative and comprehensive look at the latest developments in the 21st-century penal abolitionism movement, both reflecting on key critical thought and setting the agenda for local and global abolitionist ideas and interventions over the coming decade. Penal abolitionists question the legitimacy of criminal law, policing, courts, prisons and more broadly the idea of punishment, to argue that rather than effectively handling or solving social problems, interpersonal disputes, conflicts and harms, they actually increase individual and societal problems. The Routledge International Handbook of Penal Abolition is organized around six key themes: Social movements and abolition organizing Critical resistance to the penal state Voices from imprisoned and marginalized communities Diversity of abolitionist thought International perspectives on abolitionism Building new justice practices as a response to social and individual wrongdoing. A global-centred and world-encompassing project, this book provides the reader with an alternative and critical perspective from which to reflect and raises the visibility of abolitionist ideas and strategies in a time when there is considerable discussion of how we will move forward in response to what has given rise to the criminalizing system: white supremacy, racial capitalism and human wrongdoing. It is essential reading for all those engaged with punishment and penology, criminology, sociology, corrections and critical prisons studies. It will appeal to any reader who seeks an innovative response to the calamitous failures of the modern criminalizing system.

Although the negative consequences of rising incarceration rates have been well-established, criminological research has largely neglected to document psychological, social, and behavioral changes that occur during periods of incarceration. Drawing on an original longitudinal study of long-term French prisoners, this book examines the process of desistance from crime and positive growth in prison. It offers reflections on how personal transformation can be achieved in prison, particularly among individuals serving long prison sentences. This research investigates the barriers to achieving positive growth in prison, as well as the different ways in which transformation can occur behind bars. It also conceptualizes the process of abandoning crime in prison, and sheds light on the cognitive, social, and structural factors that may trigger, accelerate, or hamper this process. This book explores the circumstances under which individuals can thrive in prison, and identifies key features of the narratives of prisoners who have achieved positive growth. The research presented in this book also examines the intricacies of returning to society after a lengthy period of time in prison. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book will be invaluable reading for those engaged in studies of criminology and criminal justice, sociology, criminal behavior, prisons, and penology. It is also aimed at a variety of audiences, including academics, practitioners, policy-makers, and prisoners.

Based on a reading of contemporary philosophical arguments, this book accounts for how punishment has provided audiences with pleasure in different historical contexts. Watching tragedies, contemplating hell, attending executions, or imagining prisons have generated pleasure, according to contemporary observers, in ancient Greece, in medieval Catholic Europe, in the early-modern absolutist states, and in the post-1968 Western world. The pleasure was often judged morally problematic, and raised questions about which desires were satisfied, and what the enjoyment was like. This book offers a research synthesis that ties together existing work on the pleasure of punishment. It considers how the shared joys of punishment gradually disappeared from the public view at a precise historic conjuncture, and explores whether arguments about the carnivalesque character of cruelty can provide support for the continued existence of penal pleasure. Towards the end of this book, the reader will discover, if willing to go along and follow desire to places which are full of pain and suffering, that deeply entwined with the desire for punishment, there is also the desire for social justice. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, philosophy and all those interested in the pleasures of punishment.

This book is the first Australian study, based on extensive fieldwork, of the personal backgrounds and processes by which juveniles get drawn into risky and violent situations that culminate in murder. Drawing on interviews with every juvenile under sanction of life imprisonment in the State of South Australia (2015-2019), it investigates links in the chain of events that led to the lethal violence that probably would have been broken had there been appropriate intervention. Specifically, the book asks whether the existing criminal justice frame is the appropriate way to deal with children who commit grave acts. The extent to which prison facilitates and/or inhibits the mental, emotional, and social development of juvenile 'lifers' is a critical issue. Most - if not all - will be released at some point, with key issues of risk (public protection) and rehabilitation (probability of desistance) coming sharply to the fore. In addition, this book is also the first to capture how significant others including mothers, fathers, grandparents, and siblings are affected when children kill and the level of commitment these relatives have towards supporting the prisoner in his or her quest to build a positive future. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, andpenology; practitioners working in social policy; and all those interested in the lives and backgrounds of juvenile offenders.

An essential work that advances an acute awareness of our responsibility to make society equitable for all. Library Journal, Starred Review In this provocative book, the authors connect the regulation of African American people in many settings into a powerful narrative. Completely updated throughout, the book now includes a new chapter on policing black athletes' bodies, and expanded coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement, policing trans bodies, and policing Black women's bodies.

An essential work that advances an acute awareness of our responsibility to make society equitable for all. Library Journal, Starred Review In this provocative book, the authors connect the regulation of African American people in many settings into a powerful narrative. Completely updated throughout, the book now includes a new chapter on policing black athletes' bodies, and expanded coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement, policing trans bodies, and policing Black women's bodies.

This book highlights and examines the level, reach and consequences of corruption in international criminal justice systems. The book argues that corruption in and of criminal justice is an international problem regardless of the jurisdiction and type of political system - democratic, dictatorship or absolute monarchy. It argues that state power combined with the privatization of criminal justice and its policing, custodial institutions and community rehabilitation services is a vast industry within, and across, international jurisdictions that are worth substantial state fund. Criminal Justice and Corruption explains how different theoretical approaches highlight the problem of preventing corruption, discusses the problem of measuring criminal justice corruption, and focuses on individual criminal justice institutions. For each institution Brooks covers key literature and discusses the issues that they face, with a conclusion that reflects on the level and reach of corruption in criminal justice and whether it can maintain its legitimacy, particularly in democratic states.