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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

This book explores how power is negotiated in women's prisons. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in three penal establishments in England, it analyses how women manage the restrictions of imprisonment and the manner in which they attempt to resist institutional control. It is proposed that power is negotiated on a private, individual level, as women often resist the institution simply by trying to maintain an image of control over their own lives. However, their image of themselves as active, reasoning agents is undermined by institutional regimes which encourage traditional, passive, feminine behaviour at the same time as they deny the women their identities and responsibilities as mothers, wives, girlfriends and sisters. Femininity is, therefore, both the form and the goal of women's imprisonment. Yet paradoxically, femininity also offers the possibility of resistance, because women manage to rebel by appropriating and changing aspects of it.

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.

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.

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.

In 1949, Annie Samuelli and her sister Nora were seized by the Communists on trumped-up charges in a mass arrest of all Romanian nationals working for the US and British legations in Bucharest. After nine months of torture and interrogation, the two sisters were sentenced to long prison terms. Then, in 1961, after 11 years and 340 days in separate prisons and security cells, the two were quietly released from jail and exiled upon payment of ransom by a relative living in the United States. In this book, Annie Samuelli writes of those years of imprisonment. She describes her successful effort to sustain her own and others' spirits through the seemingly endless ordeal.

Gender, Ethnicity, and the State is a study of Latina and Latino prisoners in New York State. Through the use of two case studies, it compares the organizing strategies for reform pursued by Latina and Latino prisoners between 1970 and 1987, the support they received from non-Latina(o) prisoners and third parties, and the response of penal personnel to their calls for support.

"Discourse, Power and Justice" is a distinctive and theoretically informed, empirical study of the administration of the Scottish prison system. It is based on extensive research and combines theoretical innovation with detailed empirical evidence. The book is located at a confluence of two academic sub-disciplines and their associated literature, socio-legal studies of justice and the sociology of knowledge, which are combined to produce a novel theoretical framework. The authors focus on the activities of those who manage the prison system. They identify the most important social actors in the prison system, located both historically and comparatively, and examine their characteristic forms of discourse. A number of crucial areas of decision-making are analyzed in depth including decisions about the initial classification of prisoners, transfers around the system and the allocation of prisoners to different forms of work. A major focus of the book is on the different forms and mechanisms of accountability and the book concludes with an analysis of recent policy changes. Adler has published "Parential Choice and Educational Policy" (Ediburgh University Press, 1989) and "Justice Di

After guards find a book in his cell containing the pencilled name of a suspected gang member, Rodrigo Santiago is "validated" for gang affiliation and sent to indefinite solitary confinement in the Pelican Bay State Prison Secure Housing Unit, or SHU. Life in the SHU is monotonous, isolating, and enraging. It literally drives prisoners insane. Rodrigo resolves to survive. He struggles to maintain a connection to his daughter, Luz, through letters that are his only happiness. As Luz grows up, though, she presses Rodrigo for more insight into his daily life. She wants the real him. Willing to give her anything she asks, but finding himself at a loss for words, Rodrigo makes a mistake that threatens to destroy the trust between them. Meanwhile a bold, state-wide hunger strike in California prisons gathers force. Gang enmities are set aside. Improbable alliances are forged. Activists and prisoner families organize on the outside. Finding herself increasingly politicized over this issue, Luz fears she can never help her dad. Rodrigo fears he 's lost his daughter forever. On opposite sides of the prison walls they fight to end the torture of endless isolation. Based on the events of the historic 2013 California prison hunger strike, Flying Kites is a story about resilience, forgiveness, hope, and what it means to find your own voice.

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.

The suicide rate for prisoners is often four times that of the general population. While previous studies have tended to rely on official statistics and prison records, "Suicides in Prison" draws directly on the experiences of both prisoners and staff. The interviews conducted by Alison Liebling help elucidate the circumstances which lead to suicide and attempted suicide. She provides further evidence to support the growing notion that suicide is not an exclusively psychiatric problem, but one in which a person's social support and coping mechanisms plays a crucial role.
"Suicides in Prison" shows how serious difficulties in the management of prisoners at risk of suicide may be exacerbated by problems of communication between departments, and that prison officers may lack the necessary training to play a major role in suicide prevention. Furthermore, Liebling insists that if staff perceptions and attitudes are not addressed, any attempt to improve procedures may well by ineffective.
"Suicides in Prison" is of interest to probation officers, social workers and prison wardens, as well as those studying penology courses. It traces the recent history of the problem, providing the first major theoretical discussion of the nature and causes of suicide in prison.

Kaneko Fumiko (1903-1926) wrote this memoir while in prison after being convicted of plotting to assassinate the Japanese emperor. Despite an early life of misery, deprivation, and hardship, she grew up to be a strong and independent young woman. When she moved to Tokyo in 1920, she gravitated to left-wing groups and eventually joined with the Korean nihilist Pak Yeol to form a two-person nihilist organization. Two days after the Great Tokyo Earthquake, in a general wave of anti-leftist and anti-Korean hysteria, the authorities arrested the pair and charged them with high treason. Defiant to the end (she hanged herself in prison on July 23, 1926), Kaneko Fumiko wrote this memoir as an indictment of the society that oppressed her, the family that abused and neglected her, and the imperial system that drove her to her death.

The process of judicial control over institutions is often described as growing socio-legal trend which impacts the development of modern societies. This is particularly the case for prisons and other penal institutions, as international bodies and the courts have tried to influence prison policies since the 1960s. This book addresses this dynamic situation by focusing on European monitoring as a major influence on penal and prison policies within, between and across nation states. Bringing together experts from around Europe, this book actively contributes to debates and analysis within penal and prison policy studies by shedding lights on the impacts of monitoring, and demonstrates how the study of penal and prison reform in different European countries can contribute to building a clearer and more precise picture of European legal systems. This book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of prisons, penology and punishment, as well as policymakers and professionals working for national Ministries of Justice and for prison department and national human rights institutions, as well as those working for INGOs and NGOs.

Imprisonment has become big business in the United States. Using a "history of ideas" approach, this book examines the cultural underpinnings of prisons in the United States and explores how shared ideas about imprisonment evolve into a complex, loosely connected nationwide system of prisons that keeps enough persons to populate a small nation behind bars, razor wire and electrified fences. Tracing both the history of the prison and the very idea of imprisonment in the United States, this book provides students with a critical overview of American prisons and considers their past, their present and directions for the future. Topics covered include: * a history of imprisonment in America from 1600 to the present day; * the twentieth-century prison building binge; * the relationship between U.S. prisons and the private sector; * a critical account of capital punishment; * less-visible prison minorities, including women, children and the elderly; and * sex, violence and disease in prison. This comprehensive book is essential reading for advanced courses on corrections and correctional management and offers a compelling and provocative analysis of the realities of American penal culture from past to present. It is perfect reading for students of criminal justice, corrections, penology and the sociology of punishment.

This book is a reflection on the nature of confinement, experienced by prison inmates as everyday life. It explores the meanings, purposes, and consequences involved with spending every day inside prison. Female Imprisonment results from an ethnographic study carried out in a small prison facility located in the south of Portugal, and Frois uses the data to analyze how incarcerated women talk about their lives, crimes, and expectations. Crucially, this work examines how these women consider prison: rather than primarily being a place of confinement designed to inflict punishment, it can equally be a place of transformation that enables them to regain a sense of selfhood. From in-depth ethnographic research involving close interaction with the prison population, in which inmates present their life histories marked by poverty, violence, and abuse (whether as victims, as agents, or both), Frois observes that the traditional idea of "doing time", in the sense of a strenuous, repressive, or restrictive experience, is paradoxically transformed into "having time" - an experience of expanded self-awareness, identity reconstruction, or even of deliverance. Ultimately, this engaging and compassionate study questions and defies customary accounts of the impact of prisons on those subjected to incarceration, and as such it will be of great interest for scholars and students of penology and the criminal justice system.

This title, first published in 1981, draws from an extensive range of national and local material, and examines how innovations in policy and administration, while solving problems or setting new objectives, frequently created or disclosed fresh difficulties, and brought different types of people into the administration and management of prisons, whose interests, values and expectations in turn often had significant effects upon penal ideas and their practical applications. Special attention has been paid to the study of recruitment, the work and influence of gaolers, keepers, governors, and highly administrative officials. This comprehensive book will be of interest to students of criminology and history.

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.