Royer examines the changing ritual of execution across five centuries and discovers a shift both in practice and in the message that was sent to the population at large. She argues that what began as a show of retribution and revenge became a ceremonial portrayal of redemption as the political, religious and cultural landscape of England evolved.

1.Whereas many of the competing books focus on prisons, fewer focus on the concept of punishment, and its social and political context. 2. This book has a multi-disciplinary market across criminology, sociology and soco-legal studies. 3. This book is well-suited for upper level courses on punishment and penology, prisons and the criminal justice system.

Michel Foucault's writing about the Panopticon in Discipline and Punish has dominated discussions of the prison and the novel, and recent literary criticism draws heavily from Foucauldian ideas about surveillance to analyze metaphorical forms of confinement: policing, detection, and public scrutiny and censure. But real Victorian prisons and the novels that portray them have few similarities to the Panopticon. Sean Grass provides a necessary alternative to Foucault by tracing the cultural history of the Victorian prison, and pointing to the tangible relations between Victorian confinement and the narrative production of the self. The Self in the Cellexamines the ways in which separate confinement prisons, with their demand for autobiographical production, helped to provide an impetus and a model that guided novelists' explorations of the private self in Victorian fiction.

This short text, ideal for Social Problems and Criminal Justice courses, examines the American prison system, its conditions, and its impact on society. Wehr and Aseltine define the prison industrial complex and explain how the current prison system is a contemporary social problem. They conclude by using California as a case study, and propose alternatives and alterations to the prison system.

The growing body of work on imprisonment, desistance and rehabilitation has mainly focused on policies and treatment programmes and how they are delivered. Experiencing Imprisonment reflects recent developments in research that focus on the active role of the offender in the process of justice. Bringing together experts from around the world and presenting a range of comparative critical research relating to key themes of the pains of imprisonment, stigma, power and vulnerability, this book explores the various ways in which offenders relate to the justice systems and how these relationships impact the nature and effectiveness of their efforts to reduce offending. Experiencing Imprisonment showcases cutting-edge international and comparative critical research on how imprisonment is experienced by those people living and working within imprisonment institutions in North America and Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Scandinavia. The research explores the subjective experience of imprisonment from the perspective of a variety of staff and prisoner groups, including juveniles, adult female and male prisoners, older prisoners, sex offenders, wrongfully convicted offenders and newly released prisoners. Offering a unique view of what it is like to be a prisoner or a prison officer, the chapters in this book argue for a prioritisation of understanding the subjective experiences of imprisonment as essential to developing effective and humane systems of punishment. This is essential reading for academics and students involved in the study of criminology, penology and the sociology of imprisonment. It will also be of interest to Criminal Justice practitioners and policymakers around the globe.

Winner, W. E. B. DuBois Distinguished Book Award presented by the National Conference of Black Political Scientists Examines the lifelong consequences of a felony conviction through the compelling words of former prisoners Felony convictions restrict social interactions and hinder felons' efforts to reintegrate into society. The educational and vocational training offered in many prisons are typically not recognized by accredited educational institutions as acceptable course work or by employers as valid work experience, making it difficult for recently-released prisoners to find jobs. Families often will not or cannot allow their formerly incarcerated relatives to live with them. In many states, those with felony convictions cannot receive financial aid for further education, vote in elections, receive welfare benefits, or live in public housing. In short, they are not treated as full citizens, and every year, hundreds of thousands of people released from prison are forced to live on the margins of society. Convicted and Condemned explores the issue of prisoner reentry from the felons' perspective. It features the voices of formerly incarcerated felons as they attempt to reconnect with family, learn how to acclimate to society, try to secure housing, find a job, and complete a host of other important goals. By examining national housing, education and employment policies implemented at the state and local levels, Keesha Middlemass shows how the law challenges and undermines prisoner reentry and creates second-class citizens. Even if the criminal justice system never convicted another person of a felony, millions of women and men would still have to figure out how to reenter society, essentially on their own. A sobering account of the after-effects of mass incarceration, Convicted and Condemned is a powerful exploration of how individuals, and society as a whole, suffer when a felony conviction exacts a punishment that never ends.

First published in 1992, Crime, Criminal Justice and the Probation Service is a thought-provoking analysis of the role of the probation service in developing an integrated system of criminal justice. Robert Harris provides readable information about our knowledge of such areas as criminal statistics, victims, fear of crime and crime prevention. He also explores the treatment of women and ethnic minorities by the criminal justice system, the question of a sentencing council and the future of community corrections. A central theme is that all the professionals involved in the criminal justice system must work more closely together so that the mistakes of the past can be avoided in the future. The book therefore has a wide appeal not only to probation officers and social workers, but also to criminal justice professionals and administrators, including the police and the legal profession.

Virtually every constitutional order in the common law world contains a provision for executive clemency or pardon in criminal cases. This facility for legal mercy is not limited to a single place in modern legal systems, but is instead realized through various practices such as a law enforcement officer's decision to arrest, a prosecutor's decision to prosecute, and a judge's decision to convict and sentence. Doubts about legal mercy in any form as unfair, unguided, or arbitrary are as ubiquitous as the exercise of mercy itself. This book presents a comparative analysis of the clemency and pardon power in the common law world. Andrew Novak compares the modern development, organization, and practice of constitutional and statutory schemes of clemency and pardon in the United Kingdom, United States, and Commonwealth jurisdictions. He asks whether the bureaucratization of the clemency power is in line with global trends, and explores how innovations in legislative involvement, judicial review, and executive consultation have made the mercy and pardon procedure more transparent. The book concludes with a discussion on the future of the clemency and pardon power given the decline of the death penalty in the Commonwealth and the rise of the modern institution of parole. As a work concerned with the practice of mercy in the common law world, this book will be of great interest to researchers and students of international and comparative criminal justice and international human rights law.

The most punitive era in American history reached its apex in the 1990s, but the trend has reversed in recent years. Smart on Crime: The Struggle to Build a Better American Penal System examines the factors causing this dramatic turnaround. It relates and echoes the increasing need and desire on the part of actors in the American government system to construct a penal system that is more rational and humane. Author Garrick L. Percival points out that the prison boom did not naturally emerge as a governmental response to increasing crime rates. Instead, political forces actively built and shaped the growth of a more aggressive and populated penal system. He is optimistic that the shifting political forces surrounding crime and punishment can now reform the system, explaining how current political actors can craft more constructive and just policies and programs. The book shows how rationality and humanitarianism lead to a penal system that imprisons fewer people, does less harm to the lives of individual offenders and those close to them, and is less expensive to maintain. The book presents empirical data to concretely demonstrate what is working and what is not in today's penal system. It closely examines policies and practices in Texas, Ohio, and California as comparative illustrations on what progress has been made or needs to be made in penal systems across the United States. The book includes a comprehensive discussion of highlighted issues, and relates more than two dozen interviews with pivotal political actors who clarify why there is a major shift underway in the American penal system. Their insights reveal paths that can be taken to improve the current penal system.

Throughout the nineteenth century the idyllic island of Fernando de Noronha, which lies two hundred miles off Brazil's northeastern coast, was home to Brazil's largest forced labor penal colony. In Punishment in Paradise Peter M. Beattie uses Noronha as a case study to understand nineteenth-century Brazil's varied social and cultural values, especially in relation to justice, class, color, civil condition, human rights and labor. As Brazil's slave population declined after 1850, the use of colonial-era disciplinary practices at Noronha-such as flogging and forced labor-stoked anxieties about human rights and Brazil's international image. Beattie contends that the treatment of slaves, convicts, and other social categories subject to coercive labor extraction were interconnected and that reforms that benefitted one of these categories made them harder to deny to others. In detailing Noronha's history and the end of slavery as part of an international expansion of human rights, Beattie places Brazil firmly in the purview of Atlantic history.

Throughout the nineteenth century the idyllic island of Fernando de Noronha, which lies two hundred miles off Brazil's northeastern coast, was home to Brazil's largest forced labor penal colony. In Punishment in Paradise Peter M. Beattie uses Noronha as a case study to understand nineteenth-century Brazil's varied social and cultural values, especially in relation to justice, class, color, civil condition, human rights and labor. As Brazil's slave population declined after 1850, the use of colonial-era disciplinary practices at Noronha-such as flogging and forced labor-stoked anxieties about human rights and Brazil's international image. Beattie contends that the treatment of slaves, convicts, and other social categories subject to coercive labor extraction were interconnected and that reforms that benefitted one of these categories made them harder to deny to others. In detailing Noronha's history and the end of slavery as part of an international expansion of human rights, Beattie places Brazil firmly in the purview of Atlantic history.

In the 1980s a poor farmer's son from Recife, Brazil, joined the Brazilian navy and began selling cocaine. After his arrest in Rio de Janeiro he spent the next eight years in prison, where he joined the Comando Vermelho criminal faction and eventually became one of its leaders. Robert Gay tells this young man's dramatic and captivating story in Bruno. In his shockingly candid interviews with Gay, Bruno provides many insights into the criminal world in which he lived: details of day-to-day prison life; the inner workings of the Brazilian drug trade; the structure of criminal factions; and the complexities of the relationships and links between the prisons, drug trade, gangs, police, and favelas. And most stunningly, Bruno's story suggests that Brazilian mismanagement of the prison system directly led to the Comando Vermelho and other criminal factions' expansion into Rio's favelas, where their turf wars and battles with police have terrorized the city for over two decades.

In Community Punishment: European perspectives, the authors place punishment in the community under the spotlight by exploring the origins, evolution and adaptations of supervision in 11 European jurisdictions. For most people, punishment in the criminal justice system is synonymous with imprisonment. Yet, both in Europe and in the USA, the numbers of people under some form of penal supervision in the community far exceeds the numbers in prison, and many prisoners are released under supervision. Written and edited by leading scholars in the field, this collection advances the sociology of punishment by illuminating the neglected but crucial phenomenon of 'mass supervision'. As well as putting criminological and penological theories to the test in an examination of their ability to explain the evolution of punishment beyond the prison, and across diverse states, the contributors to this volume also assess the appropriateness of the term 'community punishment' in different parts of Europe. Engaging in a serious exploration of common themes and differences in the jurisdictions included in the collection, the authors go on to examine how 'community punishment' came into being in their jurisdiction and how its institutional forms and practices have been legitimated and re-legitimated in response to shifting social, cultural and political contexts. This book is essential reading for academics and students involved in the study of both community punishment and comparative penology, but will also be of great interest to criminal justice policymakers, managers and practitioners.

In Community Punishment: European perspectives, the authors place punishment in the community under the spotlight by exploring the origins, evolution and adaptations of supervision in 11 European jurisdictions. For most people, punishment in the criminal justice system is synonymous with imprisonment. Yet, both in Europe and in the USA, the numbers of people under some form of penal supervision in the community far exceeds the numbers in prison, and many prisoners are released under supervision. Written and edited by leading scholars in the field, this collection advances the sociology of punishment by illuminating the neglected but crucial phenomenon of 'mass supervision'. As well as putting criminological and penological theories to the test in an examination of their ability to explain the evolution of punishment beyond the prison, and across diverse states, the contributors to this volume also assess the appropriateness of the term 'community punishment' in different parts of Europe. Engaging in a serious exploration of common themes and differences in the jurisdictions included in the collection, the authors go on to examine how 'community punishment' came into being in their jurisdiction and how its institutional forms and practices have been legitimated and re-legitimated in response to shifting social, cultural and political contexts. This book is essential reading for academics and students involved in the study of both community punishment and comparative penology, but will also be of great interest to criminal justice policymakers, managers and practitioners.

The book provides an account of many Jesuits, from the time of St. Ignatius to the 1990's, who have been incarcerated around the world for their faith. It is divided into chapters that deal with specific themes related to their imprisonment. The principal themes are: prayer as a key element in survival, arrest and trial procedures, the experience of suffering, Mass, the daily order of prison life, forced labor, ministry to other prisoners, guards, prisoners who became Jesuits while imprisoned, community in prison, and voluntary incarceration.This is the first book to examine the experience of incarcerated Jesuits around the world and down through the centuries from the standpoint of these various themes. Much of the material is by the Jesuits themselves, in letters, autobiographical fragments and other sources-including obscure publications long out of print. The result is a gathering together of these pieces and fragments into a coordinated whole, with commentary on their significance in the context of the political and cultural situations of their time-situations that were generally the immediate cause of the Jesuits imprisonment, whether in Elizabethan England or in Communist China and Russia. A chart of imprisoned Jesuits by country of incarceration at the beginning, and a glossary of names at the back (as well as an index), will help the reader to keep track of the names of the many Jesuits who figure in the book.

Drawing on qualitative and quantitative research from around the world, this book brings together renowned international scholars to explore life-course perspectives on women's imprisonment. Instead of covering only one aspect of women's carceral experiences, this book offers a broader perspective that encompasses women's pathways to prison, their prison experiences and the effects of these experiences on their children's well-being, as well as their subsequent chances of desisting from crime.Encompassing perspectives from the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Scotland, the United States, Ukraine and Sri Lanka, this book uncovers the similarities across time and space in women offenders' life histories and those of their children and examines the differences in women's experiences and trajectories by shedding light on the moderating effects of particular cultural contexts. Lives of Incarcerated Women will be of interest to academics and students engaged in the study of punishment, penology, life-course criminology, women and crime and gender studies. It will also be of great interest to practitioners.

This book explores how restorative justice is used and what its potential benefits are in situations where the state has been either explicitly or implicitly involved in human rights abuses. Restorative justice is increasingly becoming a popular mechanism to respond to crime in democratic settings and while there is a burgeoning literature on these contexts, there is less information that focuses explicitly on its use in nations that have experienced protracted periods of conflict and oppression. This book interrogates both macro and micro utilisations of restorative justice, including truth commissions, criminal justice reform and the development of initiatives by communities and other non-state actors. The central premise is that the primary potential of restorative justice in responding to international crime should be viewed in terms of the lessons that it provides for problem-solving, rather than its traditional role as a mechanism or process to respond to conflict. Four values are put forward that should frame any restorative approach - engagement, empowerment, reintegration and transformation. It is thought that these values provide enough space for local actors to devise their own culturally relevant processes to achieve longstanding peace. This book will be of interest to those conducting research in the fields of restorative justice, transitional justice as well as criminology in general.

This book explores the theoretical and empirical dimensions of community crime prevention in China, examining in particular the role of social capital in a rapidly modernizing economic, social and political context. In doing so it provides a vivid picture of contemporary crime and crime control in China as well as analyzing the very particular Chinese approach to community crime prevention, looking at such social institutions as the household registration system, the neighbourhood committee, the work unit and the public security bureau. The particular focus of this book is on BLSCC Building Little Safe and Civilized Communities in the city of Shenshen which has been undergoing rapid change. The book looks at two contrasting communities within the city, looking at their different characteristics and the differing ways in which social capital operates in relation to crime and crime prevention. As well as shedding light on the hitherto largely hidden subject of crime prevention in China this book also makes an important contribution to wider debates about social capital and its potential, an invaluable study based on unique research.

This book showcases innovative justice initiatives from around the world which engage offenders, practitioners and communities to reduce reoffending and support desistance and positive change. It is groundbreaking in bringing together inspiring ideas and pioneering practices to analyse how 'justice done differently' is making a difference. The voices and experiences of the people at the forefront of these innovative initiatives are presented throughout the book, including offenders, corrections staff and directors, the judiciary, scientists and academics, volunteers and community organisations. Strengths-based research methods are used to investigate and celebrate best practices and 'good news stories' from the field. The authors raise critical questions about what is considered innovative and effective, for whom and in what context, presenting their own conceptual approach for analysing innovation. With initiatives drawn from diverse jurisdictions and cultures - including the UK, Europe, Australia, Asia, the US and South America - this book showcases original ideas and refreshing developments that have the potential to transform rehabilitation and reintegration practices. The book's substance and style will resonate with practitioners, students and academics across the interdisciplinary fields of criminology and criminal justice.

Voices From American Prisons: Faith, Education and Healing is a comprehensive and unique contribution to understanding the dynamics and nature of penal confinement. In this book, author Kaia Stern describes the history of punishment and prison education in the United States and proposes that specific religious and racial ideologies - notions of sin, evil and otherness - continue to shape our relationship to crime and punishment through contemporary penal policy. Inspired by people who have lived, worked, and studied in U.S. prisons, Stern invites us to rethink the current 'punishment crisis' in the United States. Based on in-depth interviews with people who were incarcerated, as well as extensive conversations with students, teachers, corrections staff, and prison administrators, the book introduces the voices of those who have participated in the few remaining post-secondary education programs that exist behind bars. Drawing on individual narrative and various modern day case examples, Stern focuses on dehumanization, resistance, and community transformation. She demonstrates how prison education is essential, can provide healing, and yet is still not enough to interrupt mass incarceration. In short, this book explores the possibility of transformation from a retributive punishment system to a system of justice. The book's engaging, human accounts and multidisciplinary perspective will appeal to criminologists, sociologists, historians, theologians and scholars of education alike. Voices from American Prisons will also capture general readers who are interested in learning about a timely and often silenced reality of contemporary modern society.

This is the first book to provide a comprehensive historical-geographical lens to the development and evolution of correctional institutions as a specific subset of carceral geographies. This book analyzes and critiques global practices of incarceration, regimes of punishment, and their corresponding spaces of "corrections" from the eighteenth to twenty-first centuries. It examines individuals' experiences within various regulatory regimes and spaces of punishment, and offers an interpretation of spaces of incarceration as cultural-historical artifacts. The book also analyzes the spatial-distributional geographies of incarceration, particularly with respect to their historical impact on community political-economic development and local geographies. Contributions within this book examine a range of prison sites and the practices that take place within them to help us understand how regimes of punishment are experienced, and are constructed in different kinds of ways across space and time for very different ends. The overall aim of this book is to help understand the legacies of carceral geographies in the present. The resonances across space and time tell a profound story of social and spatial legacies and, as such, offer important insights into the prison crisis we see in many parts of the world today.

In recent years there has been massively increased demand for the services of the private security industry, which has now assumed a far greater role in policing areas that were once the sphere of the police --for example, shopping malls, leisure parks and transportation terminals. This book provides a detailed account of the developments in urban planning, public policy and the commercial world which have promoted the development of private security, and provides a unique examination of security teams in operation in three very different environments --a shopping mall, a retail and leisure complex, and an arts centre. The study is set within a broader context that considers changes in retail and leisure patterns that have promoted the development of large, multi-purpose developments, shifts in town centre planning to create more secure high street retail and leisure facilities, and the promotion of CCTV and security patrols. Finally, the book considers the ethical issues that arise with the massively increased use of private security, and the broader policy issues which arise.

Ten years ago there were no faith-based units in prisons outside South America. Today, they are spreading all over the world, including the United States, Europe and the Commonwealth. My Brother's Keeper is the first major study of a global phenomenon. Exploring the roots of faith-based units in South America, it explains why the Prison Service of England and Wales set up the first Christian-based unit in the western world in 1997 - and its rapid expansion. It also explains how, at exactly the same time, the United States introduced Christian-based units - and why they were complimented by interfaith and multifaith initiatives. At the heart of My Brother's Keeper is an interior account of life inside four Christian-based prison units in England. It draws on the findings of a detailed evaluation conducted by the authors for the Home Office, Prison Service and Kainos Community between 2000 and 2001, including an updated reconviction study. It is an authoritative account of an innovative programme. Its analysis of what works and what doesn't in faith-based units around the world makes My Brother's Keeper a valuable roadmap for all who care about improving prison conditions. It presents a vision of justice that is not just concerned with building more prisons but with rebuilding more prisoners. It argues that by making prisons more human and punishment more humane, faith-based units can be of value - and keep faith in prisons.

The broad aim of this book is to provide a general basis for comparatively analysing and understanding the French riots of October/November 2005 and the corresponding Bristish disorders which occurred in the spring/summer of 2001. The first of the French riots broke out on 27 October in the north Parisian banlieue (suburb) of Clichy-sous-Bois when two teenage youths of Muslim heritage were electrocuted in a substation while fleeing from the police. The two youths had apparently become unwittingly involved, together with their friends, in a police investigation of a break-in. It is not clear whether they had actually been chased by police officers. Nevertheless, a rumor to this effect quickly circulated the locality, provoking violent confrontation between youths and police. Three more weeks of rioting then ensued in neighbouring Parisian suburbs and other major French cities with similar concentrations of ethnic minorities. The riots invariably involved thousands of youths from poorer areas who confronted the police, set fire to local buildings and ignited hundreds of motor vehicles. Further rioting - though not on the same scale as in 2005 - occurred subsequently in 2006 and 2007. England and Wales have had their own counterparts to the French riots. In the early and mid 1980s, there were a number of clashes between police and African-Caribbean youths in inner-city areas. Further, in 2001 rioting broke out in the northern mill towns and cities of Bradford, Burnley, Leeds and Oldham. All of these later instances involved youths from Pakistani or Bangladeshi descent. In contrast to the riots that occurred in France though, a contributing factor to 2001 riots was the activities of white neo-Fascists. Many official reports and academic studies followed each wave of disorder, each questioning the effectiveness of Britain's 'multicultural' society, in addition to other possible factors such as the marginalisation and 'criminalisation' of minority ethnic youth, and their relations with the police. Such issues were again on the agenda after more rioting occurred in the Lozells area of Birmingham in 2005. Unlike the previous disorders, this entailed conflict between South Asian and African-Caribbean youths, following a rumor that a young African girl had been gang-raped by South Asians. British attempts to analyse and remedy the underlying causes of the riots constitute a potentially valuable resource to French academics, practitioners and policy makers. In turn, the French experience provides a fertile basis for re-applying, testing and enhancing existing British theory and policy. The book consists of a highly coherent, theoretically rich and thematically comprehensive collection of papers which provide an unparalleled description and comparative analysis of the French and British riots, along with social policy recommendations to help to address the underlying issues.

The question of 'what works' in offender treatment has dominated the field of prisoner re-entry and recidivism research for the last thirty years. One of the primary ways the criminal justice system tries to reduce the rates of recidivism among offenders is through the use of cognitive behavioural programs (CBP) as in-prison intervention strategies. The emphasis for these programs is on the idea that inmates are in prison because they made poor choices and bad decisions. Inmates' thinking is characterized as flawed and the purpose of the program is to teach them to think and act in socially appropriate ways so they will be less inclined to return to prison after their release. This book delves into the heart of one such cognitive behavioural programme, examines its inner workings, its effects on inmates' narrated experience and considers what happens when a CBP of substandard quality and integrity is used as a gateway for inmates' release. Based on original empirical research, this book provides realistic suggestions for improving policy, for reforming current in-prison programs engaging in problematic practices and for instituting alternatives that take the needs of the inmates into greater account. This book is essential reading for students and academics engaged in the study of sociology, criminal justice, prisons, social policy, sentencing and punishment.