In Arts in Corrections, the author-a poet, translator and teacher-takes readers on a chronological journey through an annotated selection of 24 of his own publications from 1981 to 2014 which recount his experiences teaching, consulting and documenting US arts programs in prisons, jails and juvenile facilities. Anyone interested in corrections and arts-in-corrections will be drawn in by the poetic sensibility Hillman brings to his writing. Readers will gain a historical and personal perspective not only into correctional arts programming in the US over the last 40 years, but also the institutional transformations in policy, culture, populations, economics, and the criminological mission expansion into other institutional settings like K-12 education. Original essays, articles, monographs and poems are interspersed with recent annotations to deliver not only a top-down view of the correctional system but also the author's personal journey of "discouragement and hope" from work conducted in approximately 200 adult and juvenile facilities in 30 states and six countries. This comprehensive book is essential reading for a broad cross-section of international readers interested in and involved in the arts-in-corrections field. With two million individuals behind bars in the US at any given time, the profile of arts programs in prisons and jails is rising and interest in criminal-justice matters more generally is increasing. This includes not only arts-in-corrections professionals, policy makers, students, researchers, advocates and academics, but professionals in multiple other fields as well as the general public.

This book is a biographical history of Rottnest Island, a small carceral island offshore from Western Australia. Rottnest is also known as Wadjemup, or "the place across the water where the spirits are", by Noongar, the Indigenous people of south-western Australia. Through a series of biographical case studies of the diverse individuals connected to the island, the book argues that their particular histories lend Rottnest Island a unique heritage in which Indigenous, maritime, imperial, colonial, penal, and military histories intersect with histories of leisure and recreation. Tracing the way in which Wadjemup/Rottnest Island has been continually re-imagined and re-purposed throughout its history, the text explores the island's carceral history, which has left behind it a painful community memory. Today it is best known as a beach holiday destination, a reputation bolstered by the "quokka selfie" trend, the online posting of photographs taken with the island's cute native marsupial. This book will appeal to academic readers with an interest in Australian history, Aboriginal history, and the history of the British Empire, especially those interested in the burgeoning scholarship on the concept of "carceral archipelagos" and island prisons.

This volume addresses major issues and research in corrections and sentencing with the goal of using previous research and findings as a platform for recommendations about future research, evaluation, and policy. The last several decades witnessed major policy changes in sentencing and corrections in the United States, as well as considerable research to identify the most effective strategies for addressing criminal behavior. These efforts included changes in sentencing that eliminated parole and imposed draconian sentences for violent and drug crimes. The federal government, followed by most states, implemented sentencing guidelines that greatly reduced the discretion of the courts to impose sentences. The results were a multifold increase in the numbers of individuals in jails and prisons and on community supervision-increases that have only recently crested. There were also efforts to engage prosecutors and the courts in diversion and oversight, including the development of prosecutorial diversion programs, as well as a variety of specialty courts. Penal reform has included efforts to understand the transitions from prison to the community, including federal-led efforts focused on reentry programming. Community corrections reforms have ranged from increased surveillance through drug testing, electronic monitoring, and in some cases, judicial oversight, to rehabilitative efforts driven by risk and needs assessment. More recently, the focus has included pretrial reform to reduce the number of people held in jail pending trial, efforts that have brought attention to the use of bail and its disproportionate impact on people of color and the poor. This collection of chapters from leading researchers addresses a wide array of the latest research in the field. A unique approach featuring responses to the original essays by active researchers spurs discussion and provides a foundation for developing directions for future research and policymaking.

This edited book explores prison masculinities, drawing from a wide range of international researchers to highlight how masculinities may divert from the "hypermasculine" or macho typology typically found in the prison masculinities literature. The book includes a diverse selection of writing on masculinities "in" and "of" prison; masculinities experienced by those living within, working, and experiencing prison as well as historical and critical accounts of masculinities from around the world. The contributors highlight how masculinities are experienced in a multitude of ways as is evidenced in both qualitative and quantitative research with men before, during, and after imprisonment; with correctional officers and staff; in the analysis of public records, in the critical examination of Sykes' seminal work; and in historical and contemporary Australian society. Evidenced in writing drawn from Australia, the Dominican Republic, Ukraine, Hong Kong, the United States, Scotland, and the Netherlands, the contributors acknowledge that rather than being fixed, discourses around prison masculinities now include sexuality, gender identity, and diverse understandings around masculinities as strategic, hegemonic, and ever changing. Prison Masculinities is important reading for students and scholars across disciplines, including criminology, sociology, gender studies, law, international relations, history, health, psychology, and education. Chapter 4 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com . It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book is the first volume to explore criminal justice work and criminological research through the lens of emotional labour. A concept first coined 30 years ago, emotional labour seeks to explore the ways in which people manage their emotions in order to achieve the aims of their organisations, and the subsequent impact of this is on workers and service users. The chapters in this edited collection explore work in a wide range of criminal justice institutions as well as the penal voluntary sector. In addition to literature review chapters which consolidate what we already know, this book includes case study chapters which extend our knowledge of how emotional labour is performed in specific contexts, and in relation to certain types of work. Emotional Labour in Criminal Justice and Criminology covers topics such as prisoners who die from natural causes in prison, to the work of independent domestic violence advisors and the use of emotion by death penalty lawyers in the US. An accessible and compelling read, this book presents ground-breaking qualitative and quantitative research which will be critical to criminologists, criminal justice practitioners, students of criminology and academics in the fields of social policy and public service.

Offering an important addition to existing critiques of governance feminism and carceral expansion based mainly on experiences from the Global North, this book critically addresses feminist law reform on violence against women, from a decolonial perspective. Challenging the consensus that penal expansion is mainly associated with the co-option of feminist campaigns to counteract violence against women in the context of neoliberal globalisation, this book shows that long-standing colonial narratives underlie many of today's dominant legal discourses justifying criminalisation, even in countries whose governments have called themselves "leftist" and "post-neoliberal". Mapping the history of law reform on violence against women in Ecuador, the book reveals how the conciliation between feminist campaigns and criminalisation strategies takes place through liberal legality, the language of human rights, and the discourse of constitutional guarantees, across the political spectrum. Whilst human rights make violence against women intelligible in mainstream legal terms, the book shows that the emergence of a "rights-based penality" produces a benign, formally innocuous criminal law, which can be presented as progressive, but in practice reproduces colonial and postcolonial paradigms that limit and reshape feminist demands. The book raises new questions on the complex social and political factors that impact on feminist law reform projects, as it demonstrates how colonial assumptions about gender, race, class, and the family remain embedded in liberal criminal law. This theoretically and empirically informed analysis makes an innovative contribution to feminist legal theory, post-colonial studies, and criminal law; and will be of interest to activists, scholars and policymakers working at the intersections between gender equality, law, and violence in Latin America and beyond.

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.

This book tells the story of the star class, a segregated division for first offenders in English convict prisons; known informally as 'star men', convicts assigned to the division were identified by a red star sewn to their uniforms. 'Star Men' in English Convict Prisons, 1879-1948 investigates the origins of the star class in the years leading up to its establishment in 1879, and charts its subsequent development during the late-Victorian, Edwardian, and interwar decades. To what extent did the star class serve to shield 'gentleman convicts' from their social inferiors and allow them a measure of privilege? What was the precise nature of the 'contamination' by which they and other 'accidental criminals' were believed to be threatened? And why, for the first twenty years of its existence, were first offenders convicted of 'unnatural crimes' barred from the division? To explore these questions, the book considers the making and implementation of penal policy by senior civil servants and prison administrators, and the daily life and work of prisoners at policy's receiving end. It re-examines evolving notions of criminality, the competing aims of reformation and deterrence, and the role and changing nature of prison labour. Along the way, readers will encounter an array of star men, including arsonists, abortionists, sex offenders and reprieved murderers, disgraced bankers, light-fingered postmen, bent solicitors, and perjuring policemen. Taking a fresh look at English prison history through converging lenses of class, sexuality, and labour, 'Star Men' in English Convict Prisons, 1879-1948 will be of great interest to penal historians and historical criminologists, and to scholars working on related aspects of modern British history.

The controversy surrounding community responses to housing for sexually violent predators When a South Carolina couple killed a registered sex offender and his wife after they moved into their neighborhood in 2013, the story exposed an extreme and relatively rare instance of violence against sex offenders. While media accounts would have us believe that vigilantes across the country lie in wait for predators who move into their neighborhoods, responses to sex offenders more often involve collective campaigns that direct outrage toward political and criminal justice systems. No community wants a sex offender in its midst, but instead of vigilantism, Monica Williams argues, citizens often leverage moral, political, and/or legal authority to keep these offenders out of local neighborhoods. Her book, the culmination of four years of research, 70 in-depth interviews, participant observations, and studies of numerous media sources, reveals the origins and characteristics of community responses to sexually violent predators (SVP) in the U.S. Specifically, The Sex Offender Housing Dilemma examines the placement process for released SVPs in California and the communities' responses to those placements. Taking the reader into the center of these related issues, Monica Williams provokes debate on the role of communities in the execution of criminal justice policies, while also addressing the responsibility of government institutions to both groups of citizens. The Sex Offender Housing Dilemma is sure to promote increased civic engagement to help strengthen communities, increase public safety, and ensure government accountability.

This book explores prisoners' experiences of prison education and investigates whether participation in prison education contributes to an offender's ability to desist from crime and increases social capital levels. While the link between prison education and reduced rates of recidivism is well established through research, far less is known about the relationship between prison education and desistance. The book demonstrates how prisoners experience many benefits from participating in prison education, including increased confidence, self-control and agency, along with various other cognitive changes. In addition, the book examines prisoners' accounts that provide evidence of strong connections between prison education and the formation of pro-social bonds which have been shown to play a role in the desistance process. It also highlights the links between prison education and social capital, and the existence of a form of prison-based social capital arising from the prison culture. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to those engaged in criminology, sociology, penology, desistance, rehabilitation, the sociology of education and all those interested in learning more about the positive impact of prison education on prisoners.

From 1935 until 1975, just about every junkie busted for dope went to the Narcotic Farm. Equal parts federal prison, treatment center, farm, and research laboratory, the Farm was designed to rehabilitate addicts and help researchers discover a cure for drug addiction. Although it began as a bold and ambitious public works project, and became famous as a rehabilitation center frequented by great jazz musicians among others, the Farm was shut down forty years after it opened amid scandal over its drug-testing program, which involved experiments where inmates were being used as human guinea pigs and rewarded with heroin and cocaine for their efforts. Published to coincide with a documentary to be aired on PBS, The Narcotic Farm includes rare and unpublished photographs, film stills, newspaper and magazine clippings, government documents, as well as interviews, writings, and anecdotes from the prisoners, doctors, and guards that trace the Farm's noble rise and tumultuous fall, revealing the compelling story of what really happened inside the prison walls.

Drawing on participatory action research conducted in Sierra Leone, Kosovo and the Philippines, Human Rights in Prisons analyses encounters between rights-based non-governmental organisations and prisons. It explores the previously under-researched perspectives of prison staff and prisoners on their lives and relationships.

Far more than a building of brick and mortar, the prison relies upon gruesome stories circulated as commercial media to legitimize its institutional reproduction. Perhaps no medium has done more in recent years to both produce and intervene in such stories than television. This unapologetically interdisciplinary work presents a series of investigations into some of the most influential and innovative treatments of American mass incarceration to hit our screens in recent decades. Looking beyond celebratory accolades, Lee A. Flamand argues that we cannot understand the eagerness of influential programs such as OZ, The Wire, Orange Is the New Black, 13th, and Queen Sugar to integrate the sensibilities of prison ethnography, urban sociology, identity politics activism, and even Black feminist theory into their narrative structures without understanding how such critical postures relate to the cultural aspirations and commercial goals of a quickly evolving TV industry and the most deeply ingrained continuities of American storytelling practices.

In outlining the online expressions of penal life, this book disrupts the conventional human encounters that underpin empirical criminological scholarship on prisons because, figuratively speaking, prisons in Russia are de-nesting from their institutional moorings and borders. Using the online world of Runet as the research site and presenting research from selectively drawn evidence gathered from secondary data from prison-related websites, it explores the 'moving walls' of the prison from socio-political and cultural perspectives. The book discusses how prisoners and their families articulate and give meaning to their experiences when they are online, and while doing so develop their rights awareness. This book is a pioneering methodological, criminological and theoretical study, the first of its kind in global criminology and humanities, and because it is forging a new path for penal scholarship, cannot be all-encompassing but rather acts as a 'map' for other researchers in different fields to use. It will be useful for scholars working in comparative fields and jurisdictions on the subject of prisons, rights and how the internet is being utilised by prisoners, their families and communities organised around prison activism.

The best-selling bible of the movement to defund the police in an updated edition.

The massive uprising that followed the police killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020— by some estimates the largest protests in US history—thrust the argument to defund the police to the forefront of international politics. That case had been put persuasively a few years earlier in The End of Policing by Alex Vitale, now a leading figure in the urgent public discussion over policing and racial justice.

The central problem, Vitale demonstrates, is the dramatic expansion of the police role over the last forty years. Drawing on firsthand research from across the globe, he shows how the implementation of alternatives to policing—such as drug legalization, regulation, and harm reduction instead of the policing of drugs—has led to reductions in crime, spending, and injustice.

This updated edition includes a new introduction that takes stock of the renewed movement to challenge police impunity and shows how we move forward, evaluating protest, policy, and the political situation.

Prisons research has very specific skills associated with it, and requires a particular approach to interacting with closed institutions and offending populations. There are many issues that require thought when undertaking prisons research, as well as numerous possible ways to do it. This book provides a comprehensive guide to the different aspects and methods possible in prisons research, allowing the novice researcher to gain some ideas on what is often a relatively secretive practice. After introducing the rationale for prisons research, its methodological and critical context and covering basic practicalities, this book offers a range of tips and tricks for the prisons researcher. It covers key topics such as ethics, the process of choosing methods and prisons research around the world. It is essential reading for students engaged with criminological research methods and for early career researchers.

Witness in the Era of Mass Incarceration works from the premise that if the law establishes and maintains both its practical and symbolic authority on the basis of its monopoly on legally sanctioned violence and the suffering threatened and delivered by such violence, then we cannot know the full human cost or concrete moral status of any legal state without human witness to the depth and manner of suffering meted out by such violence. The prison writer stands in the position to offer such witness. The prison writer knows the law's violence in the flesh. For every other writer, reflection upon the degree and manner of suffering meted out under legal sanction-that is, reflection upon the full human cost of the contemporary legal order-is necessarily speculative. In close readings of first-person witness from prisons in the U.S., Ireland, and Africa, Witness in the Era of Mass Incarceration discovers literary tropes that chart at once local, national, and transnational conditions of carceral experience-the extant conditions of legalized suffering. In exhibiting the labor required to move from institutionalized abjection to the minimum requirements of rights-bearing personhood, this witness offers the sole credible vision of the possubility of a post carceral understanding of freedom.

Based on the lived experiences of incarcerated persons and staff, this book explores the symbolic significance of prison foodways to normalization, autonomy, identity construction, power, group formation and security. The book also traces the rationalization(s) that policy makers attach to prison food, from the water and bread diet of the 18th century, the contested abolition of alcohol consumption, to the current fear surrounding the spread of COVID-19 through food distribution in prisons. The argument is developed that prison food policies have always reflected how Belgian governments have treated imprisoned persons. The emphasis on Belgian prisons and the discussions on prison foodways situated on a micro and macro level add a unique flavour to prison food scholarship by providing a deeper understanding of a penal culture outside the dominant tradition of Anglo-Saxon and Nordic studies. Consequently, the book provides a nuanced conception of prison foodways for penologists, sociologists, those with interests in wider prison policy, and those working on the socio-cultural role of food in closed environments.

Prison disturbances during the period reveal inadequacies of the practice and philosophy of custodial sentencing. This social history analyses a period in which the modern prison experienced some of its most serious challenges both on a practical and philosophical level. These include the way in which prison was utilised to deal with poor, disaffected and political sections of society, and the failure to establish in the prison a legitimate means of punishment. English prisons have been the site of continued struggles over power, waged between prisoners, prison staffand prison authorities. Such struggles have been strongly influenced by social, political and penal contexts. These dynamics are examined from a perspective which emphasises the forms of disturbances that occurred within Englishprisons between 1850 and 1920 and the consequences of a custodial sentence for those subject to it. For many offenders, the taint of imprisonment closed down their choices and instituted a pattern of "revolving door" custody forrepeated petty crimes. For some convicts, the physical and psychologically undermining effects of penal servitude, and in some cases extreme acts of self-injury, could incapacitate them for life. Dr ALYSON BROWN is lecturer in the history of crime at Edge Hill College of Higher Education, Lancashire.

Covers a longer span of time than other books - three decades enabling systematic examination of the policies of four governments: Conservative, New Labour, Coalition and Conservative. It both provides a detailed historic account of the twists and turns of policy and legislation over the 30 year period and combines this with commentary from those intimately involved in decision making and implementation of policy and legislation. There is a range of interviewees, including many from non-political sources. Its unique contribution is the combination of the analysis of legislative and organisational changes with the interviewing of virtually all the most important players in the process - all surviving Home Secretaries and Ministers of Justice since 1990, junior ministers; all Directors of Prisons NOMS/HMPPS and the new National Probation Service; four Chief Inspectors of Prisons and three Chief Inspectors of Probation; the four most recently retired Lord Chief Justices. A unique added value is the interviews with virtually all the politicians and other key players who have been involved over the past 30 years, which provide a unique commentary and insight into how they thought and how they approached their responsibilities. The period of time in question has seen many changes in prison and probation and a detailed analysis of this in one place would be useful but, crucially, to also have the interviews of so many people makes this unprecedented. The authors are highly respected and Professor Roy King has been a leading authority on prisons for several decades.

Establishes a new framework for the architectural design of prisons to promote the health and well-being of all in the prison environment Essential reading for those engaged in the study of criminology, corrections, and penology;. prison authorities, policymakers, and public health officials; and architects and engineers interested in the effects of design on well-being Uses information gathered from prison authorities and designers from four countries and three different prison models to understand the differences and similarities in their approach to the well-being of both inmates and staff

This edited collection utilises recent advances in theories on masculinities to explore and analyse the ways in which prisons shape performances of gender, both within prison settings and following release from prison. The authors assess here how the highly gendered world of the prison (where the population is overwhelmingly male in most countries) impacts upon the performance of masculinities. Including original pieces from England, Australia, Scotland and the USA, as well as contributions which take a broader methodological and conceptual approach to masculinity, this engaging and original collection holds international appeal and relevance. Cumulatively, the chapters illustrate the importance of considering a nuanced understanding of masculinity within prison research, and as such, will be of particular interest for scholars of penology, gender studies, and the criminal justice system.

Inspiring firsthand account of how in-prison vocational training programs at Riker's Island Jail lead to meaningful post-release employment and reduce recidivism - the Green House and GreenTeam run by James Jiler for the Horticultural Society of New York. James Jiler combines an engaging personal account of running a highly successful horticultural vocation program at the largest jail complex in the United States with a practical guide to starting and managing prison and re-entry gardening programs. The Greenhouse Project gives horticultural job-training to male and female inmates at New York City's Rikers Island jail system. After release, ex-offenders can intern with the GreenTeam, which provides landscaping and gardening services to community groups and institutions throughout New York State. Jiler's humor and heartfelt stories about prison community and clear explanations of what works broaden this book's appeal to all social activists involved with at-risk populations.

Cultural Writing. Memoir. These edited letters and diaries are a moving account of the unusual friendship between Andrew Lee Jones and Jane Officer. In July 1991 Andrew Lee Jones became the last person to die in "Old Sparky," Louisiana's electric chair. Over the preceding fifteen months, Andrew corresponded with Jane Officer, an English woman whom he met through a penfriend organization based in England. Andrew was 35, poor, black and a convicted criminal; his English friend was white, middle class and 55. She traveled to the USA for the first time in her life to plead for Andrew's life at a Pardon Board hearing, and spent his last few hours with him and his family.

The Routledge Handbook on American Prisons is an authoritative volume that provides an overview of the state of U.S. prisons and synthesizes the research on the many facets of the prison system. The United States is exceptional in its use of incarceration as punishment. It not only has the largest prison population in the world, but also the highest per-capita incarceration rate. Research and debate about mass incarceration continues to grow, with mounting bipartisan agreement on the need for criminal justice reform. Divided into four sections (Prisons: Security, Operations and Administration; Types of Offenders and Populations; Living and Dying in Prison; and Release, Reentry, and Reform), the volume explores the key issues fundamental to understanding the U.S. prison system, including the characteristics of facilities; inmate risk assessment and classification, prison administration and employment, for-profit prisons, special populations, overcrowding, prison health care, prison violence, the special circumstances of death row prisoners, collateral consequences of incarceration, prison programming, and parole. The final section examines reform efforts and ideas, and offers suggestions for future research and attention. With contributions from leading correctional scholars, this book is a valuable resource for scholars with an interest in U.S. prisons and the issues surrounding them. It is structured to serve scholars and graduate students studying corrections, penology, institutional corrections, and other related topics.