This book provides a much-needed sociological account of the social world of the English prison officer, making an original contribution to our understanding of the inner life of prisons in general and the working lives of prison officers in particular. As well as revealing how the job of the prison officer - and of the prison itself - is accomplished on a day-to-day basis, the book explores not only what prison officers do but also how they feel about their work. In focusing on how prison officers feel about their work this book makes a number of interesting revelations - about the essentially domestic nature of much of the work they do, about the degree of emotional labour invested in it and about the performance nature of many of the day-to-day interactions between officers and prisoners. Finally, the book follows the prison officer home after work, showing how the prison can spill over into their home lives and family relationships. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in different types of prisons (including interviews with prison officers' wives and children as well as prison officers themselves), this book will be essential reading for all those with an interest in how prisons and organisations more generally operate in practice.

Long-term prisoners need to be given the space to reflect, and grow. This ground-breaking study found that engaging prisoners in philosophy education enabled them to think about some of the 'big' questions in life and as a result to see themselves and others differently. Using the prisoners' own words, Szifris shows the importance of this type of education for growth and development. She demonstrates how the philosophical dialogue led to a form of community which provided a space for self-reflection, pro-social interaction and communal exploration of ideas, which could have long-term positive consequences.

Around one in five prisoners report the previous or current incarceration of a parent. Many such prisoners attest to the long-term negative effects of parental incarceration on one's own sense of self and on the range and quality of opportunities for building a conventional life. And yet, the problem of intergenerational incarceration has received only passing attention from academics, and virtually little if any consideration from policy makers and correctional officials. This book - the first of its kind - offers an in-depth examination of the causes, experiences and consequences of intergenerational incarceration. It draws extensively from surveys and interviews with second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-generation prisoners to explicate the personal, familial and socio-economic contexts typically associated with incarceration across generations. The book examines 1) the emergence of the prison as a dominant if not life-defining institution for some families, 2) the link between intergenerational trauma, crime and intergenerational incarceration, 3) the role of police, courts, and corrections in amplifying or ameliorating such problems, and 4) the possible means for preventing intergenerational incarceration. This is undeniably a book that bears witness to many tragic and traumatic stories. But it is also a work premised on the idea that knowing these stories - knowing that they often resist alignment with pre-conceived ideas about who prisoners are or who they might become - is part and parcel of advancing critical debate and, more importantly, of creating real change. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars in criminology, sociology, cultural studies, social theory and those interested in learning about more about families in prison.

Long sentenced young people are a small but significant part of the juvenile prison population. The current approach to young people convicted of serious crime speaks to wider issues in criminal and social justice, including the idealisation of (some) childhoods, processes of racialisation and identity and the sociology of the body. Analysing the relationships between biography, trauma and habitus reveals the ways in which class, racial and legal status are experienced and resisted. Young Men's Experiences of Long-Term Imprisonment: Living Life considers the need for the reinvigoration of prison ethnography and calls for a phenomenological approach to understanding youth crime and punishment. An insightful ethnographic study on imprisoned 15- to 17-year-olds in England, this volume examines how young people experience long-term imprisonment, manage their time and imagine and shape their futures. Drawing on observations, interviews and correspondence, Tynan situates long-term imprisonment of young men within the wider social context of criminal and social justice; and analyses constructs and practices that locate responsibility for crime with individuals and communities. Young Men's Experiences of Long-Term Imprisonment: Living Life will be of interest to students and researchers interested in the sociology of prisons, punishment and youth justice and qualitative research methodology.

Prison narratives are an invaluable source for the study of minority positions or discourses of otherness in US culture. Particularly in the discourses of the US criminal justice system, politics and the visual media, criminals are represented as the other, from the perspectives of race, sexuality and moral inferiority. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this compelling study analyzes how American prison narratives reflect and produce ideologies of masculinity in the United States. For the first time, this book puts various subgenres of prison narratives into a dialogue in order to demonstrate a polar dichotomy in the institutional and public discourses of criminality. It draws together fascinating materials that have rarely, if ever, received careful attention and examines popular culture to demonstrate the profound ways in which implicit understandings of prison life shape all Americans, and their reactions to people both incarcerated and not.

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.

The recent explosion in women's imprisonment in the US--a 2,800 percent increase from 1970 to 2001--and around the world has received little critical analysis. Women of color, immigrants, and indigenous women, in particular, have been targeted by "tough on crime" policies and the global war on drugs, making them the majority inside prison walls while still the minority outside of them. The symbiotic relationship between private prison corporations and the state criminal justice system has also led to harsher sentencing and enforcement, causing prison overcrowding and creating a demand for more prison construction.
This collection of essays provides a new analysis of women's imprisonment, shifting the focus from women's behavior to the role of the state, corporations, and the media in fueling prison expansion. The contributors argue that the rise in women's criminalization worldwide is shaped by global factors, from free trade agreements and neoliberal restructuring to multinational corporate expansion.While much analysis has focused on imprisoned men, scholars have neglected to look at the way race, gender, class and nation affect the criminalization of women of color. The essays engage in such controversial topics as "drug mules," immigrant trafficking, and the war on terror.

Suicides in institutions are a major problem. Relatives and friends, staff and fellow patients/prisoners are all affected. In any type of institution, closed or open, common themes emerge in suicide prevention. This book explores the prison setting and describes the development of suicide prevention strategies. These issues are relevant across the wider forensic setting.

Suicide in Prisons provides an up-to-date review of recent research into suicide and self-injury in prisons, and makes links between the research, the prison context and related practice-based issues. Key issues covered included suicide prevention, self-injury, risk assessment, peer group support and staff training. It provides the reader with a good background to aid informed practice.

In this book Alana Barton explores the social control and disciplining of unruly and 'deviant' women from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Her particular focus is the 'semi penal' institution, a category that includes refuges, reformatories and homes. She suggests that these occupy a unique position within the social control 'continuum', somewhere between the formal regulation of the prison and the informal control of the 'community' or domestic sphere, but at the same time incorporating methods of discipline from both arenas. The book draws on Dr Barton's extensive fieldwork at one such institution, currently a women's bail and probation hostel, which opened as a reformatory in 1823. Barton begins by examining the ideological and social conditions underpinning the creation of this institution, deconstructing the dominant feminising discourses around domesticity, respectability, motherhood, sexuality and pathology that were mobilised to categorise and control its nineteenth-century residents. She goes on to discuss the contemporary experiences of women within the hostel and their strategies for coping with or resisting the disciplinary regimes and discourses imposed upon them. Her analysis reveals that many of the discourses used to characterise and discipline women in reformatories during the nineteenth century continue to be utilised for the same purpose in a probation hostel nearly two hundred years later. She also reveals that the distribution of power in institutions is not fixed, but can be subtly negotiated and redistributed. Concluding with an examination of current developments in community punishments for women, this book will make a significant contribution to the literature around alternatives to custody for female offenders by strongly challenging contemporary debates liberal, critical and feminist around 'appropriate' and relevant penal policy for women.

This book is Open Access under a CC BY license. It is the first monograph-length study of the force-feeding of hunger strikers in English, Irish and Northern Irish prisons. It examines ethical debates that arose throughout the twentieth century when governments authorised the force-feeding of imprisoned suffragettes, Irish republicans and convict prisoners. It also explores the fraught role of prison doctors called upon to perform the procedure. Since the Home Office first authorised force-feeding in 1909, a number of questions have been raised about the procedure. Is force-feeding safe? Can it kill? Are doctors who feed prisoners against their will abandoning the medical ethical norms of their profession? And do state bodies use prison doctors to help tackle political dissidence at times of political crisis?

This book provides a much-needed sociological account of the social world of the English prison officer, making an original contribution to our understanding of the inner life of prisons in general and the working lives of prison officers in particular. As well as revealing how the job of the prison officer - and of the prison itself - is accomplished on a day-to-day basis, the book explores not only what prison officers do but also how they feel about their work. In focusing on how prison officers feel about their work this book makes a number of interesting revelations - about the essentially domestic nature of much of the work they do, about the degree of emotional labour invested in it and about the performance nature of many of the day-to-day interactions between officers and prisoners. Finally, the book follows the prison officer home after work, showing how the prison can spill over into their home lives and family relationships. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in different types of prisons (including interviews with prison officers' wives and children as well as prison officers themselves), this book will be essential reading for all those with an interest in how prisons and organisations more generally operate in practice.

A collection of 20 pieces by people in prison and on probation, covering the theme of 'hope'. Explores aspects of prisons, the criminal justice system, and rehabilitation.

In contrast to the generally dismal results of various approaches to rehabilitation, these consciousness-based strategies have proven effective in preventing crime and rehabilitating offenders! This book will introduce you to a powerful, unique approach to offender rehabilitation and crime prevention. In contrast to the generally dismal results of most rehabilitation approaches, studies covering periods of 1-15 years indicate that this new approachemploying the Maharishi Transcendental Meditation (R) and TM-Sidhi programsreduces recidivism from 35-50%. Transcendental Meditation (R) in Criminal Rehabilitation and Crime Prevention provides the reader with a theoretical overview, new original research findings, and examples of practical implementation. With this book, you will explore what motivates people to commit crimes, with emphasis on stress and restricted self-development. Then you'll examine the results and policy implications of applying these consciousness-based techniques to offender rehabilitation and crime reduction. Most chapters include tables or figures that make the information easy to understand. Transcendental Meditation (R) in Criminal Rehabilitation and Crime Prevention does not merely review the theory behind this innovative approach to rehabilitation and prevention but also emphasizes the practical value of the programs it describes and reports how techniques and strategies based on Transcendental Meditation (R) have been put to use in a variety of settings. This book will familiarize the reader with: a rehabilitation approach so universal in its applicability that any adult or juvenile offender can begin it at the point of sentencing, during incarceration, or at the point of parole the in-depth background on adult growth and higher states of consciousness necessary to understand this consciousness-based, developmental approach the results of empirical studies conducted in prisons around the country, with up to 15 years of follow-up a preview of how cost-effective the rehabilitation program might be implications for public policy and the judicial systemincluding an innovative alternative sentencing program how this approach deals not only with individuals but also with the community as a wholewhen practiced by a small percentage of the population, the TM and TM-Sidhi programs may reduce crime in the larger community how these society-level prevention programs may prove to be effecitive in reducing not only school violence in the community but, if applied on sufficient scale, war deaths and terrorism in the greater society

The Self in the Cell examines the emergence of the separate confinement penitentiary in England, the demand for autobiography the penitentiary imposed and the ways in which the prison's demand for self-narrative shaped Victorian novels about the private self. It is shown, contrary to what is argued by Foucauldians that the prison is more closely and tangibly related to the first-person narrative production than to omnisciently-narrated 'fantasies of surveillance'.

Brazilian authorities continuously fail to comply with international norms on minimal conditions of incarceration. Brazil's prison population has risen ten-fold since the country's return to democracy in the 1980s. Its prisons typically operate at double official capacity and with 100 prisoners for each guard on duty. At the same time, however, the average Brazilian prison is not as disorderly or its staff-inmate relations so conflictual as our established theories on prison life might predict. This monograph explores the means by which Brazilian prisons function in the absence of guards. More specifically, the means by which prison security and inmate discipline is negotiated between prison managers, gangs and the wider inmate body. While fragile and varied, this historical tradition of co-produced governance has for decades kept most prisons in better order and enabled most prisoners to better survive.

Prison Nation charts the injustices of prison privatization, race and the justice system, the quixotic drug war and the rarely discussed prison AIDS crisis. With fascinating narratives, shocking tales and small stories of hope, this collection paints a picture of a world many Americans know little or nothing about.

Prisons are dangerous places, and assaults, threats, theft and verbal abuse are pervasive - attributable both to the characteristics of the captive population and to an institutional sub culture which promotes violence as a means of resolving conflicts. Yet the crimes perpetrated by prisoners on other prisoners have attracted little interest, and criminological research has contributed little to an understanding of situations in which violence arises in penal institutions. This book seeks to remedy this, and to address and answer a number of key questions: how do features of the prison social setting shape conflicts?; what social norms guide the decision to use violence?; what are the personal and social consequences of spending months or years in places where distrust and anxiety are normal?; how do staff respond to the dangers that are part of daily life in many prisons?; is it possible to identify factors associated with risk and resilience?; and what methods of handling conflicts do prisoners use that could prevent violence? Prison Violence adopts a distinctive approach to answering these questions, and is based on extensive research, including interviews with both victims and perpetrators of prison violence; it pioneers a conflict-centred approach, seeking to understand the pathways into and out of situations where there is potential for violence, focusing on interpersonal and institutional dynamics rather than on individual psychological factors.

I propose to open my mind as wide as possible to allow my readers the first ever glimpse at South Central from my side of the gun, street, fence and wall. After pumping eight blasts from a sawed-off shotgun at a group of rival gang members, twelve-year-old Kody Scott was initiated into the L.A. gang the Crips. He quickly matured into one of the most formidable Crip combat soldiers, earning the name 'Monster' for committing acts of brutality and violence that repulsed even his fellow gang members. When the inevitable jail term confined him to a maximum-security cell, a complete political and personal transformation followed: from Monster to Sanyika Shakur, Black nationalist, member of the New Afrikan Independence Movement and crusader against the causes of gangsterism. In a document that has been compared to The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice, Shakur makes palpable the despair and decay of America's inner cities and gives eloquent voice to one aspect of the Black experience today.

What happens inside our prisons? What's Prison For? examines the "incarceration" part of "mass incarceration." What happens inside prisons and jails, where nearly two million Americans are held? Bill Keller, one of America's most accomplished journalists, has spent years immersed in the subject. He argues that the most important role of prisons is preparing incarcerated people to be good neighbors and good citizens when they return to society, as the overwhelming majority will. Keller takes us inside the walls of our prisons, where we meet men and women who have found purpose while in state custody; American corrections officials who have set out to learn from Europe's state-of-the-art prison campuses; a rehab unit within a Pennsylvania prison, dubbed Little Scandinavia, where lifers serve as mentors; a college behind bars in San Quentin; a women's prison that helps imprisoned mothers bond with their children; and Keller's own classroom at Sing Sing. Surprising in its optimism, What's Prison For? is an indispensable guide on how to improve our prison system, and a powerful argument that the status quo is a shameful waste of human potential.

This title was first published in 2003. The "Red Mafia" in Russia have become the subject of increasing international interest and considerable misinterpretation. After well-received editions in Russian, French and Italian, Anton Oleinik's study of Russian prisons, in which he explores the social roots of organized crime in post-Soviet societies, is now published in English. This English edition includes a postscript on the Moscow terrorist crisis of 2002. Oleinik's analysis reveals prison society as a mirror of broader Russian society - characterized by the absence of the state as an organizer of social practices. He builds on this to make a central distinction between two types of societies - the modern "large" society and the "small" society, like Russia, that has only been partially modernized, and in which the world of everyday life, experiences and relationships remains entirely separated from the official aims of modernization and efficiency. Oleinik is interested in the void between these two separate worlds, a void he sees being filled in Russia by the Mafia.

During the past two centuries a vibrant prison press has chronicled life behind bars in American prisons, championed inmate causes, and challenged those in authority who sought to silence it. At its apex, several hundred periodicals were published by and for inmates. Unlike their peers who passed their sentences stamping out license plates, these convicts spent their days like reporters in any community-looking for the story. Yet their own story, the lengthy history of their unique brand of journalism, has remained largely unknown. In "Jailhouse Journalism," James McGrath Morris presents the history of this medium, the lives of the men and women who brought it to life, and the controversies that often surround it.

The dramatic history of prison journalism has included many famous, notorious, and unique personalities such as Robert Morris, the "financier of the America Revolution"; the Younger Brothers of the Jesse James gang; Julian Hawthorne, the only son of Nathaniel Hawthorne; men of the radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW); Charles Chapin, famed city editor of New York's "Evening World" until he murdered his wife; Dr. Frederick Cook, North Pole explorer whose claim to have been the first to reach the pole is still debated today; Tom Runyon, who won a place for himself in history with an Underwood; and Wilbert Rideau, an illiterate teenaged murderer who raised prison journalism to the pinnacle of achievement.

In his new introduction Morris addresses the spread of prison journalism into other forms of media, such as radio and the Internet. He discusses the conflicts between those who publish jailhouse news and those who would wish to control, or eliminate it altogether.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 left 25 million Russians living outside the Russian Federation. This important new book explores their social identity, examining the mutually held perceptions, fears and resulting nationalism of both the ethnic Russians living outside the Russian Federation and the indigenous, or 'titular', populations they live amongst.
Based on a unique study involving national surveys conducted in Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Kazakhstan, the book maps the main individual, intergroup and cross-national factors that shape the fears of 'titulars' and Russians as well as the possible consequences and the risk of ethnic conflict in the five republics. There is detailed statistical analysis of how background factors (personal and national) affect intergroup perceptions; along with discussion of mutual stereotypes, social distance, language and the perception of citizenship and analysis of the dynamics of assimilation and separation of Russians in former soviet states. The attitudes of both groups to other smaller minority groups are also examined.
This book provides significant new conclusions on the complexity of intergroup relations and seeks to relate these findings to a general theory of intergroup relations. It will be essential reading for those working in this area within the disciplines of Psychology, Sociology and Politics.

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This book makes public, for the first time, a full account of the development of the privatization of prisons, centred on the only full-scale empirical study yet to have been undertaken in Britain. After providing an up-to-date overview of the development of private sector involvement in penal practice in the United Kingdom, North America, Europe and Australia, the authors go on to describe the first two years in the life of Wolds Remand Prison - the first private prison in Britain. They look at the daily life for remand prisoners, assess the duties and morale of staff and compare the workings of Wolds to a new local prison in the public sector. The authors conclude by discussing some of the practical and theoretical issues to have emerged from contracting out, ethical issues surrounding the whole privatization debate and implications for the future of the prison system and penal policy.

Comparing and contrasting the prison systems of 15 nations, this volume addresses the crisis and change in penology which has occurred during the 1980s and 1990s. The contributors identify both common and unusual problems which face penal systems throughout the world, and compare a variety of these systems by employing sociological analysis. Analyses of the penal systems in industrial, non-industrial, stable and unstable nations are undertaken here, and possible prospects for social and penal reform around the globe are discussed.

Macho Love: Sex Behind Bars in Central America is the first in-depth study of sexual culture and AIDS in Latin prisons. Psychologists, social workers, criminologists, and AIDS specialists will discover how the interplay of sexual ideals, prostitution, manipulation, resistance, and power relationships among prisoners and some staff are based on money, sex, drugs, and violence. Macho Love gives you a stirring and emotional look at the various risks and dangers lurking in the Latin American prison culture and discusses how Costa Rican and Central American prisons are improving the situation with new intervention programs. Fascinating and informative, Macho Love explores the dangerous Latin prison culture as it discusses: new HIV/AIDS prevention programs implemented in some Costa Rican and Central American prisons the frequency and types of prostitution and rape in prison drug and alcohol addiction and their effects on the spread of HIV/AIDS an understanding of why rehabilitation programs fail or succeed the lack of opportunities to work or to study that leaves the inmates vulnerable to the only freedom they have left--sex why a "cachero," or a man who penetrates another man, is not considered a homosexual and often refuses to wear a condom, which tremendously increases the risk of HIV/AIDS Macho Love explores the life-threatening sexual culture in prisons to bring you the realities of the Latin prison culture. This revealing book examines the different types of relationships which occur in prisons and the factors that place inmates at risk for contracting the HIV virus, such as not wearing a condom because of intoxication due to drugs and alcohol. Macho Love also shows you how the new HIV/AIDS intervention programs in Costa Rica are combatting these serious problems to lower HIV infection rates and avoid the spread of this deadly and dangerous disease.