Elizabeth Fry (nee Gurney, 1780-1845) was descended from two wealthy Quaker banking families. Her Quaker faith was crucial to her adult life and she became active in social reform. Despite having eleven children, she was active in community work, and became a Quaker minister. Persuaded to visit the women's wing in Newgate Prison in 1813, she was appalled at the conditions in which the prisoners, and their children, lived. She became a pioneer in seeking to improve the situation for women in prisons and on transportation ships. The British Ladies' Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners was probably the first national British women's society. Fry's ideas on the humane treatment of prisoners influenced international legal systems. This memoir, based on her letters and diaries, was edited by two of her daughters, and was first published in 1847. Volume 1 ends in 1825.

Elizabeth Fry (nee Gurney, 1780-1845) was descended from two wealthy Quaker banking families. Her Quaker faith was crucial to her adult life and she became active in social reform. Despite having eleven children, she was active in community work, and became a Quaker minister. Persuaded to visit the women's wing in Newgate Prison in 1813, she was appalled at the conditions in which the prisoners, and their children, lived. She became a pioneer in seeking to improve the situation for women in prisons and on transportation ships. The British Ladies' Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners was probably the first national British women's society. Fry's ideas on the humane treatment of prisoners influenced international legal systems. This memoir, based on her letters and diaries, was edited by two of her daughters, and was first published in 1847. Volume 2 covers the period from 1826 to 1845.

As banks crashed, belts tightened, and cupboards emptied across the country, American prisons grew fat. Doing Time in the Depression tells the story of the 1930s as seen from the cell blocks and cotton fields of Texas and California prisons, state institutions that held growing numbers of working people from around the country and the world-overwhelmingly poor, disproportionately non-white, and displaced by economic crisis. Ethan Blue paints a vivid portrait of everyday life inside Texas and California's penal systems. Each element of prison life-from numbing boredom to hard labor, from meager pleasure in popular culture to crushing pain from illness or violence-demonstrated a contest between keepers and the kept. From the moment they arrived to the day they would leave, inmates struggled over the meanings of race and manhood, power and poverty, and of the state itself. In this richly layered account, Blue compellingly argues that punishment in California and Texas played a critical role in producing a distinctive set of class, race, and gender identities in the 1930s, some of which reinforced the social hierarchies and ideologies of New Deal America, and others of which undercut and troubled the established social order. He reveals the underside of the modern state in two very different prison systems, and the making of grim institutions whose power would only grow across the century.

Exploring the first purpose-built prison community of its kind, the HMP Dovegate Therapeutic Community, this book provides the most comprehensive coverage of this research to date, following the progress of individual prisoners' through therapy and highlighting the key essentials for prisoners to address their motivations and criminal behaviour.

A LETHAL STORM. A DEADLY PRISON. WHO WILL SURVIVE THE NIGHT? 'From page one, BREAKOUT slams the cell door on the reader and refuses to release them' LINCOLN CHILD, New York Times bestselling author. 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... 'From page one, BREAKOUT slams the cell door on the reader and refuses to release them' LINCOLN CHILD, bestselling author. 'Brutal, blood-boltered, and insistently cinematic; a pulp triumph' DOMINIC NOLAN 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. Readers are gripped by BREAKOUT: 'On the edge of my seat and read it in a day...can see it being made into a movie' ***** Goodreads Reviewer 'Gripping, action-packed, and intense... The fast-paced plot made me want to speed through this book' ***** Goodreads Reviewer 'Fast, furious and nerve jangling adventure' ***** Goodreads Reviewer

What happens inside Latin American prisons? How does the social organisation of prisoners relate to the political structures beyond the walls? Is it possible to resist corrupt penal regimes? In Prison Writing of Latin America, Joey Whitfield turns to those best placed to answer these questions: people who have been imprisoned themselves. Drawing on a century of material produced by Latin American prisoners from Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil, Whitfield weaves readings of novels, memoirs and testimonial texts with social and political analysis. Rather than distinguishing between dictatorial and democratic periods of government, he shows that from the point of view of the prisoner, all states are authoritarian in nature. In the face of oppression, however, prisoners both 'political' and 'criminal' have found ways not only to resist but also to create alternative communities both real and imagined, sometimes in collaboration with each other.

This study traces the subject to the reign of Henry VIII. The author describes the location and analyses the types of prison buildings: county gaols, 'national' prisons (like the Fleet), franchise, municipal, 'bishops' and forest prisons. He also deals with the administration, staffing, repair and appearance of the buildings. Professor Pugh emphasizes that imprisonment was widely used as a punishment and was not wholly custodial and coercive; that the treatment of prisoners, if callous, was not intentionally cruel; and that the exaction of fees and lodging charges was not an 'abuse' but came to be the only way in which imprisonment could be made to work. These views correct prevailing misconceptions. The growth of imprisonment for debt and the system called 'benefit of clergy' are traced. Several chapters are devoted to escaping and its punitive consequences and to the trial of suspected felons. There is also some discussion of the imprisonment or monks within their monasteries.

The Welsh criminal justice system is unique. While the country has its own devolved government and parliament, there is no Welsh equivalent of the Scottish or Northern Irish justice systems. Rather, the writ of England and Wales criminal justice institutions continues to run. Yet the extensive responsibilities of Wales's devolved institutions ensure that they necessarily play a significant role in criminal justice. As a result, the Welsh criminal justice system operates across a 'jagged edge' of devolved and reserved powers and responsibilities. This book provides the first academic account of this system. It demonstrates not only that Wales has some of the worst criminal justice outcomes in western Europe, but that even if the will existed to try to address these problems, the current constitutional underpinnings of the Welsh criminal justice system would make it nigh-on impossible. Based on official data and in-depth interviews, this is an urgent and challenging book, required reading for anyone interested in Welsh politics and society.

During the past 25 years, the prison population in America shot upward to reach a staggering 1.53 million by 2005. This book takes a broad, critical look at incarceration, the huge social experiment of American society. The authors investigate the causes and consequences of the prison buildup, often challenging previously held notions from scholarly and public discourse. By examining such themes as social discontent, safety and security within prisons, and the impact on crime and on the labour market, Piehl and Useem use evidence to address the inevitable larger question, where should incarceration go next for American society, and where is it likely to go?

Unhappy Child, troubled adolescent, dissatisfied wife, a woman at odds with convention. This was Elizabeth Fry, known to her family and friends as Betsy. in 1816, at the age of 36, when she had been a minister of the Society of Friends for five years, Betsy walked alone into the hell of Newgate Gaol. The transformation she wrought among it wretched female inhabitants propelled her onto the stage of world history. In the following years she transformed her generation's perception of offenders, and helped create a professional prison service. She was also a catalyst in the long struggle that eventually saw women achieving recognition in the world beyond family and home.

For over 800 years Newgate was the grimy axle around which British society slowly twisted. This is where such legendary outlaws as Robin Hood and Captain Kidd met their fates, where the rapier-wielding playwrights Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe sharpened their quills, and where flamboyant highwaymen like Claude Duval and James Maclaine made legions of women swoon. While London's theatres came and went, the gaol endured as Londons unofficial stage. From the Peasants Revolt to the Great Fire, it was at Newgate that England's greatest dramas unfolded. By piecing together the lives of forgotten figures as well as re-examining the prison's links with more famous individuals, from Dick Whittington to Charles Dickens, this thrilling history goes in search of a ghostly place, erased by time, which has inspired more poems and plays, paintings and novels, than any other structure in British history.

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.

Abolitionism is not only a strategy or a set of demands, aimed at the reduction (or suppression) of custody, it is also a perspective, a philosophy, an approach which challenges conventional definitions of crime. This book examines the origin, philosophy and achievements of abolitionism and reviews the literature on penal abolitionism from the 1960s to the 1980s.
By collecting and discussing the key abolitionist arguments, the author critically analyzes the views expressed by its leading proponents; Nils Christie, Louk Hulsman, Thomas Mathiesen and Herman Bianchi, examining in particular how their views took shape, their philosophical foundations, and the social and political context of abolitionist ideas and perspectives. Policies, such as the virtual abolition of custody for young offenders in Italy, are presented and the area of informal justice is also addressed, with an overview of mediation and compensation practices, and an assessment of the degree of their effectiveness and desirability.
Through assessment of these achievements and experiments of specific abolitionist ideas, the author attempts to identify the legacy of abolitionism from a European perspective, while bringing into focus more recent contributions concerning the study of terrorism and war.

Captives combines a thrilling narrative account of Rikers Island's descent into infamy with a dramatic retelling of the last seventy years of New York and American politics from the vantage point of its jails. It is a story of a crowded field of contending powers-city bureaucrats and unions, black power activists and correction offices, crooked cops and elected leaders- struggle for the right to run our cities, a story that culminates in the triumph of of the twin figures we today call neoliberalism and mass incarceration. It is the history of how the Rikers Island of today-and the social order it represents-came to be. With a sweeping vision and an often cinematic touch, Captives records how the tempo of history was set by the metronome of bloody and bruising clashes between corrections officers and prisoners, and between police officers and virtually everyone else. Written by a one-time inmate, Captives draws on extensive archival research, decades of journalism, interviews, prisoner testimonials, and firsthand experience to deliver an urgent intervention into our nationwide conversation about the future of mass incarceration.

In recent decades, the nature of criminal punishment has undergone change in the United States. This case study of women serving time in California in the 1960s and 1990s examines key points in this recent history. In this 2005 book, the authors begin with a look at imprisonment at the California Institution for Women in the early 1960s, when the rehabilitative model dominated official discourse. They compare women's experiences in the 1990s, at the California Institution for Women and the Valley State Prison, when the recent 'get tough' era was near its peak. Drawing on archival data, interviews, and surveys, their analysis considers the relationships among official philosophies and practices of imprisonment, women's responses to the prison regime, and relations between women prisoners. The experiences of women prisoners reflected the transformations Americans have witnessed in punishment over recent decades, but they also mirrored the deprivations and restrictions of imprisonment.

In recent decades, the nature of criminal punishment has undergone change in the United States. This case study of women serving time in California in the 1960s and 1990s examines key points in this recent history. In this 2005 book, the authors begin with a look at imprisonment at the California Institution for Women in the early 1960s, when the rehabilitative model dominated official discourse. They compare women's experiences in the 1990s, at the California Institution for Women and the Valley State Prison, when the recent 'get tough' era was near its peak. Drawing on archival data, interviews, and surveys, their analysis considers the relationships among official philosophies and practices of imprisonment, women's responses to the prison regime, and relations between women prisoners. The experiences of women prisoners reflected the transformations Americans have witnessed in punishment over recent decades, but they also mirrored the deprivations and restrictions of imprisonment.

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.

The recent Boumediene v. Bush decision, which tossed aside the dysfunctional military court system envisioned by the Bush administration and upheld the right of habeas corpus for detainees, promises to throw national security law into chaos, and will also probably lead to the closing of Guantanamo. In this timely and much-needed book, Glenn Sulmasy, one of America's leading experts on national security law, opens with a much-needed history of America's long and complicated experience with such courts since the early days of the Republic. After tracing their evolution in the contemporary era, Sulmasy argues for a more a sensible approach to the global war on terror's unique set of prisoners. He proposes a reasonable "third way" solution that avoids even more extreme measures, on the one hand, and a complete shuttering of the court system, on the other. Instead, he advocates creating a separate standing judicial system, overseen by civilian judges, that allows for habeas corpus appeals and which focuses exclusively on existing war-on-terror cases as well as the inevitable cases to come. For all those who want to explore the crucial legal issues behind the headlines about Gitmo and the rights of detainees, The National Security Court System offers a clear-headed assessment of where we are and where we ought to be going.

In the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, African Americans made up approximately twelve percent ofthe United States population but close to forty percent of the United States prison population. Now, in the latter half of the decade, the nation is in the midst of the largest multi-year discharge of prisoners in its history. In Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities, Anthony C. Thompson discusses what is likely to happen to these ex-offenders and why.

For Thompson, any discussion of ex-offender reentry is, de facto, a question of race. After laying out the statistics, he identifies the ways in which media and politics have contributed to the problem, especially through stereotyping and racial bias. Well aware of the potential consequences if this country fails to act, Thompson offers concrete, realizable ideas of how our policies could, and should, change.

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.

Over the last decade, the reformed youth justice system has seen increases in the numbers of children and young people in custody, a sharp rise in indeterminate sentences and the continuing deaths of young prisoners. The largest proportion of funding in youth justice at national level is spent on providing places for children and young people remanded and sentenced to custody. The publication of the Youth Crime Action Plan during 2008 and the increasing emphasis on early intervention provides a framework to consider again the interface between local services and secure residential placements. This report brings together contributions from leading experts on young people and criminal justice to critically examine current policy and practice. There are vital questions for both policy and practice on whether the use of custody reduces re-offending or whether other forms of residential placements are more effective long-term. The report looks at current approaches to the sentencing and custody of children and young people, prevention of re-offending and a range of alternative regimes.

This book examines the control of prison disorder through the application of situational crime prevention principles. It spans two subject areas--crime prevention and corrections--and may interest academics as well as practitioners in these fields. On one hand, the book presents a new model of situational prevention that has applications beyond institutions to community settings. On the other, the examination of particular problem behaviors provides a comprehensive review of the prison control literature that does not depend upon a specific interest in situational crime prevention.

This volume makes a case for engaging critical approaches for teaching adults in prison higher education (or "college-in-prison") programs. This book not only contextualizes pedagogy within the specialized and growing niche of prison instruction, but also addresses prison abolition, reentry, and educational equity. Chapters are written by prison instructors, currently incarcerated students, and formerly incarcerated students, providing a variety of perspectives on the many roadblocks and ambitions of teaching and learning in carceral settings. All unapologetic advocates of increasing access to higher education for people in prison, contributors discuss the high stakes of teaching incarcerated individuals and address the dynamics, conditions, and challenges of doing such work. The type of instruction that contributors advocate is transferable beyond prisons to traditional campus settings. Hence, the lessons of this volume will not only support readers in becoming more thoughtful prison educators and program administrators, but also in becoming better teachers who can employ critical, democratic pedagogy in a range of contexts.

A convincing argument that mass incarceration neither reduces crime nor ensures safety Over two million people are incarcerated in America's prisons and jails, eight times as many since 1975. Mandatory minimum sentencing, parole agencies intent on sending people back to prison, three-strike laws, for-profit prisons, and other changes in the legal system have contributed to this spectacular rise of the general prison population. After overseeing the largest city jail system in the country, Michael Jacobson knows first-hand the inner workings of the corrections system. In Downsizing Prisons, he convincingly argues that mass incarceration will not, as many have claimed, reduce crime nor create more public safety. Simply put, throwing away the key is not the answer.