This book examines the role of religion and spirituality in desistance from crime and disengagement from gangs. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with male gang members and offenders as well as insights gathered from pastors, chaplains, coaches and personal mentors, the testimonials span three continents, focusing on the USA, Scotland, Denmark and Hong Kong. This volume offers unique empirical findings about the role that religion and spirituality can play in enabling some male gang members and offenders to transition into a new social sphere characterised by the presence of substitute forms of brotherhood and trust, and alternative forms of masculine status. The author presents critical insights into the potential relationship between religious and spiritual participation and the emergence of coping strategies to deal with the 'stigmata' that gang masculinity leaves behind. With its wide-ranging and multi-perspective approach, this book will be essential reading for students and scholars of gang culture, masculinity and spirituality, as well as policy makers and practitioners.

This book examines how the prison environment, architecture and culture can affect mental health as well as determine both the type and delivery of mental health services. It also discusses how non-medical practices, such as peer support and prison education programs, offer the possibility of transformative practice and support. By drawing on international contributions, it furthermore demonstrates how mental health in prisons is affected by wider socio-economic and cultural factors, and how in recent years neo-liberalism has abandoned, criminalised and contained large numbers of the world's most marginalised and vulnerable populations. Overall, this collection challenges the dominant narrative of individualism by focusing instead on the relationship between structural inequalities, suffering, survival and punishment. Chapter 2 of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

A useful research resource and handy reference, this book discusses the many important ethical and legal issues that arise in the delivery of health care to prisoners at correctional facilities. It references national standards of professional practice as well as the advice of recognized experts. The mission of corrections is the care and custody of prisoners with a view to public safety within a place dedicated to punishment, while the mission of the medical and mental health professionals in a corrections facility is to care for the health and well-being of the prisoners. Both have a duty to provide care, but their differing roles and objectives give rise to ethical role conflict and disagreement regarding appropriate care strategies. Humane Health Care for Prisoners considers important ethical and legal issues that arise in the delivery of health care to prisoners, covering topics such as privacy, confidentiality, informed consent, extended isolation and solitary confinement, use of mace, strip searches and body cavity searches, and medical experimentation on prisoners as human subjects. It also considers participation by health care professionals in capital punishment, coerced substance abuse treatment, how much health care to provide, organizational structure and hierarchy, cooperation between correctional and health care staff, and the importance of recognizing mental illness as a chronic condition. This book is informative for professionals working in corrections facilities, such as physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, wardens, jail administrators, sheriffs, and corrections officials, as well as legislators and decision makers, attorneys involved in correctional healthcare lawsuits, students of criminal justice, and those seeking to work in the field of correctional health care or in corrections. Additionally, students and professors of medical ethics will find this book helpful in illustrating real-life topics for research and discussion. Clearly lays out the ethical issues in role conflicts or difficult policy questions in correctional health care management Makes the argument that while correctional and medical care professionals have their own goals, policies, and practices in the correctional environment, a willingness to accommodate the key principles and needs of the other party benefits both disciplines Investigates the central theme of what is right and what is wrong, by using ethical principles, court decisions, and accepted national standards as a guide Provides an index designed to facilitate the book's use as a quick and ready reference

This book provides a unique analysis of prisons and the violence at work inside them. It not only addresses aspects such as racial discrimination, especially in US prisons, but also gender differences, specific criminal groups operating within prisons, the reintegration processes and its failures. Combining works by various authors, it presents diverse perspectives on prison violence: in countries ranging from the USA to Australia, crossing European countries such as Portugal and Spain, among others, but also specific aspects such as prohibitions on phone calls, the economic crisis, and the current challenges of mass incarceration. As such, it offers a broad overview of several problems relevant to all scholars interested in deepening their understanding of violence in prisons.

This book describes the complex process of desistance from sexual crime as told by 74 men incarcerated for sexual offenses and released back into the community. Unlike much of the research on this topic, Harris places strong emphasis on how men who have committed serious sexual offenses come to stop offending and end their 'criminal career'. Drawing on in-depth interviews, Harris outlines three main strategies that the men employ in order to pursue offense-free lives. The Retirement Strategy is divided into those who appear to simply 'resign' and those who go on to 'rebuild' their lives. The Regulation Strategy characterizes desistance as a product of one's ability to navigate increasingly restrictive legislation ('restricted,' 'rehearsed,' 'resistant,' and 'reclusive' desistance). The men who describe their desistance in terms of Recovery do so either through 'rehabilitation' or through 'resilience.' This original and engaging study will be of great interest not only to academics who study sexual aggression but also those who have survived sexual abuse themselves, and anyone working with survivors of sexual abuse, individuals convicted of sexual offenses, their families, and their communities.

The death penalty remains one of the most controversial issues in the United States. Its proponents claim many things in their defense of its continued application. For example, they claim that it deters crime, that death by lethal injection is painless and humane, that it is racially neutral, and that it provides "closure" to families of the victims. In this comprehensive review of the major death penalty issues, the authors systematically dismantle each one of these myths about capital punishment in a hard-hitting critique of how our social, political, and community leaders have used fear and myth (symbolic politics) to misrepresent the death penalty as a public policy issue. They successfully demonstrate how our political and community leaders have used myth and emotional appeals to misrepresent the facts about capital executions. Successive chapters address the following topics: the notion of community bonding, the expectation of effective crime fighting, the desire for equal justice, deterrence, the hope for fidelity to the Constitution, the claim of error-free justice, closure, retribution, cost-effectiveness, and the messianic desires of some politicians. In each of these areas the authors quote from death penalty advocates making these claims and then proceed to analyze and ultimately dismember the claimed advantages of the death penalty.

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.

Written by an inmate serving 45 years for a drug conviction when he was 23, this is an in-depth view living behind bars from the perspective of prisoners themselves. Sections of the book are based on length of imprisonment. Prisoners in Fort Dix, N.J., detail their unique experiences, thoughts, and feelings about "life on the inside." Some describe the actions that lead to their confinement, or detail the complexities of living in all-male communities. Others reveal the ways they cope with their terms, or the expectations they have for life after prison. Santos offers the gripping stories of men serving a variety of terms, providing commentary and analysis as he guides readers through the prison experience. How men adjust to their confinement, and how they utilize their time while serving their sentences, can be a predictor of future success or failure both in prison and society upon their release. Through these often-difficult accounts, readers gain a greater understanding of what it means to be a prisoner, and how the system itself can contribute to both positive adjustment and negative outcomes alike.

The profile of prisoners across many Western countries is strikingly similar - 95% male, predominantly undereducated and underemployed, from the most deprived neighbourhoods. This book reflects on how similarly positioned men configure masculinities against global economic shifts that have seen the decimation of traditional, manual-heavy industry and with it the disruption of long-established relations of labour. Drawing on life history interviews and classical ethnography, the book charts a group of men's experiences pre, during and post prison. Tracking the development of masculinities from childhood to adulthood, across impoverished streets, 'failing' schools and inadequate state 'care', the book questions whether this proved better preparation for serving prison time than working in their local, service-dominated, labour markets. It integrates theories of crime, geography, economics and masculinity to take into account structural and global economic shifts as well as individual long-term perspectives in order to provide a broad examination on pathways to prison and post prison.

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.

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.

This book is an examination of sample companies that produce theatre with and for prison inmates. It is a careful compilation of comprehensive case studies of three such producing companies. Based on personal interviews, newspaper reviews and articles, and other testimonials from participants, each case study catalogs the working processes of the given company, the conditions they faced working in the prison environment, and how the theatre-artists tailored their work to meet these conditions. Alongside the empirical study of the companies, the author has employed prevalent theories from criminology and penology, as well as applicable performance theory, to discuss the significance of the theatre work as a social phenomenon within the very specific culture of the prison. From these individual studies, the author draws conclusions about the potential importance and place theatre could have in the penal system. This book, a first study of its kind, is a groundbreaking and important contribution to theatre studies.

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.

'A robust, decolonial challenge to carceral feminism' - Angela Y. Davis ***Winner of an English PEN Award 2022*** The mainstream conversation surrounding gender equality is a repertoire of violence: harassment, rape, abuse, femicide. These words suggest a cruel reality. But they also hide another reality: that of gendered violence committed with the complicity of the State. In this book, Francoise Verges denounces the carceral turn in the fight against sexism. By focusing on 'violent men', we fail to question the sources of their violence. There is no doubt as to the underlying causes: racial capitalism, ultra-conservative populism, the crushing of the Global South by wars and imperialist looting, the exile of millions and the proliferation of prisons - these all put masculinity in the service of a policy of death. Against the spirit of the times, Francoise Verges refuses the punitive obsession of the State in favour of restorative justice.

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"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

"Rachel King offers us the stories of families who understand the powerful reality that taking another life in the name of justice only perpetuates the tragedy. I encourage others to read these stories to better understand their journey from despair and anger to some level of peace and even forgiveness."--Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, author of Dead Man Walking Could you forgive the murderer of your husband? Your mother? Your son? Families of murder victims are often ardent and very public supporters of the death penalty. But the people whose stories appear in this book have chosen instead to forgive their loved ones' murderers, and many have developed personal relationships with the killers and have even worked to save their lives. They have formed a nationwide group, Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation (MVFR), to oppose the death penalty. MVFR members are often treated as either saints or lunatics, but the truth is that they are neither. They are ordinary people who have responded to an extraordinary and devastating tragedy with courage and faith, choosing reconciliation over retribution, healing over hatred. Believing that the death penalty is a form of social violence that only repeats and perpetuates the violence that claimed their loved ones' lives, they hold out the hope of redemption even for those who have committed the most hideous crimes. Weaving third-person narrative with wrenching first-hand accounts, King presents the stories of ten MVFR members. Each is a heartrending tale of grief, soul searching, and of the challenge to choose forgiveness instead of revenge. These stories, which King sets in the context of the national discussion over the death penalty debate and restorative versus retributive justice, will appeal not only to those who oppose the death penalty, but also to those who strive to understand how people can forgive the seemingly unforgivable. Rachel King is a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington national office where she lobbies on crime policy. She is currently working on a book about the families of death row inmates.

This book addresses the idea that victims remain contested and controversial participants of justice in the twenty-first century adversarial criminal trial. Victims are increasingly participating in all phases of the criminal trial, with new substantive and procedural rights, many of which may be enforced against the state or defendant. This movement to substantive rights has been contentious, and evidences a contested terrain between lawyers, defendants, policy-makers and even victims themselves. Bringing together substantial source materials from law and policy, this book sets out the rights and powers of the victim throughout the phases of the modern adversarial criminal trial. It examines the role of the victim in pre-trial processes, alternative pathways and restorative intervention, the jury trial, sentencing, appeal and parole. Preventative detention, victim registers, criminal injuries compensation and victim assistance, restitution and reparations, and extra-curial rights and declarations are examined to set out the rights of victims as they impact upon and constitute aspects of the modern criminal trial process. The adversarial criminal trial is also assessed in the context of the increased rights of victims in international law and procedure, and with reference to policy transfer between civil and common law jurisdictions. This timely and comprehensive book will be of great interest to scholars of criminology, criminal law and socio-legal studies.

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.