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.

Is prison a humane form of punishment and an effective means of rehabilitation? Are current prison policies, such as shifting resources away from rehabilitation toward housing more offenders, improving the safety and lives of incarcerated populations?

Considering that many Canadians have served time, are currently incarcerated, or may one day be incarcerated--and will be released back into society--it is essential for the functioning and betterment of communities that we understand the realities that shape the prison experience for adult male offenders. "Surviving Incarceration" reveals the unnecessary and omnipresent violence in prisons, the heterogeneity of the prisoner population, and the realities that different prisoners navigate in order to survive.

Ricciardelli draws on interviews with almost sixty former federal prisoners to show how their criminal convictions, masculinity, and sexuality determined their social status in prison and, in consequence, their potential for victimization. The book outlines the modern "inmate code"? that governs prisoner behaviours, the formal controls put forth by the administration, the dynamics that shape sex-offender experiences of incarceration, and the personal growth experiences of many prisoners as they cope with incarceration.

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.

This book focuses on the philosophy, politics and impact of the 'New Right' which originated in France and has since influenced activism, ideology and policy in a number of European countries. This book explores the idea that revolutionaries do not necessarily need to come from the left, nor use arms in order to overturn liberal democracy. In the post-World War Two era, the extremists of the revolutionary right took three different paths: 1) parliamentary; 2) extra-parliamentary; and 3) metapolitical. The New Right (nouvelle droite - ND in France) took the metapolitical path, but that did not mean it abandoned its revolutionary desire to smash liberal democracy throughout Europe. The book examines four interpretations of the New Right. These interpretations include the following: 1) The New Right as a fascist or quasi-fascist movement; 2) The New Right as a challenge to the traditional right-left dichotomy, which has structured European political debates for more than 200 years; 3) The New Right as an alternative modernist movement, which rejects liberal and socialist narratives of modernity; accepts the technical but not political or cultural effects of modernity; and longs for a pan-European political framework abolishing liberal multiculturalism and privileging ethnic dominance of so-called original Europeans; and 4) The New Right as a variant of political religion and conversionary processes. The book concludes by analysing the positions, cultural and political impact, and relationship to democracy of the New Right. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of racism, fascism, extremism, European politics, French politics and contemporary political theory.

This book discusses the role of the prison in Europe across a divide of over 200 years. Inspired by the travels of the prison reformer John Howard (1726-1790), who visited prisons across Europe in the eighteenth century, it fundamentally reflects on centuries of the practice of locking people up as punishment. Howard travelled across Europe to visit prisons, with a simple method: he travelled and knocked on prison doors on his journey and entered the premises. He then observed the situation in the prison, took notes and left to visit other locations. Howard's influential book The State of the Prisons resulted from his experiences, provoking debate among prison reformers and academics worldwide. Adopting the contemporary methods of prison tourism research, the author follows in Howard's footsteps. He draws on extensive research conducted in prisons across six countries: England, Norway, the Netherlands, France, Italy and Azerbaijan. Howard's reflections are used as a frame to assess contemporary prisons, particularly revolving around the questions of what prisons are for today, and what they should (or should not) be. It will be of great interest to criminologists researching prisons and penology, as well as historians interested in the histories of punishment.

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.

Caught up in one of the many purges that swept the Soviet Union during the Great Terror, Leonid Petrovich Bolotov (1906-1987) was one of 86 engineers arrested at Leningrad's Red Triangle Rubber Factory and sent to the Gulag as "enemies of the people." He would be the only one to survive and return his family, enduring two decades in the infamous Kolyma labor camps. Translated into English and published here for the first time, Bolotov's memoir narrates with growing intensity his arrest, imprisonment and interrogation, his "confession" and trial, his exile to hard labor in Arctic Siberia, and his rehabilitation in 1956 following the official end of Stalin's personality cult.

The first collection on this important topic, Captive Audience examines the social, gendered, ethnic, and cultural problems of incarceration as explored in contemporary theatre. Beginning with an essay by Harold Pinter, the original contributions discuss work including Harold Pinter's screenplays for The Handmaid's Tale and The Trial, Theatrical Prison Projects and Marat/Sade. Kimball King, Thomas Fahy, Rena Fraden, Tiffany Ana Lopez, Fiona Mills, Harold Pinter, Ann C. Hall, Christopher C. Hudgins, Pamela Cooper, Robert F. Gross, Claudia Barnett, Lois Gordon

San Pedro is Bolivia's most notorious prison. Small-time drug smuggler Thomas McFadden found himself on the inside. Marching Powder is the story of how he navigated this dark world of gangs, drugs and corruption to come out on top. Thomas found himself in a bizarre world, the prison reflecting all that is wrong with South American society. Prisoners have to pay an entrance fee and buy their own cells (the alternative is to sleep outside and die of exposure), prisoners' wives and children often live inside too, high quality cocaine is manufactured and sold from the prison. Thomas ended up making a living by giving backpackers tours of the prison - he became a fixture on the backpacking circuit and was named in the Lonely Planet guide to Bolivia. When he was told that for a bribe of $5000 his sentence could be overturned, it was the many backpackers who'd passed through who sent him the money. Written by lawyer Rusty Young, Marching Powder - sometimes shocking, sometimes funny - is a riveting story of survival.

This book focuses on the philosophy, politics and impact of the 'New Right' which originated in France and has since influenced activism, ideology and policy in a number of European countries. This book explores the idea that revolutionaries do not necessarily need to come from the left, nor use arms in order to overturn liberal democracy. In the post-World War Two era, the extremists of the revolutionary right took three different paths: 1) parliamentary; 2) extra-parliamentary; and 3) metapolitical. The New Right (nouvelle droite - ND in France) took the metapolitical path, but that did not mean it abandoned its revolutionary desire to smash liberal democracy throughout Europe. The book examines four interpretations of the New Right. These interpretations include the following: 1) The New Right as a fascist or quasi-fascist movement; 2) The New Right as a challenge to the traditional right-left dichotomy, which has structured European political debates for more than 200 years; 3) The New Right as an alternative modernist movement, which rejects liberal and socialist narratives of modernity; accepts the technical but not political or cultural effects of modernity; and longs for a pan-European political framework abolishing liberal multiculturalism and privileging ethnic dominance of so-called original Europeans; and 4) The New Right as a variant of political religion and conversionary processes. The book concludes by analysing the positions, cultural and political impact, and relationship to democracy of the New Right. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of racism, fascism, extremism, European politics, French politics and contemporary political theory.

In 2003, the US Senate and Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), prompting a number of research projects that cumulatively began to broaden and deepen our understanding of this complex aspect of prison life. Risk Markers for Sexual Victimization and Predation in Prison contains the results of Dr. Warren and Dr. Jackson s study, and it extends the literature on prison rape in important and distinct ways. Their research, which encompasses the full continuum of sexual behavior among incarcerated individuals, succeeds in identifying multi-layered predictive models for different types of sexual behavior across and within genders. The process by which the authors came to their study design, their experiences while implementing it, and the nature and significance of their findings, represent the content of this book. "

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.

A digitally remastered facsimile edition of Danny Lyon's seminal 1971 photobook, highly influential in the history of documentary photography. Conversations with the Dead provides an extraordinary photographic record of life inside six Texas prisons and the relationships Lyon built with the inmates. Revolutionary at the time of publication, it was one of the first photobooks to include ephemera. This new edition has been updated with an afterward by Lyon himself detailing what happened to the inmates in the 40 years since the book was first published. It also offers new, unseen material including outtake images, audio recordings and newly commissioned texts on a specially created microsite as a free ibook edition of this landmark publication. Features: - A new afterward by Danny Lyon

Ngugi wa Thiong'o's powerful prison memoir begins half an hour before his release on 12 December 1978. A year earlier, he recalls, armed police arrived at his home and took him to Kenya's Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. There, Ngugi lives in a block alongside other political prisoners, but he refuses to give in to the humiliation. He decides to write a novel in secret, on toilet paper - it is a book that will become his classic, Devil on the Cross. Wrestling with the Devil is Ngugi's unforgettable account of the drama and challenges of living under twenty-four-hour surveillance. He captures not only the pain caused by his isolation from his family, but also the spirit of defiance and the imaginative endeavours that allowed him to survive.

What do Russian prisons look like? Who is sent to prison in Russia? How is punishment allocated and administered? This pioneering book aims to answer these and other questions by embarking on a journey that begins by exploring how the prisons have survived the collapse of the USSR, and ends with a discussion of global penal politics. It is the first book to have been written in English on penal practices in the contemporary Russian prison system. Surviving Russian Prisons focuses in particular on the reality of work and labour within Russian prisons, exploring its changing function. From being for much of the twentieth century a major activity as well as an ideological justification for prison regimes, its main function now has been to enable prisoners to survive through participating in a barter economy. In exploring the microworlds of the Russian prison this book at the same time presents new evidence and offers fresh insight into how prisons are governed in societies undergoing turbulent social and political transformation; it explores how current practices in relation to prisoners' work comply with international regulations designed to promote humane containment and positive custody; and debates the nature of knowledge on penal discourse in transitional states.

From role-plays with street gangs in the USA to Beckett in Brixton; from opera productions with sex offenders to psychodrama with psychopaths, the book will discuss, analyse and reflect on theoretical notions and practical applications of theatre for and with the incarcerated.
Theatre in Prison is a collection of thirteen international essays exploring the rich diversity of innovative drama works in prisons. The book includes an introduction that will present a contextualisation of the prison theatre field. Thereafter, leading practitioners and academics will explore key aspects of practice &endash; problemitising, theorising and describing specific approaches to working with offenders. The book also includes extracts from prison plays, poetry and prisoners writings that offer illustrations and insights into the experience of prison life.

It is no secret that America's sentencing and corrections systems are in crisis, and neither system can be understood or repaired fully without careful consideration of the other. This handbook examines the intertwined and multi-layered fields of American sentencing and corrections from global and historical viewpoints, from theoretical and policy perspectives, and with close attention to many problem-specific arenas. Editors Joan Petersilia and Kevin R. Reitz, both leaders in their respective fields, bring together a group of preeminent scholars to present state-of-the art research, investigate current practices, and explore the implications of new and varied approaches wherever possible. The handbook's contributors bridge the gap between research and policy across a range of topics including an overview of mass incarceration and its collateral effects, explorations of sentencing theories and their applications, analyses of the full spectrum of correctional options, and first-hand accounts of life inside of and outside of prison. Individual chapters reflect expertise and source materials from multiple fields including criminology, law, sociology, psychology, public policy, economics, political science, and history.
Proving that the problems of sentencing and corrections, writ large, cannot be addressed effectively or comprehensively within the confines of any one discipline, The Oxford Handbook of Sentencing and Corrections is a vital reference volume on these two related and central components of America's ongoing experiment in mass incarceration.