This volume brings together an unusual collection of British captivity writings - composed during and after imprisonment and in conditions of siege. Writings from the 'Mutiny' of 1857 are well known, but there exists a vast body of texts, from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Burma, and the Indian subcontinent, that have rarely been compiled or examined. Written in anxiety and distress, or recalled with poignancy and anger, these siege narratives depict a very different Briton. A far cry from the triumphant conqueror, explorer or ruler, these texts give us the vulnerable, injured and frightened Englishman and woman who seek, in the most adverse of conditions, to retain a measure of stoicism and identity. From Robert Knox's 17th-century account of imprisonment in Sri Lanka, through J. Z. Holwell's famous account of the 'Black Hole' of Calcutta, through Florentia Sale's Afghan memoir, and Lady Inglis's 'Mutiny' diary from Lucknow, the book opens up a dark and revealing corner of the colonial archive. Lucid and intriguing, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern South Asia, colonial history, literary and culture studies.

Associations for librarianship frequently speak out against inequities especially when related to the freedom to read. Prisoners are in a grey area, often ignored and overlooked by policymakers, despite potential impact of library services for incarcerated individuals. The field is also de-professionalized: candidates sans graduate degrees in library science frequently fill positions and correctional institution administrators often author policies on library service. Authors writing about prison librarianship cite the need to implement the public library service model despite the dichotomy between this model and practical implementations of prison library service. The reason for this dichotomy is apparent: practices in prison libraries violate many tenets of librarianship with the justification of maintaining order in correctional institutions. The gap between policy and practice continues to grow in prison libraries. Prison Librarianship: The Neglected Profession is an exploration of this gap in prison libraries in the United States. The author investigates state, national, and international policies on prison libraries, reviews literature on the topic, and describes partnerships between prison and public libraries. To determine adherence to policy results from a national survey and follow-up interviews are shared, which serve as narratives to describe what is actually happening inside.

This book, first published in 1983, examines in detail the training of the key group of people within the British prison system: prison governors. It shows how problems, endemic to the prison system, influences their training; how staff seek to construct a coherent training course and how recruits struggle to come to terms with their ambiguous new role. It describes how attitudes towards the job changed during the training period and argues that the lack of a clear role-image prevented the adoption of a common occupational culture.

Prison Management, Prison Workers, and Prison Theory develops a new conception of prison infrastructure, organization, and policy to explore how workers and administrators are essential in the development of culture and morality within the prison environment. Stephen C. McGuinn demonstrates that effective managers prioritize prison workers in order to meet external social demands of imprisonment and internal demands of daily operation. McGuinn argues that prison administrators need to unify prison staff under a new conception of the institution. The exploration of current power structures and their opportunities for improvement provides insight for those interested in criminology, criminal justice, prison theory and reform, policy studies, and labor studies.

"This is an exceptional personal testimony and story of achievement - Ahmed Othmani tells of his own appalling treatment when in detention and how it informed and inspired a lifetime vocation to struggle for the rights of all prisoners everywhere. As the story demonstrates, Othmani is one of those rare individuals who moved from passion and conviction to effective action - he was responsible for the establishment of one of the world's most reliable and mature human rights organizations, in the field of penal reform, Penal Reform International (PRI). His untimely death in Morocco in 2004 deprived the cause of a passionate advocate, but the work goes on." [From the Preface]

The POW Camp at Fort McClellan, Alabama, was one of hundreds of American containment centers built to hold the hundreds of thousands of German prisoners captured during World War II. The camp's well maintained and humane facilities gained it a reputation as a ""model camp."" Military officials praised its elimination of major operational problems. International inspectors commended it, calling it one of the best camps in the country. Prisoners accepted and even enjoyed their time there. Drawing on official documents and recollections of prisoners, soldiers and civilians, this book provides a personal and detailed history of a widely praised and admired place of internment.

The second edition of the Handbook on Prisons provides a completely revised and updated collection of essays on a wide range of topics concerning prisons and imprisonment. Bringing together three of the leading prison scholars in the UK as editors, this new volume builds on the success of the first edition and reveals the range and depth of prison scholarship around the world. The Handbook contains chapters written not only by those who have established and developed prison research, but also features contributions from ex-prisoners, prison governors and ex-governors, prison inspectors and others who have worked with prisoners in a wide range of professional capacities. This second edition includes several completely new chapters on topics as diverse as prison design, technology in prisons, the high security estate, therapeutic communities, prisons and desistance, supermax and solitary confinement, plus a brand new section on international perspectives. The Handbook aims to convey the reality of imprisonment, and to reflect the main issues and debates surrounding prisons and prisoners, while also providing novel ways of thinking about familiar penal problems and enhancing our theoretical understanding of imprisonment. The Handbook on Prisons, Second edition is a key text for students taking courses in prisons, penology, criminal justice, criminology and related subjects, and is also an essential reference for academics and practitioners working in the prison service, or in related agencies, who need up-to-date knowledge of thinking on prisons and imprisonment.

This book offers the reader an incisive view into the political, social and economic evolutions of mass incarceration across the globe. It examines the different political and social contexts that combine with free market mechanisms of mass incarceration to ascertain how economic incentives shape penal policy. Using qualitative analysis of a wide variety of incarceration forms, each chapter compares a US example with a non-US case study, showing how first world countries that occupy the economic forefront of prison privatization are exporting new models of penal institutionalization to developing countries. The chapters examine issues such as the privatization of asylum detention centres, the economic impacts of maintaining vast forced labour camps, the social consequences of imprisoning journalists, and the use of state sanctioned torture. Capturing a nascent international trend through an interdisciplinary lens, this book questions why so many languish in prison, whether the incarceration of thousands benefits society as a whole, and how these penal policies might be roundly reconsidered.

This book offers the reader an incisive view into the political, social and economic evolutions of mass incarceration across the globe. It examines the different political and social contexts that combine with free market mechanisms of mass incarceration to ascertain how economic incentives shape penal policy. Using qualitative analysis of a wide variety of incarceration forms, each chapter compares a US example with a non-US case study, showing how first world countries that occupy the economic forefront of prison privatization are exporting new models of penal institutionalization to developing countries. The chapters examine issues such as the privatization of asylum detention centres, the economic impacts of maintaining vast forced labour camps, the social consequences of imprisoning journalists, and the use of state sanctioned torture. Capturing a nascent international trend through an interdisciplinary lens, this book questions why so many languish in prison, whether the incarceration of thousands benefits society as a whole, and how these penal policies might be roundly reconsidered.

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.

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.

The California youth corrections system is undergoing the most sweeping transformation in its 154-year history. The extraordinary nature of this change is revealed by the striking decline in the state's youth incarceration rate. In 1996, with 10,000 youth confined in 11 state-run correctional facilities, California boasted the nation's third highest youth incarceration rate. Now, with only 800 youth remaining in a system comprised of just three institutions, California has one of the nation's lowest youth incarceration rate. How did such unprecedented changes occur and what were the crucial conditions that produced them? Daniel E. Macallair answers these questions through an examination of the California youth corrections system's origins and evolution, and the patterns and practices that ultimately led to its demise. Beginning in the 19th century, California followed national juvenile justice trends by consigning abused, neglected, and delinquent youth to congregate care institutions known as reform schools. These institutions were characterized by their emphasis on regimentation, rigid structure, and harsh discipline. Behind the walls of these institutions, children and youth, who ranged in age from eight to 21, were subjected to unspeakable cruelties. Despite frequent public outcry, life in California reform schools changed little from the opening of the San Francisco Industrial School in 1859 to the dissolution of the California Youth Authority (CYA) in 2005. By embracing popular national trends at various times, California encapsulates much of the history of youth corrections in the United States. The California story is exceptional since the state often assumed a leadership role in adopting innovative policies intended to improve institutional treatment. The California juvenile justice system stands at the threshold of a new era as it transitions from a 19th century state-centered institutional model to a decentralized structure built around localized services delivered at the county level. After the Doors Were Locked is the first to chronicle the unique history of youth corrections and institutional care in California and analyze the origins of today's reform efforts. This book offers valuable information and guidance to current and future generations of policy makers, administrators, judges, advocates, students and scholars.

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.

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.

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.

This book aims to present key aspects of the prison-based bullying research which has taken place over the last few years. It is a field in which there has been considerably increased interest. One of the main features of this book is the recognition that much previous bullying research has been descriptive in nature, with little underlying theory to assist its development as an area of academic interest. In addressing this need this book will serve as an indispensable resource for students, academics and professionals with interests in this field. Chapters in the book address the following areas: need for innovation in prison bullying research, statistics on bullying, combining methods to research prison bullying, bullying behaviour among women in prison, bullying and suicides in prisons, developmental antecedents of prison bullies and/or victims, applying evolutionary theory to prison bullying, applying social problem solving models to prison bullying.

For the past few years prisons have attracted much media attention, due to substantial increases in the prison population and the deteriorating conditions in which prisoners are held. In addition, there has been industrial action by prison officers and a series of disturbances and riots by prisoners. Following the riot at Strangeways prison in Manchester in 1990 Lord Justice Woolf was called to conduct an inquiry into the riots and their causes. Prisons After Woolf serves as a basic source of information on prison issues and reviews them in the light of the Woolf proposals. In so doing, its contributors, drawn from all areas of the legal and prison system, present an important broad perspective on the major questions in penology today.

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This volume on penitentiary systems in the Americas offers a long-overdue look at the prisons that exist at the forefront of the ongoing struggle against drugs and violence throughout North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean. From Haiti to Bolivia, the authors examine the conditions in these systems, and allow several common themes to emerge, including the alarming prevalence of lengthy pre-trial detention and the often abysmal living conditions in these institutions. Taken together, this comprises the first comparative overview of the use and abuse of prisons in the Americas.

Winner of the 2014 Division of Women and Crime Distinguished Scholar Award presented by the American Society of Criminology Finalist for the 2013 C. Wright Mills Book Award presented by the Society for the Study of Social Problems Compelling interviews uncover why tough drug policies disproportionately impact women in the American prison system Since the 1980s, when the War on Drugs kicked into high gear and prison populations soared, the increase in women's rate of incarceration has steadily outpaced that of men. As a result, women's prisons in the US have suffered perhaps the most drastically from the overcrowding and recurrent budget crises that have plagued the penal system since harsher drugs laws came into effect. In Breaking Women, Jill A. McCorkel draws upon four years of on-the-ground research in a major US women's prison to uncover why tougher drug policies have so greatly affected those incarcerated there, and how the very nature of punishment in women's detention centers has been deeply altered as a result. Through compelling interviews with prisoners and state personnel, McCorkel reveals that popular so-called "habilitation" drug treatment programs force women to accept a view of themselves as inherently damaged, aberrant addicts in order to secure an earlier release. These programs were created as a way to enact stricter punishments on female drug offenders while remaining sensitive to their perceived feminine needs for treatment, yet they instead work to enforce stereotypes of deviancy that ultimately humiliate and degrade the women. The prisoners are left feeling lost and alienated in the end, and many never truly address their addiction as the programs' organizers may have hoped. A fascinating and yet sobering study, Breaking Women foregrounds the gendered and racialized assumptions behind tough-on-crime policies while offering a vivid account of how the contemporary penal system impacts individual lives.

Prison Management, Prison Workers, and Prison Theory develops a new conception of prison infrastructure, organization, and policy to explore how workers and administrators are essential in the development of culture and morality within the prison environment. Stephen C. McGuinn demonstrates that effective managers prioritize prison workers in order to meet external social demands of imprisonment and internal demands of daily operation. McGuinn argues that prison administrators need to unify prison staff under a new conception of the institution. The exploration of current power structures and their opportunities for improvement provides insight for those interested in criminology, criminal justice, prison theory and reform, policy studies, and labor studies.

This collection includes a kaleidoscope of voices and perspectives from prisoners, former prisoners, scholars, and activists to examine the extraordinarily invisible and closed system of incarceration that characterizes the massive U.S. prison industry. The book explores in multiple ways, the role of writing in carceral settings, including material realities, ethics, and social justice. It is a book about the power of writing as well as its limits. It is a book that celebrates and critiques, challenges, and reveals. It is a book that, like the writing of incarcerated women, repays careful reading.

This collection includes a kaleidoscope of voices and perspectives from prisoners, former prisoners, scholars, and activists to examine the extraordinarily invisible and closed system of incarceration that characterizes the massive U.S. prison industry. The book explores in multiple ways, the role of writing in carceral settings, including material realities, ethics, and social justice. It is a book about the power of writing as well as its limits. It is a book that celebrates and critiques, challenges, and reveals. It is a book that, like the writing of incarcerated women, repays careful reading.

Provide education to prisoners and they won't return to crime. America accounts for 5 percent of the world's population, yet incarcerates about 25 percent of the world's prisoners with about 2.3 million men and women in U.S. facilities. Examining a wealth of studies by researchers and correctional professionals, and the experience of educators, this book finds an irrefutable conclusion: the likelihood of an undereducated prisoner returning to crime is high, but recidivism rates drop in direct correlation with the amount of education prisoners receive, and the rate drops dramatically with each additional level of education attained. Presenting a workable solution to America's over incarceration and recidivism problems, this book demonstrates that great fiscal benefits arise when modest sums are spent educating prisoners, instead of dedicating exponentially higher resources to confining them. Educating prisoners brings a reduction in crime and social disruption, reduced domestic spending and a rise in quality of life.