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.

The imprisonment rate in America has grown by a factor of five since 1972. In that time, punishment policies have toughened, compassion for prisoners has diminished, and prisons have gotten worse-a stark contrast to the origins of the prison 200 years ago as a humanitarian reform, a substitute for capital and corporal punishment and banishment. So what went wrong? How can prisons be made simultaneously more effective and more humane? Who should be sent there in the first place? What should happen to them while they are inside? When, how, and under what conditions should they be released?
The Future of Imprisonment unites some of the leading prisons and penal policy scholars of our time to address these fundamental questions. Inspired by the work of Norval Morris, the contributors look back to the past twenty-five years of penal policy in an effort to look forward to the prison's twenty-first century future. Their essays examine the effects of current high levels of imprisonment on urban neighborhoods and the people who live in them. They reveal how current policies came to be as they are and explain the theories of punishment that guide imprisonment decisions. Finally, the contributors argue for the strategic importance of controls on punishment including imprisonment as a limit on government power; chart the rise and fall of efforts to improve conditions inside; analyze the theory and practice of prison release; and evaluate the tricky science of predicting and preventing recidivism.
A definitive guide to imprisonment policies for the future, this volume convincingly demonstrates how we can prevent crime more effectively at lower economic and human cost.

Prison, Inc. provides a first-hand account of life behind bars in a controversial new type of prison facility: the private prison. These for-profit prisons are becoming increasingly popular as state budgets get tighter. Yet as privatization is seen as a necessary and cost-saving measure, not much is known about how these facilities are run and whether or not they can effectively watch over this difficult and dangerous population. For the first time, Prison, Inc. provides a look inside one of these private prisons as told through the eyes of an actual inmate, K.C. Carceral who has been in the prison system for over twenty years.

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the role of the prison as a source of political ideas and site of political engagement, as well as in the prisoner's quest for citizenship. The rising number of prisoners has increased fiscal burdens, which has meant that imprisonment has become a more important political issue. There is also greater interest in the prison as a site of political activism and in the generation of radical political ideas within the prison context and the formation of political networks within prison which extend beyond the prison walls. This book considers the prison as a site of political protest, discusses the quest for citizenship and the denial or negation of citizenship in prison, examines the discovery of politics in prison and the role of the prison in increasing political awareness, explores the treatment of political prisoners and reflects on the prisoner as a political problem for politicians negotiating pressures from the media and the public when addressing prisoners' demands. Drawing on a range of contemporary and historical topics such as prison riots, radicalisation and the denial of voting rights, and including discussion of cases from the UK, US and Russia, this book examines the prison as a political institution and as a site of both politicisation and political protest. This book will be of interest to students and academics engaged with prisons, penology, punishment and corrections.

Convict Maids looks at female convicts transported from Britain and Ireland to New South Wales between 1826 and 1840. Deborah Oxley refutes the notion that these women were prostitutes and criminals, arguing that in fact they helped put the colony on its feet. Analyzing their backgrounds, Oxley finds that they were skilled, literate, young and healthy--qualities exploited by the new colony. Convict Maids draws on historical, economic and feminist theory, and is impressive for its extensive and original research.

AS SEEN ON BBC BREAKFAST Step inside one of Britain's most renowned prisons... During her time as a prison teacher Mim Skinner met people from all walks of life - what united them, was that they had committed a serious crime. But Mim's job was not to judge them, it was to teach. In this compelling, inspirational memoir Mim takes you behind the bars. From drugs and violence to pregnancy and heartbreak, Mim's classroom saw it all. With high drama but also candid humour The Prison Teacher is full of eye-opening stories of those without a voice, revealing the human side of our country's most controversial institution. 'Shocking, poignant and darkly funny' Woman & Home 'Full of nitty-gritty details of life inside' The Guardian 'Humbling, hopeful and wryly hilarious' The Herald 'Very real and powerful account' Kate Paradine, CEO of Women in Prison 'A humane, sometimes humorous, and always perceptive account of prison life' Ken Loach 'Very funny and important' Pandora Sykes, co-host The High Low Show A STYLIST NON-FICTION BOOK OF YEAR 2020

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"An important and significant contribution. . . . A study of the social construction of gender and how culture and agency influence the meaning of work . . ., vivid and compelling."
--"American Journal of Sociology"

When most people think of prisons, they imagine chaos, violence, and fundamentally, an atmosphere of overwhelming brute masculinity. But real prisons rarely fit the "Big House" stereotype of popular film and literature. One fifth of all correctional officers are women, and the rate at which women are imprisoned is growing faster than that of men. Yet, despite increasing numbers of women prisoners and officers, ideas about prison life and prison work are sill dominated by an exaggerated image of men's prisons where inmates supposedly struggle for physical dominance.

In a rare comparative analysis of men's and women's prisons, Dana Britton identifies the factors that influence the gendering of the American workplace, a process that often leaves women in lower-paying jobs with less prestige and responsibility.

In interviews with dozens of male and female officers in five prisons, Britton explains how gender shapes their day-to-day work experiences. Combining criminology, penology, and feminist theory, she offers a radical new argument for the persistence of gender inequality in prisons and other organizations. At Work in the Iron Cage demonstrates the importance of the prison as a site of gender relations as well as social control.

This book explores the growing importance of prisons, both lay and ecclesiastical, in western Europe between 1000 and 1300. It attempts to explain what captors hoped to achieve by restricting the liberty of others, the means of confinement available to them, and why there was an increasingly close link between captivity and suspected criminal activity. It discusses conditions within prisons, the means of release open to some captives, and writing in or about prison.

Power on the Inside is the first book to examine the historical development of prison gangs worldwide, from those that emerged inside mid-nineteenth-century Neapolitan prisons to the new generation of younger inmates challenging the status quo within gang subcultures today. Historian-criminologist Mitchel P. Roth examines prison gangs throughout the world, from the Americas, Oceania, and South Africa to Southeast Asia, Europe, and beyond. The book examines the many variables that influence the evolution of prison subcultures, from colonialism and population demographics to prison architecture and staff-prisoner relations. Power on the Inside features eighty historical and contemporary images and will inform professionals in the field as well as general readers who want to know more about the realities of prison gangs today.

Shadowboxing is an explosive analysis of the history and practice of black feminisms. Joy James charts new territory by synthesizing theories of social movements with cultural and identity politics. She brings into the spotlight images of black female agency and intellectualism in radical and anti-radical political contexts, challenging us to rethink our understanding of the changing African presence in American culture. From a comparative look at Ida B. Wells, Ella Baker, Angela Davis, and Assata Shakur to analyses of the black woman in white cinema and the black man in feminist coalitions, she focuses attention on the invisible or the forgotten. James convincingly demonstrates how images of powerful women are either consigned to oblivion or transformed into icons robbed of intellectual power. Shadowboxing honors and analyzes the work of black activists and intellectuals and redefines the sharp divide between intellectual work and political movements.

"Startling."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Unusually intimate and powerful."
--New York Times

"A slim volume of indelible impressions. . . . Highly recommended."
--Library Journal

"Gripping. . . . I could not put this book down."
--Jimmy Breslin

"Masterfully opens pathways for thought."
--The Nation

"If the initial response to Christianson's book and exhibit are any indication, Condemned may further erode support for capital punishment."
--Village Voice

"The important achievement of Condemned is not in theorizing about the death penalty . . . it is in forcing the reader to look at it up close and thus get a firmer sense of what it really, truly is. If you favor the death penalty, you ought to know exactly what it is you favor. Based on the book, I will tell you this: It is a horror."
--Scripps Howard News Service

"This is a rare book-haunting fragments from the lives of men and women on their way to the electric chair. A moving and troubling epitaph for the guilty and perhaps the innocent."
"--William Kennedy, author of Ironweed"

In the annals of American criminal justice, two prisons stand out as icons of institutionalized brutality and deprivation: Alcatraz and Sing Sing. In the 70 odd years before 1963, when the death sentence was declared unconstitutional in New York, Sing Sing was the site of almost one-half of the 1,353 executions carried out in the state. More people were executed at Sing Sing than at any other American prison, yet Sing Sing's death house was, to a remarkable extent, one of the most closed, secret and mythologized places in modern America.

In this remarkable book, based on recently revealed archivalmaterials, Scott Christianson takes us on a disturbing and poignant tour of Sing Sing's legendary death house, and introduces us to those whose lives Sing Sing claimed. Within the dusty files were mug shots of each newly arrived prisoner, most still wearing the out-to-court clothes they had on earlier that day when they learned their verdict and were sentenced to death. It is these sometimes bewildered, sometimes defiant, faces that fill the pages of Condemned, along with the documents of their last months at Sing Sing.

The reader follows prisoners from their introduction to the rules of Sing Sing, through their contact with guards and psychiatrists, their pleas for clemency, escape attempts, resistance, and their final letters and messages before being put to death. We meet the mother of five accused of killing her husband, the two young Chinese men accused of a murder during a robbery and the drifter who doesn't remember killing at all. While the majority of inmates are everyday people, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were also executed here, as were the major figures in the infamous Murder Inc., forerunner of the American mafia. Page upon page, Condemned leaves an indelible impression of humanity and suffering.

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 study explores the pre-history of Irish convict transportation to New South Wales which began with the Queen in April 1791. It traces earlier attempts to revive the trans-Atlantic convict trade and the frustrated efforts by Irish authorities to join in the Botany Bay scheme after 1786. The nine Irish shipments to North America and the West Indies are described in detail for the first time, including the dramatic outcomes in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and the Leeward Islands which eventually forced the Home Office to find space for Irish convicts on the Third Fleet. These events are related against the background of Dublin's burgeoning crime rate in the 1780s, the critical insecurity of its prison system and the troubled political relationship between Ireland and Britain.

Prisons today contain large proportions of drug users. Drug Use and Prisons provides the first comprehensive account of patterns of drug use and risk behaviours in prisons, and of the different responses to this feature of prison life. Experts from Europe, North and South America, Africa and Australia, from a variety of professional backgrounds, provide an international perspective on this ongoing problem.

In the past, prisoners were one of the 'hidden populations' of drug users. But with increasing recognition of the potential for the prison setting to act as a conduit for HIV and transmission within the prisoner population and thence into the community, failure to face this prospect is no longer an option for public health researchers or policymakers, nor for those working in the prison system.

This work offers an analysis of the penal control of women at the end of the 20th century. The author develops many of the themes of her previous work, while introducing concepts such as "gender testing", and "ameliorative justice". Using the words and views of both staff and inmates of the women's prisons, Carlen presents a powerful case for both a quantitative and qualitative reduction in women's imprisonment.

"Torture has ceased to exist," Victor Hugo claimed, with some justification, in 1874. Yet more than a century later, torture is used routinely in one out of every three countries. This book is about torture in Western society from earliest times to the present. A landmark study since its original publication a decade ago, Torture is now available in an expanded and updated paperback edition. Included for the first time is a broad and disturbing selection of documents charting the historical practice of torture from the ancient Romans to the Khmer Rouge.

"Provocative and insightful. . . . With the publication of this excellent work, Pisciotta has established himself as one of the most important of the prison historians to whom we should listen in the future."
--"The Criminologist"

""Benevolent Repression" fills a maor gap in our histories of U.S. prisons--disregard for the network of men's reformatories. It seems incredible that, until now, historians neglected such a large and influential branch of the prison system. Pisciotta more than makes up for the lapse, however, with this informative and valuable study."
--Nicole Rafter
Author of "Partial Justice: Women, Prisons and Social Control"

"Pisciotta's study is a major contribution to the history of crime and punishment in America. His extensive research on the origins and development of reformatories challenges the accepted interpretation that these institutions had a reformative influence on the corrections system. This work sets the stage for a revised understanding of the institutionalization movement in uvenile corrections."
--John A. Conley, Professor and Chair of Criminal Justice, State University College at Buffalo

The opening, in 1876, of the Elmira Reformatory marked the birth of the American adult reformatory movement and the introduction of a new approach to crime and the treatment of criminals. Hailed as a reform panacea and the humane solution to America's ongoing crisis of crime and social disorder, Elmira sparked an ideological revolution. Repression and punishment were supposedly out. Academic and vocational education, military drill, indeterminate sentencing and parole--"benevolent reform"--were now considered instrumental to instilling inprisoners a respect for God, law, and capitalism.

Not so, says Al Pisciotta, in this highly original, startling, and revealing work. Drawing upon previously unexamined sources from over a half-dozen states and a decade of research, Pisciotta explodes the myth that Elmira and other institutions of "the new penology" represented a significant advance in the treatment of criminals and youthful offenders.

The much-touted programs failed to achieve their goals; instead, prisoners, under Superintendent Zebulon Brockway, considered the Father of American Corrections, were whipped with rubber hoses and two-foot leather straps, restricted to bread and water in dark dungeons during months of solitary confinement, and brutally subjected to a wide range of other draconian psychological and physical abuses intended to pound them into submission. Escapes, riots, violence, drugs, suicide, arson, and rape were the order of the day in these prisons, hardly conducive to the transformation of "dangerous criminal classes into Christian gentleman," as was claimed. Reflecting the racism and sexism in the social order in general, the new penology also legitimized the repression of the lower classes.

Highlighting the disparity between promise and practice in America's prisons, Pisciotta draws on seven inmate case histories to illustrate convincingly that the "March of Progress" was nothing more than a reversion to the ways of old. In short, the adult reformatory movement promised benevolent reform but delivered benevolent repression--a pattern that continues to this day.

A vital contribution to the history of crime, corrections, and criminal justice, this book will also have a major impact on ourthinking about contemporary corrections and issues surrounding crime, punishment, and social control.

A collection of original articles from a number of the world's leading authorities on imprisonment. The aim of the book is to review the current state of imprisonment around the world and to look at possible future developments. The underlying theme of the book is that imprisonment is undergoing a significant change in a number of different countries and that there are important lessons which can be learned from the analysis of these changes. At the same time this book is perceived as a 'state of the art' collection which provides an informed and comprehensive analysis of the major aspects of imprisonment. Consequently the book should be of interest to a wide-ranging international audience of academic researchers and policy-makers as well as students.

This is a history of the California prison movement from 1950 to 1980, focusing on the San Francisco Bay Area's San Quentin State Prison and highlighting the role that prison reading and writing played in the creation of radical inmate ideology in those years. The book begins with the Caryl Chessman years (1948-60) and closes with the trial of the San Quentin Six (1975-76) and the passage of California's Determinate Sentencing Law (1977). This was an extraordinary era in the California prisons, one that saw the emergence of a highly developed radical convict resistance movement inside prison walls. This inmate groundswell was fueled at times by remarkable individual prisoners, at other times by groups like the Black Muslims or the San Quentin chapter of the Black Panther Party. But most often resistance grew from much wider sources and in quiet corners: from dozens of political study groups throughout the prison; from an underground San Quentin newspaper; and from covert attempts to organize a prisoners' union. The book traces the rise and fall of the prisoners' movement, ending with the inevitably bloody confrontation between prisoners and the state and the subsequent prison administration crackdown. The author examines the efforts of prison staff to augment other methods of inmate management by attempting to modify convict ideology by means of "bibliotherapy" and communication control, and describes convict resistance to these attempts as control. He also discusses how Bay Area political activists became intensely involved in San Quentin and how such writings as Chessman's Cell 2455, Cleaver's Soul on Ice, and Jackson's Soledad Brother reached far beyond prison walls to influence opinion, events, and policy.

Across the country prisons are jammed to capacity and, in extreme cases, barges and mobile homes are used to stem the overflow. Probation officers in some cities have caseloads of 200 and more--hardly a manageable number of offenders to track and supervise. And with about one million people in prison and jail, and two and a half million on probation, it is clear we are experiencing a crisis in our penal system.

In Between Prison and Probation, Norval Morris and Michael Tonry, two of the nation's leading criminologists, offer an important and timely strategy for alleviating these problems. They argue that our overwhelmed corrections system cannot cope with the flow of convicted offenders because the two extremes of punishment--imprisonment and probation--are both used excessively, with a near-vacuum of useful punishments in between. Morris and Tonry propose instead a comprehensive program that relies on a range of punishment including fines and other financial sanctions, community service, house arrest, intensive probation, closely supervised treatment programs for drugs, alcohol and mental illness, and electronic monitoring of movement. Used in rational combinations, these "intermediate" punishments would better serve the community than our present polarised choice. Serious consideration of these punishments has been hindered by the widespread perception that they are therapeutic rather than punitive. The reality, however, Morris and Tonry argue, "is that the American criminal justice system is both too severe and too lenient--almost randomly." Systematically implemented and rigorously enforced, intermediate punishments can "better and more economically serve the community, the victim, and the criminal than the prison terms and probation orders they supplant."

Between Prison and Probation goes beyond mere advocacy of an increasing use of interdediate punishments; the book also addresses the difficult task of fitting these punishments into a comprehensive, fair and community-protective sentencing system.

Prisons have a very distinctive environment, one in which particular psychological problems occur with exaggerated frequency and intensity. If prison staff are to work effectively they must be aware of the influence of this unique environment upon the behaviour of those who inhabit it. This book argues that by applying psychological principles the behaviour of prisons can be better understood, and violence, distress and stress can be limited. The authors show how psychology can be used to increase our understanding of prisoners, how they became involved in crime, and how they adapt to prison life. They explain how psychology can be used and applied to make for more effective day-to-day dealing with prisoners. The authors focus on key areas of tension and particular problem groups, including sex offenders, violent offenders and the issue of AIDS. But the book also considers the effect that working in a prison has on its staff and explores how they can use psychological principles both to reduce the level of stress they undergo in their work and to secure the prisoners' mental well being.

In this work, the author reveals the hidden world of the laogai - the PRC's labour reform camps. The author, a political prisoner for 19 years, takes the reader through the harsh reality found in the camps, describing their ideological origins, complex structures and living conditions. What makes the PRC's laogai unique, according to Wu, is the essential contribution to China's GNP of the commodities produced by the prisoners and the camps' concomitant indispensability to the nation's economic health.

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.

In the archives of the Memorial International Human Rights Centre in Moscow is an extraordinary diary, a rare first-person testimony of a commander of guards in a Soviet labour camp. Ivan Chistyakov was sent to the Gulag in 1937, where he worked at the Baikal-Amur Corrective Labour Camp for over a year. Life at the Gulag was anathema to Chistyakov, a cultured Muscovite with a nostalgia for pre-revolutionary Russia, and an amateur painter and poet. He recorded its horrors with an unmatchable immediacy, documenting a world where petty rivalries put lives at risk, prisoners hacked off their fingers to bet in card games, railway sleepers were burned for firewood and Siberian winds froze the lather on the soap. From his stumbling poetic musings on the bitter landscape to his matter-of-fact grumbles about his stove, from accounts of the conditions of the camp to reflections on the cruelty of loneliness, this diary is unique - a visceral and immediate description of a place and time whose repercussions still affect the shape of modern Russia.