The United States imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any other nation. Mass Incarceration Nation offers a novel, in-the-trenches perspective to explain the factors - historical, political, and institutional - that led to the current system of mass imprisonment. The book examines the causes and impacts of mass incarceration on both the political and criminal justice systems. With accessible language and straightforward statistical analysis, former prosecutor turned law professor Jeffrey Bellin provides a formula for reform to return to the low incarceration rates that characterized the United States prior to the 1970s.

This is a comparative study of prisoners' human rights in England, Wales and the Netherlands. Over the years changes in Dutch penal policy have smoothed to some degree the sharp contrasting differences that were once characteristic of the English and the Dutch prison systems. In this context, the study documents the impact of the two countries' penal policies on prisoners' human rights and presents prisoners' views on the human rights contribution to prison life and prisoner treatment. English and Dutch prisoners treat human rights recognition and protection as the yardstick of the prison's legitimacy in contemporary democracies. Drawing on their respective experiences, Karamalidou highlights valuable lessons on what practices to adopt and what practices to cease with a view to embedding human rights in prison. A compassionate and thought-provoking study, this book will be of interest to undergraduate and postagraduate students of penology and human rights.

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.

"Gato's head snapped back... We could make out the shots of several 9mms, a couple of 38s and one or two 45s. I hurled myself through the doorway and into the room. I didn't look back." Caught in an Ecuador hotel room with 8kg of cocaine, Pieter Tritton was no mule or dupe. He had planned and organised everything. The consequence: a 12-year sentence inside one of the world's deadliest prison systems, where gun fights, executions and riots are a part of everyday life. As a Brit banged up abroad, Pieter had to learn how to survive - and fast - because one wrong move would mean death. This is the insider account of what it's like to live in a place worse than hell and come out a changed man on the other side.

Breaking the Rules: Women in Prison and Feminist Therapy challenges therapists, public policymakers, voters, and those in the criminal justice system to find treatment options, empowerment strategies, viable resources, community support, and policies that can help women with problems such as drug abuse, domestic violence, poverty, and prostitution rather than perpetually punishing them.Breaking the Rules shows you how our society makes other'of those among us who are most vulnerable, injured, and without resources. It digs under your skin and forces you to look at: the histories of abuse among women who have murdered their partners the impact of race and ethnicity on patterns of mothering and caretaking of children of women prisoners the lack of treatment options for addicted women prisoners how prison reawakens the feelings of powerlessness in women who have suffered childhood physical and sexual abuse helping women inmates develop marketable educational and vocational skills, support systems, and positive perceptions of themselves collaborative strategies that challenge the status quo of programs and support available to female offenders and their families a relational model of treatment that is based on the integration of three theoretical perspectives the strengths and limitations of twelve step programs for womenMapping the problems and offering solutions, Breaking the Rules walks you through treatment strategies and self-confirming experiences--such as feminist therapy, prisoner-led support groups, affirmative prison programming, and art therapy--that help women draw on their strengths, come to terms with their pasts, and meet future challenges head on.

Disorder Contained is the first historical account of the complex relationship between prison discipline and mental breakdown in England and Ireland. Between 1840 and 1900 the expansion of the modern prison system coincided with increased rates of mental disorder among prisoners, exacerbated by the introduction of regimes of isolation, deprivation and hard labour. Drawing on a range of archival and printed sources, the authors explore the links between different prison regimes and mental distress, examining the challenges faced by prison medical officers dealing with mental disorder within a system that stressed discipline and punishment and prisoners' own experiences of mental illness. The book investigates medical officers' approaches to the identification, definition, management and categorisation of mental disorder in prisons, and varied, often gendered, responses to mental breakdown among inmates. The authors also reflect on the persistence of systems of punishment that often aggravate rather than alleviate mental illness in the criminal justice system up to the current day. This title is also available as Open Access.

For over 100 years, at least one concentration camp has existed somewhere on Earth. First used as battlefield strategy, camps have evolved with each passing decade, in the scope of their effects and the savage practicality with which governments have employed them. Even in the twenty-first century, as we continue to reckon with the magnitude and horror of the Holocaust, history tells us we have broken our own solemn promise of "never again." In this harrowing work based on archival records and interviews during travel to four continents, Andrea Pitzer reveals for the first time the chronological and geopolitical history of concentration camps. Beginning with 1890s Cuba, she pinpoints concentration camps around the world and across decades. From the Philippines and Southern Africa in the early twentieth century to the Soviet Gulag and detention camps in China and North Korea during the Cold War, camp systems have been used as tools for civilian relocation and political repression. Often justified as a measure to protect a nation, or even the interned groups themselves, camps have instead served as brutal and dehumanizing sites that have claimed the lives of millions. Drawing from exclusive testimony, landmark historical scholarship, and stunning research, Andrea Pitzer unearths the roots of this appalling phenomenon, exploring and exposing the staggering toll of the camps: our greatest atrocities, the extraordinary survivors, and even the intimate, quiet moments that have also been part of camp life during the past century.

Over the last three decades the United States has built a carceral state that is unprecedented among Western countries and in US history. Nearly one in 50 people, excluding children and the elderly, is incarcerated today, a rate unsurpassed anywhere else in the world. What are some of the main political forces that explain this unprecedented reliance on mass imprisonment? Throughout American history, crime and punishment have been central features of American political development. This book examines the development of four key movements that mediated the construction of the carceral state in important ways: the victims' movement, the women's movement, the prisoners' rights movement, and opponents of the death penalty. This book argues that punitive penal policies were forged by particular social movements and interest groups within the constraints of larger institutional structures and historical developments that distinguish the United States from other Western countries.

During a period dominated by the biological determinism of Cesare Lombroso, Italy constructed a new prison system that sought to reconcile criminology with nation building and new definitions of citizenship. Italian Prisons in the Age of Positivism, 1861-1914 examines this "second wave" of global prison reform between Italian Unification and World War I, providing fascinating insights into the relationship between changing modes of punishment and the development of the modern Italian state. Mary Gibson focuses on the correlation between the birth of the prison and the establishment of a liberal government, showing how rehabilitation through work in humanitarian conditions played a key role in the development of a new secular national identity. She also highlights the importance of age and gender for constructing a nuanced chronology of the birth of the prison, demonstrating that whilst imprisonment emerged first as a punishment for women and children, they were often denied "negative" rights, such as equality in penal law and the right to a secular form of punishment. Employing a wealth of hitherto neglected primary sources, such as yearly prison statistics, this cutting-edge study also provides glimpses into the everyday life of inmates in both the new capital of Rome and the nation as a whole. Italian Prisons in the Age of Positivism, 1861-1914 is a vital study for understanding the birth of the prison in modern Italy and beyond.

A LETHAL STORM. THE MOST DEADLY PRISON. WHO WILL SURVIVE THE NIGHT? 'This is a stylish, heart-pounding thriller that would make one hell of a good film.' CRIME REVIEW Jack Constantine - a former cop who killed one of his wife's murderers in an act of vengeance - is serving his time in Ravenhill penitentiary, a notorious 'supermax' home to the most dangerous convicts in the country. When an apocalyptic superstorm wreaks havoc across the USA, the correctional officers flee the prison...but not before opening every cell door. The inmates must fend for themselves as lethal floodwaters rise and violent anarchy is unleashed. Teaming up with Kiera Sawyer, a Correctional Officer left behind on her first day of work, Constantine has one chance of survival - he must break out of a maximum security prison. But with the building on the verge of collapse, and deadly chaos around him, time is running out... Breathless, exhilarating and brilliantly original, this high-octane thriller is perfect for fans of Gregg Hurwitz, Lee Child and David Baldacci - and blockbuster action movies like John Wick.

This groundbreaking work examines Latin America's prison crisis and the failure of mass incarceration policies. As crime rates rose over the past few decades, policy makers adopted incarceration as the primary response to public outcry. Yet, as the number of inmates increased, crime rates only continued to grow. Presenting new cross-national data based on extensive surveys of inmates throughout the region, this book explains the transformation of prisons from instruments of incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation to drivers of violence and criminality. Bergman and Fondevila highlight the impacts of internal drug markets and the dramatic increase in the number of imprisoned women. Furthermore, they show how prisons are not isolated from society - they are sites of active criminal networks, with many inmates maintaining fluid criminal connections with the outside world. Rather than reducing crime, prisons have become an integral part of the crime problem in Latin America.

This groundbreaking work examines Latin America's prison crisis and the failure of mass incarceration policies. As crime rates rose over the past few decades, policy makers adopted incarceration as the primary response to public outcry. Yet, as the number of inmates increased, crime rates only continued to grow. Presenting new cross-national data based on extensive surveys of inmates throughout the region, this book explains the transformation of prisons from instruments of incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation to drivers of violence and criminality. Bergman and Fondevila highlight the impacts of internal drug markets and the dramatic increase in the number of imprisoned women. Furthermore, they show how prisons are not isolated from society - they are sites of active criminal networks, with many inmates maintaining fluid criminal connections with the outside world. Rather than reducing crime, prisons have become an integral part of the crime problem in Latin America.

Prison is unquestionably one of the most sex-segregated of all social institutions. From the first incarnations of the carceral project more than two centuries ago, reformers and penologists earnestly turned their attention to the construction of 'Christian gentlemen' and 'respectable ladies'. Vestiges of these projects remain to the present day, though often in radically different forms. Academic work exploring the construction of prison related gender has been a relatively recent development within the last quarter century. Included in this volume are twenty-two key articles exploring prison history, the state and gendered social control, gender and work in prisons and the gendered experience of incarceration. The introductory essay places these areas in the context both of more conventional sociologies of gender (highlighting both masculinities and femininities) and traditional scholarship on the prison, arguing for a return of this increasingly important social institution from the instrumentalist domains of criminal justice to the heart of sociological theorizing on topics of gender and social control.

How do governments and societies use prison to respond to underlying and fundamental social, economic and political issues? Using data on world imprisonment and numerous international examples from his personal experience, Coyle, a prison practitioner, academic and international expert, discusses the failings of prison around the world. Acknowledging the influence of external agencies, such as the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and court interventions in the use of solitary confinement, he offers some positive pointers for the future and how there might be a better distribution of resources between criminal justice and social justice by an application of the principles of Justice Reinvestment.

Taken over the course of more than a year of exclusive access, this work applies large format still life photography to the context of a unique prison community, E Wing at Kingston Prison in Portsmouth. For eight years this was Britain's only wing dedicated to holding elderly lifers: murderers, rapists, paedophiles and other violent criminals aged from their late 50s to over 80 years old. "Still Life: Killing Time", is not simply a reportage about a particular prison. Elements of metaphor, abstraction and documentary explore the experience of long term incarceration and the passage of time, and touch on how ageing and physical decline affect the prison environment. The claustrophobia of these close up, deliberate and regular compositions reflects both the nature of the place and the experience of working in E Wing.The recurring motifs - bars, squares, boxes, grids - show the segmentation and ordering of time and space that is fundamental to prison life, while the details of the inmates' possessions, notice-boards, walls, tables and bedsides suggest their state of mind and how they adapt to long term incarceration and getting old in an institution.

This distinctive and engaging book proposes an imaginative criminology, focusing on how spaces of transgression are lived, portrayed and imagined. These include spaces of control or confinement, including prison and borders, and spaces of resistance. Examples range from camps where asylum seekers and migrants are confined, to the exploration of deviant identities and the imagined spaces of surveillance and control in young adult fiction. Drawing on oral history, fictive portrayals, walking methodologies, and ethnographic and arts-based research, the book pays attention to issues of gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, mobility and nationality as they intersect with lived and imagined space.

From Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis, authors of the PEN Center USA award-winning DALLAS 1963, comes a madcap narrative about Timothy Leary's daring prison escape and run from the law.

On the moonlit evening of September 12, 1970, an ex-Harvard professor with a genius IQ studies a twelve-foot high fence topped with barbed wire. A few months earlier, Dr. Timothy Leary, the High Priest of LSD, had been running a gleeful campaign for California governor against Ronald Reagan. Now, Leary is six months into a ten-year prison sentence for the crime of possessing two marijuana cigarettes.

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.

This book is a thoroughly updated version of the popular first edition of The Prison Officer. It incorporates the significant increase in knowledge about the work of prison officer since the first edition was published and provides a live account of prison work and ways of understanding the role of the prison officer in the late-modern context.

Few detailed narratives exist of prison work and the sort of role the prison officer occupies; this book addresses the gap. Using a range of quantitative and qualitative data and drawing on available theoretical literature it explores the role of the prison officer in an appreciative way, taking into account the little-discussed issues of power and discretion.

It provides a single accessible guide to the world and work of the prison officer, looking in detail at the present role of the prison officer in Britain and demonstrating the centrality of staff-prisoner relationships to every operation carried out by officers.

This book will be of relevance to anyone with an interest in the work of a prison officer; students and others looking for an introductory survey of the literature and essential reading for any established and aspiring officers.

From the Sunday Times Bestselling author Dr Amanda Brown In The Prison Doctor: The Final Sentence, Dr Amanda Brown reveals stories of her time spent with foreign national prisoners. DANGER. DEPORTATION. DEATH. These are just some of the fates facing the inmates at Huntercombe prison. Some have fled their homeland in fear of their lives. Others are being sent to a country they left decades ago. But Dr Amanda Brown is doing all she can for each patient stuck in no-man's land. They have little or no idea of what awaits them outside, but she treats them with kindness and respect. Whatever their crime, and whatever their future holds, she is still their doctor.

In this revised 2017 edition of The Prison Speaks the author grapples with the fact that, 15 years after the publication of the first edition of the book in 2003, the problems in the South African prison system remain unaddressed. Issues revisited in this edition include: a brief history of prisons in South Africa; statistics on crime and punishment; overcrowding; the profile of a South African prisoner; male rape; human rights; the Number Gangs; and an outline of a group work programme that combined the factual with the experimental in a face-to-face situation with inmates. The Prison Speaks has been written for the general public, but will also be of particular interest to students of the humanities, those involved in voluntary work in prison, social workers, probation officers and anyone connected with the justice system.

VOLUME 27, NUMBER 2 (2018) is a special issue of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons marking the 20th anniversary of Convict Criminology (CC) edited by Andreas Aresti and Sacha Darke. Drawing on auto-ethnographic, action research and other approaches to qualitative inquiry, the collection features contributions on a variety of topics, including the criminalization of women, the place of current and former prisoners in advocacy work concerning 'criminal justice', the role higher education can play in carceral settings, theorizing the experience of freedom and the deprivation of liberty, pushing the boundaries of CC through abolitionism and its internationalisation. This book is published in English.

Mass incarceration is one of the greatest social problems facing the United States today. America incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other country and is one of only two countries that requires arrested individuals to pay bail to be released from jail while awaiting trial. After arrest, the bail decision is the single most important cause of mass incarceration, yet this decision is often neglected since it is made in less than two minutes. Shima Baradaran Baughman draws on constitutional rights and new empirical research to show how we can reform bail in America. Tracing the history of bail, she demonstrates how it has become an oppressive tool of the courts that disadvantages minority and poor defendants and shows how we can reform bail to alleviate mass incarceration. By implementing these reforms, she argues, we can restore constitutional rights and release more defendants, while lowering crime rates.

The incredible true story of one of the most extraordinary and inspirational prison breaks in Australian history. New York, 1874. Members of the Clan-na-Gael - agitators for Irish freedom from the English yoke - hatch a daring plan to free six Irish political prisoners from the most remote prison in the British Empire, Fremantle Prison in Western Australia. Under the guise of a whale hunt, Captain Anthony sets sail on the Catalpa to rescue the men from the stone walls of this hell on Earth known to the inmates as a 'living tomb'. What follows is one of history's most stirring sagas that splices Irish, American, British and Australian history together in its climactic moment. For Ireland, who had suffered English occupation for 700 years, a successful escape was an inspirational call to arms. For America, it was a chance to slap back at Britain for their support of the South in the Civil War; for England, a humiliation. And for a young Australia, still not sure if it was Great Britain in the South Seas or worthy of being an independent country in its own right, it was proof that Great Britain was not unbeatable. Told with FitzSimons' trademark combination of arresting history and storytelling verve, The Catalpa Rescue is a tale of courage and cunning, the fight for independence and the triumph of good men, against all odds.