View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

"This work will take its place among the growing corpus of important studies that examine patriarchy and society's need to punish its criminals in ways it paradoxically deemed more enlightened and humanitarian than in times past. Kahn uses substantial primary and secondary material. . . . Recommended."
--"Choice"

aMark E. Kann has written a fascinating, thought-provoking, and timely political-historical study of penal thought and practice in the formative years of the United States.a
--American Historical Review

Punishment, Prisons, and Patriarchy tells the story of how first-generation Americans coupled their legacy of liberty with a penal philosophy that promoted patriarchy, especially for marginal Americans.

American patriots fought a revolution in the name of liberty. Their victory celebrations barely ended before leaders expressed fears that immigrants, African Americans, women, and the lower classes were prone to vice, disorder, and crime.This spurred a generation of penal reformers to promote successfully the most systematic institution ever devised for stripping people of liberty: the penitentiary.

Today, Americans laud liberty but few citizens contest the legitimacy of federal, state, and local government authority to incarcerate 2 million people and subject another 4.7 million probationers and parolees to scrutiny, surveillance, and supervision. How did classical liberalism aid in the development of such expansive penal practices in the wake of the War of Independence?

Established as America's first foreign naval base following the Spanish-American War, Guantnamo is now more often thought of as our Devil's Island, the gulag of our times. This book takes readers beyond the orange-jumpsuited detainees of today's headlines to provide the first comprehensive history of Guantnamo from its origins to the present.

Occupying 45 square miles of land and sea, Guantnamo has for more than a century symbolized the imperial impulse within U.S. foreign policy, and its occupation is decried by Cuba as a violation of international law-even though a treaty legally grants the U.S. a lease in perpetuity. Stephen Schwab now describes the base's role in American, Caribbean, and global history, explaining how it came to be, why it's still there, and how it continues to serve a variety of purposes.

Schwab views the base's creation as part of a broad U.S. strategy of annexations, protectorates, and limited interventions devised to create a strong sphere of influence in the western Atlantic. He charts its history from this early belief that it would prevent European powers from staking imperial claims in the Caribbean and examines the crucial defensive role that Guantnamo played as a convoy hub for strategic goods during World War II. He then looks at clashes over Guantnamo during the Cold War, culminating in LBJ's decision to make the base independent by firing Cuban workers and building a desalinization plant. Schwab also fleshes out Guantnamo's ongoing roles as the U.S. Navy's lone forward base in the Caribbean, providing refueling for U.S. and allied ships, as a Coast Guard station engaged in search-and-rescue missions and counternarcotics operations, and as a U.S. facility for processing undocumented aliens.

Even though the Castro government persistently protests America's presence--and refuses even to bank the rent that the U.S. dutifully pays--Guantnamo remains the only place where diplomatic exchanges between the two countries occur, and Schwab documents how the facility has served mutual interests as both a point of nationalistic frictions and a center for diplomatic compromise. By presenting Guantnamo's story within its broader historical framework, his book gives readers a greater appreciation of America's true stake in this controversial Caribbean outpost.

Are advantaged offenders defenseless against the harshness of prison life? Based upon a qualitative study of the prison adjustment of advantaged offenders--those who, prior to prison, possessed college degrees and held high status occupations with commensurately high incomes--this book challenges the special sensitivity hypothesis and concludes that these offenders adjust well to incarceration. The author compared a group of advantaged offenders to a similar group of nonadvantaged offenders, both drawn from New York State prisons, and discovered that the advantaged offenders exhibited little (if any) engagement in institutional misconduct. They also adopted effective coping strategies.

DeRosia presents a thematic analysis of in-depth, focused interviews with both subsamples, as well as vignettes based upon those interviews. Her findings reveal that advantaged offenders hold a perspective on doing time, including prescriptions for avoiding trouble, and make conscious efforts to avoid trouble by "using" time beneficially. This study contains the most current statistics available on corrections in the U.S., including its organization, the overcrowding crisis, and prisoner profiles. The nature of life in prison and prior research on adjustment are also examined.

As a part of the debate on penitentiary architecture, this book proposes a critical interpretation of the conceptual elements and design approaches involved. This proposal, more than others, "mend" the relationship, between theoretical conception and actual building practice of the prison. The interpretation is developed from the idea that the architectural project, when it materialises in a built structure, is always the material expression of an abstract idea and of a specific vision of the world which manifests itself through the architectural consistency of the building and of the built spaces. For a long time the subject of penitentiary architecture had been neglected by contemporary architectural culture, permitting the design of prisons to be the result of a combination of obsolete practices, security regulations and the wish to reduce construction costs, in detriment of the quality of the interior space and of the efficiency of the penitentiary treatment. Thus the conception of the building focused on severe incarceration, and the refusal to accept the possibility of a more open prison remained mostly unvaried through time. Today, the subject of detention has once again caught the public eye, and that the problems related to it have become untenable. The need has become evident for a more efficient penitentiary system capable of producing positive changes in the detainees. It is thus necessary to re-think the architecture of detention in terms of the quality of space and of the respect of the dignity of the individuals, through new modes of detention, and especially through a knowledgeable design that is the expression of a renewed cultural stance that strengthens the re-educational value of the prison sentence, no longer considering it exclusively as the temporal suspension of certain rights. The objectives expressed through new theoretical developments, represent an ambitious and progressive project aimed at eradicating conservative and backward ideas regarding the role of prison architecture, and propose a new disciplinary conception of the architectural project, open to the academic and professional world in the attempt to solve and make effective the relationship between architectural design, building practices and management of the penitentiary structure. The text presented here focuses on the creation of organisational-functional tools for open-regime minimum security structures and on the identification of architectural solutions in which the residential and domestic features of the structures prevail over the typological and distributive layouts typical of traditional penitentiary buildings. The analysis aims at identifying the main essential principles for an efficient design, such as: the location, size, spatial organisation, typology of housing space, and last but not less important, the rationalisation of the internal flows. The key elements identified are summarised into a series of general design criteria aimed at establishing an efficient relationship between the functional model and the typological structure, as well as between the building and the surrounding urban fabric.

Across Europe, restorative justice has gained acceptance as a way of resolving disputes and mitigating the harm of crime in the community. Practitioners have also begun to coordinate restorative meetings in prisons in an effort to reduce the harms of victimisation and to encourage desistance from crime. This book provides a comprehensive evaluation of Building Bridges, a programme of restorative meetings between victims and prisoners in seven European countries. The authors first describe how participation affected victims and offenders. Then, through case studies in three countries, they frame the social-ecological contexts of the programmes, discussing the organisational and socio-political factors that influenced how these programmes were delivered and what is necessary for them to be sustained. Funded by the European Commission, this evaluation is essential reading for practitioners and policy-makers interested in restorative justice and prisons. It offers important insights into the potential of restorative approaches for victims and offenders and reveals the organisational and cultural obstacles to be overcome before restorative justice is a regular feature of prisons in Europe.

Over the past three decades, the United States has embraced the death penalty with tenacious enthusiasm. While most of those countries whose legal systems and cultures are normally compared to the United States have abolished capital punishment, the United States continues to employ this ultimate tool of punishment. The death penalty has achieved an unparalleled prominence in our public life and left an indelible imprint on our politics and culture. It has also provoked intense scholarly debate, much of it devoted to explaining the roots of American exceptionalism. America's Death Penalty takes a different approach to the issue by examining the historical and theoretical assumptions that have underpinned the discussion of capital punishment in the United States today. At various times the death penalty has been portrayed as an anachronism, an inheritance, or an innovation, with little reflection on the consequences that flow from the choice of words. This volume represents an effort to restore the sense of capital punishment as a question caught up in history. Edited by leading scholars of crime and justice, these original essays pursue different strategies for unsettling the usual terms of the debate. In particular, the authors use comparative and historical investigations of both Europe and America in order to cast fresh light on familiar questions about the meaning of capital punishment. This volume is essential reading for understanding the death penalty in America. Contributors: David Garland, Douglas Hay, Randall McGowen, Michael Meranze, Rebecca McLennan, and Jonathan Simon.

View the Table of Contents.
Read the Chapter 1.

"An important and significant contribution. . . . A study of the social construction of gender and how culture and agency influence the meaning of work . . ., vivid and compelling."
--"American Journal of Sociology"

When most people think of prisons, they imagine chaos, violence, and fundamentally, an atmosphere of overwhelming brute masculinity. But real prisons rarely fit the "Big House" stereotype of popular film and literature. One fifth of all correctional officers are women, and the rate at which women are imprisoned is growing faster than that of men. Yet, despite increasing numbers of women prisoners and officers, ideas about prison life and prison work are sill dominated by an exaggerated image of men's prisons where inmates supposedly struggle for physical dominance.

In a rare comparative analysis of men's and women's prisons, Dana Britton identifies the factors that influence the gendering of the American workplace, a process that often leaves women in lower-paying jobs with less prestige and responsibility.

In interviews with dozens of male and female officers in five prisons, Britton explains how gender shapes their day-to-day work experiences. Combining criminology, penology, and feminist theory, she offers a radical new argument for the persistence of gender inequality in prisons and other organizations. At Work in the Iron Cage demonstrates the importance of the prison as a site of gender relations as well as social control.

This work is an in-depth, on-the-ground examination of how prisons impact rural communities, including a revealing study of two rural communities that have chosen prisons as an economic development strategy. A recent study by the Urban Institute estimates that one-third of all counties in the United States house a prison, and that our prison and jail population is now over 2.1 million. Another report indicates that more than 97 percent of all U.S. prisoners are eventually released, and communities are absorbing nearly 650,000 formerly incarcerated individuals each year. These figures are particularly alarming considering the fact that rural communities are using prisons as economic development vehicles without fully understanding the effects of these jails on the area. This book is the result of author Eric J. Williams' ground-level research about the effects of prisons upon two rural American communities that lobbied to host maximum security prisons. Through hundreds of interviews conducted while living in Florence, Colorado, and Beeville, Texas, Williams offers the perspective of local residents on all sides of the issue, as well as a social history told mainly from the standpoint of those who lobbied for the prisons. Provides compelling data from over 200 formal and informal interviews of local politicians, residents, and prison officials, including the former directors of Texas's prison system Utilizes a combination of two qualitative methods to conduct the research

This 25-volume set has titles originally published between 1951 and 1995. It explores several different aspects of the police and their approaches to policing over the years. Many of the titles are from the 1980s, where the police were beginning to come under increasing scrutiny and their relationship with the public was under pressure. Topics include: accountability, community policing, police work, policy, training, along with international comparisons. Ongoing debates of police accountability and police race relations today mean this collection is a timely resource for those interested in criminology, particularly the recent history of the police and their role in society.

The first special juvenile court was created in 1899. Since then,juvenile justice has had a chequered history, and is now more controversial than ever. Should our treatment of young offenders differ in its aims or principles from that of adult offenders? What role should ideas of punishment or retribution play? Should our aims be rehabilitative and educative rather than punitive? Should we divert young offenders from the criminal justice system altogether, opting for 'restorative' rather than 'retributive' justice? These questions are addressed in this inter-disciplinary volume, which brings together criminologists, educationalists, psychologists and philosophers. Part I traces the history of juvenile justice, identifying patterns, and signs of what the future might hold. Part II tackles fundamental normative issues of punishment, moral education and restoration, with particular emphasis on the role of communication. Part III attends to the role that such emotions as shame and guilt should play in juvenile justice, paying particular, and critical, attention to Braithwaite's conception of reintegrative shaming.

This book is the most comprehensive treatment of the politics and the impact of the 'get tough' criminal sentencing legislation in the US. It includes a major empirical study of the celebrated California 'three strikes' law, the law that imposed a 25-years to life imprisonment the moment of a third felony conviction. 'Three Strikes' is the single most important assault on criminal recidivists in the twentieth century. This book tells the story of how such a revolutionary shift in punishment policy became law, the impact of that legislation on criminal punishments and crime rates in California, and the broad implications of Three Strikes for the ways in which punishment policy is made in democratic governments.

This book brings together moral and legal philosophers,criminologists and political theorists in an attempt to address the interdependence of the study of punishment and of political theory as well as specific issues, such as freedom, autonomy, coercion and rights that arise in both. In addition to new essays on the compatibility of rights and utilitarianism and of autonomy and coercion in Kant's theory, the book contains an extended treatment of the idea of punishment as communication. This theme is taken up in arguments over whether punishment is communicative, in the questions of what the content of any such communication could be in a pluralist society, and whether communicative accounts can make sense of the use of 'hard treatment'. By combining the techniques and expertise of different disciplines, the essays in this book shed new light on the problem of punishment. They also demonstrate the usefulness of that problem as a testing ground for legal and moral philosophy.

From the Salem witch trials to death row, this work is a gripping analysis of the evolution of punishment practices, policies, and problems in America. From Puritan ducking stools to boot camps and supermax prisons, Punishment in America investigates the evolution of punishment in the United States. Intriguing inquiries into penitentiaries, parole, capital punishment, and other sanctions reveal how the rationales behind them-retribution, rehabilitation, and deterrence-reflect changes in society, culture, and values. Reaching beyond the typical focus on prisons and incarceration to extralegal lynchings and vigilante operations and the treatment of the poor and the mentally challenged, this remarkable review also explores the impact of stricter laws on pedophiles and drug offenders and the effect of three-strikes legislation and truth in sentencing. This thought-provoking work will help readers understand the conflicting roles that punishment has played in delivering justice and promoting rehabilitation. A chronology tracking the history of punishment in the United States begins with ancient practices like blood feuds A chapter on facts and data presents studies on the impact of the war on drugs and the truth-in-sentencing laws on the prison population

Over 2 million people are incarcerated in America's prisons and jails, eight times as many since 1975. At current incarceration rates, an African American born in the U.S. today has a 30 per cent chance of spending some time in prison. Mandatory minimum sentencing, parole agencies intent on sending people back to prison, three-strike laws, for-profit prisons, and other changes in the legal system have contributed to this spectacular rise of the general prison population. After overseeing the largest city jail system in the country, Michael Jacobson knows first-hand the inner workings of the corrections system. In Downsizing Prisons, he convincingly argues that mass incarceration will not, as many have claimed, reduce crime nor create more public safety. Simply put, throwing away the key is not the answer. Given the dire budget shortfalls facing most states, there really is no choice: we no longer have the revenue to continue prison expansion while simultaneously supporting education, health care, and lower taxes. Downsizing Prisons examines specific ways that states have begun to transform their prison systems. Jacobson offers practical policy solutions and strategies, including: changing how parole and probation agencies operate, significantly reducing punitive sentencing and technical parole violations, and supporting drug-treatment programs for low-level drug offenders. These policy changes can actually increase public safety as well as save money. As our prison populations swell to record levels, it is clear that the time to reform our prison system has come. Downsizing Prisons offers a clear and persuasive plan of action.

Before the nineteenth century, American prisons were used to hold people for trial and not to incarcerate them for wrong-doing. Only after independence did American states begin to reject such public punishment as whipping and pillorying and turn to imprisonment instead. In this legal, social, and political history, Adam J. Hirsch explores the reasons behind this change. Hirsch draws on evidence from throughout the early Republic and examines European sources to establish the American penitentiary's ideological origins and parallel development abroad. He focuses on Massachusetts as a case study of the transformation and presents in-depth data from that state. He challenges the notion that the penitentiary came as a by-product of Enlightenment thought, contending instead that the ideological foundations for criminal incarceration had been laid long before the eighteenth century and were premised upon old criminological theories. According to Hirsch, it was not new ideas but new social realities-the increasing urbanization and population mobility that promoted rampant crime-that made the penitentiary attractive to post-revolutionary legislators. Hirsch explores possible economic motives for incarcerating criminals and sentencing them to hard labor, but concludes that there is little evidence to support this. He finds that advocates of the penitentiary intended only that the prison pay for itself through enforced labor. Moreover, prison advocates frequently involved themselves in other contemporary social movements that reflected their concern to promote the welfare of criminals along with other oppressed groups.

A comprehensive overview of American penology covering practices, historical precedents, ideologies, changing attitudes, system descriptions, and trends in prison management, as well as noteworthy penal literature. The entries are alphabetically arranged in a concise dictionary format and are cross-referenced to clarify the more technical penal terminology. There is a brief description of each state prison system and major components of the federal system are discussed. Entries include administrative structure, components of the adult and juvenile inmate populations in their respective institutions, and operating budgets for an indication of current costs and capital expenditure budgets for furture expansion costs to corrections systems. The dictionary provides an overview of a broad variety of topics in American penology. Each entry is followed by complete references and cross references to clarify technical terminology of penology. The entries give essential information about the administrative structure, adult and adolescent population in respective institutions, and both operating budgets for current costs and capital budgets for future expansion for interstate comparison. Other entries include program description, ideology, techniques, and a historical perspective of American prisons.

Based on a comprehensive study of three counties in Texas, this work examines the idea of differential handling of minority youth offenders. Traditional wisdom indicates that minorities are over-represented in the juvenile justice system due to racism and discrimination within the system itself. The author refutes this logic by challenging current studies and examining the results of the Texas study. The findings suggest that minorities are represented in the juvenile justice system in greater numbers than their majority offender counterparts due to their greater involvement in criminal activity, not to any differential treatment they may receive at crucial decision points within the system. Allegations of racial bias against the juvenile justice system are often supported by the federal government, which suggests that minorities continue to be targeted more frequently for arrest, prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment merely because they are persons of color. Drawing on new research, the author addresses racial disparity in the juvenile justice system and contends that previous research suffers methodological and statistical analysis problems, resulting in the mischaracterization of the issue of racial bias. The present study argues that most minority juveniles receive different case outcomes because of the severity of their current offense, and both the length and severity of their prior delinquency careers. Tracy's research ultimately indicates that rather than being discriminatory, the juvenile system is, instead, reacting to a particular type of delinquent using legally permissible guidelines.

Antoinette Bosco's heart was crushed when Shadow Clark murdered her son John and his wife Nancy. In time her grief transformed into forgiveness. Toni felt that to want one more unnatural death would be wrong. "I could say that the 18-year -old who ended the lives of my children with an 8mm semiautomatic must be punished for life but I could not say, kill this killer". Toni chose mercy over vengeance, and again her life changed forever.

Today she is widely known as an opponent of capital punishment in this the only modern Western nation that retains executions. In telling her dramatic journey she presents compelling arguments why the death penalty does not work and is morally wrong. She also shares unforgettable true stories form parents such as Dominick Dunne who suffered through similar experiences but also learned to choose love over fear.

Choosing Mercy is timely, gut-honest, and inspiring. It may not change some people's minds but it will begin to change their hearts.

Through studies of beheaded Irish traitors, smugglers hung in chains on the English coast, suicides subjected to the surgeon's knife in Dresden and the burial of executed Nazi war criminals, this volume provides a fresh perspective on the history of capital punishment. The chapters 'Introduction: A Global History of Execution and the Criminal Corpse' and 'The Gibbet in the Landscape: Locating the Criminal Corpse in Mid-Eighteenth-Century England' are open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

This balanced approach to legal precedent and moral argument regarding the death penalty presents the evidence so readers can reach their own informed conclusions. Capital Punishment examines the debate around the death penalty, raising questions and attempting to provide an even-handed examination of this controversial practice. The authors combine analysis of important issues with excerpts from landmark legal decisions, important documents, survey results, and empirical data. The first part of the book discusses the origins of the death penalty and traces its development from antiquity to contemporary times. Detailed statistical information about capital punishment is presented and discussed, and the death penalty is considered against a constitutional backdrop with various arguments-for and against-articulated. The second part of the book consists of three appendices. The first appendix presents an annotated list of important capital-punishment cases; the second supplies a more general chronological treatment of capital punishment; and the third provides a bibliographic essay directing readers to other relevant sources of interest. A thorough and insightful treatment, Capital Punishment provides both a summary of the current state of capital punishment and a discussion of areas of continuing controversy. 15 black-and-white photos Excerpts from legal documents, court decisions, and statistical and survey data Timeline Bibliography