He was a suspected Cold War spy. She became the glamorous KGB double agent in a Bond movie. When a prisoner writes to a movie star, the best he can hope for is a signed photo. But when Alex wrote to the glamorous Fiona Fullerton she was beguiled by the artistry of his letters and poems. In this heartfelt memoir, Fiona Fullerton recalls-for the first time-her 12 year correspondence with Prisoner 789959 Alexander Alexandrowicz -including his wise counsel about her marriage, divorce and career at the forefront of cinema, TV and theatre. Based on their original letters, the narrative is one of contrasts-about a man in the darkest days of his prolonged incarceration and a woman surrounded by the brightest lights of show business. Shocked by his long sentence, Alex protested his innocence and railed against the system, often from solitary confinement-whilst she roamed the world, a celebrity and a nomad. From this unlikely juxtaposition developed the friendship at the centre of this book. The true story of how two people from social extremes forged a 30 year bond of friendship against all odds. It also tells of how they came to rely on each other and the author's search for him after he disappeared. 'Have you ever heard of Nadejda Philaretovna von Meck? She and Tchaikovsky were corresponding for years, they never met-and yet he produced his finest work for her. My finest work shall be for you... It is you alone who has given me strength while I have been in prison, the strength to restore lost and dying hope into burning resolution'. 'Yes, the bond between us will get stronger, Alex. It will never die now. I'll always be here when you need me. I need you too, don't forget, so together we'll muddle through'. Reviews 'What a lovely, lovely book... compelling, gripping, moving, insightful': Erwin James, Guardian correspondent. Author Fiona Fullerton was one of Britain's most well known and versatile actresses, starring in movies, television and West End theatres, holding a high profile media presence for over 20 years. She then became a Property Columnist, writer and property investment guru, reaching a vastly different audience. Foreword Edward Fitzgerald CBE QC is one of the UK's leading lawyers specialising in criminal law, public law and international human rights law. He has featured in many leading cases at home and abroad. He was Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year in 2009, Silk of the Year in 2005 and winner of The Times Justice Human Rights Award in 1998.

The contributors examine the evidence for the effectiveness of prison and programmes in the community aimed at reducing reoffending and some of the claims and counter-claims for whether prison works. The main focus of this book is the high prison population and austere financial climate in England and Wales, the challenges these present for the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) and particularly HM Prison Service, and the emerging evidence of what works in reducing reoffending.

An ideal first source of reference for practitioners, judges, and legal representatives working on any case affecting prisoners, Blackstone's Prison Law Handbook is a complete practical guide to the main areas that give rise to prisoner complaints which include sentence calculation, Independent Adjudications, licence recall, and Parole Board hearings. The Handbook emphasises practical considerations which the practitioner should take into account and refers to the most recent relevant statutory provisions, key domestic and European cases, Prison Service Instructions (PSIs), and Prison Service Orders (PSOs), allowing practitioners to keep up to date in a fast moving area. Blackstone's Prison Law Handbook uses a similar format to Blackstone's Magistrates' Court Handbook with an easy-to-use layout, facilitating quick reading and instant decision-making. Diagrams, flowcharts, and a clear system of icons aid comprehension and speedy navigation. The Handbook also contains cross-references to Blackstone's Criminal Practice for further research.

To date, knowledge of the everyday world of the juvenile correction institution has been extremely sparse. Compassionate Confinement brings to light the challenges and complexities inherent in the U.S. system of juvenile corrections. Building on over a year of field work at a boys' residential facility, Laura S. Abrams and Ben Anderson-Nathe provide a context for contemporary institutions and highlight some of the system's most troubling tensions. This ethnographic text utilizes narratives, observations, and case examples to illustrate the strain between treatment and correctional paradigms and the mixed messages regarding gender identity and masculinity that the youths are expected to navigate. Within this context, the authors use the boys' stories to show various and unexpected pathways toward behavior change. While some residents clearly seized opportunities for self-transformation, others manipulated their way toward release, and faced substantial challenges when they returned home. Compassionate Confinement concludes with recommendations for rehabilitating this notoriously troubled system in light of the experiences of its most vulnerable stakeholders.

"Send Them to Hell" is a horrifying, authentic chronicle of life as lived by foreign inmates over the past two decades in Bangkok's notorious prison system. Murder, human-rights abuse, drugs, prisoner and child sex slavery, blackmail, extortion, extreme violence, medical maltreatment, and unjustifiable death penalties feature as everyday occurrences in the living hells that are Bangkwang and Klong Prem jails. Sebastian Williams has graphically revealed this shocking reality through the eyes of a long-term inmate who has endured at first hand the unimaginable, inhuman nightmare that constitutes the Thai penal system.

Since 2002, the United States has operated military detention facilities at its Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to hold individuals detained during overseas counter-terrorism operations. In 2009, the President directed the closure of these facilities within one year. Since then, a number of statues have prohibited the transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States. This book describes the current Guantanamo Bay detention facilities and infrastructure; examines the DoD corrections facilities and factors to be considered if these facilities were used to hold the detainees; and discusses other security and legal considerations.

What do you reckon to our Prisons? A waste of time - just universities of crime - more like 3* hotels - food better than at home - more drugs on those Landings than on our streets - sentences too short, don't even fit the crime. These people are criminals and should be punished: that should teach them - they are released far too soon and come out worse than they went in. Lock them up and throw away the key. We are safer when they are Inside: we can get on with our lives. So goes the common opinion: include gyms, football fields, TVs and mobile phones and we turn away in disgust. It's much harder if you have been at the receiving end of crime, your heart weighed down with grief or your anger like an imminent volcanic eruption as you scream for justice and revenge.

Understandable: but we must beware lest we lock ourselves up in the high-walled prison of our minds and emotions - throwing away that key.

Both prisons need a rethink before true release and reconciled living are possible. Discipline Inside Jail: - Yes, but cruelty only worsens a situation already bad enough. The facilities that grate with you can work towards change for those who choose that route. You say you feel safer now they' are Inside: the hole they left will soon be filled by others. Do you hope for a peaceful, reconciled life? Not yet, maybe: one day But most of these people will be released back into society: then what?

This book is a must read for anyone connected with prisons, perhaps especially for those who turn a blind eye, a deaf ear - through fear or not realising how redemptive involvement can be.

Originally published as a series on Reality Sandwich and The Huffington Post, Exile Nation is a work of "spiritual journalism" that grapples with the themes of drugs, prisons, politics, and spirituality through Shaw's personal story. In 2005, Shaw was arrested in Chicago for possession of MDMA and was sent to prison for one year. Shaw not only looks at the current prison system and its many destructive flaws, but also at how American culture regards criminals and those who live outside of society. He begins his story at Chicago's Cook County Jail, and uses its sprawling, highly corrupt infrastructure to build upon his overarching argument. This is an insider's look at the forgotten or excluded segments of our society, the disenfranchised lifestyles and subcultures existing in what Shaw calls the "exile nation." They are those who lost some or all of their ability to participate in the full opportunities of society because of an arrest or conviction for a non-violent, drug-related, or "moral" offense, those who cannot participate in the credit economy, and those with lifestyle choices that involve radical politics and sexuality, cognitive liberty, and unorthodox spiritual and healing practices. Together they make up the new "evolutionary counterculture" of the most significant epoch in human history.

Just as consumer demands for mobile devices have risen rapidly, the use of cell phones by prison inmates has grown as the U.S. prison population continues to expand. This use is considered contraband by prison officials. The number of cell phones confiscated by prison officials has dramatically increased in only a few years. This increase in unauthorised cell phone use by inmates is a mounting concern among correctional administrators across the country. This book investigates and examines wireless technology solutions to prevent contraband cell phone use in prisons, such as jamming, managed access, and detection.

Jere Van Dyk was on the wrong side of the border. He and three Afghan guides had crossed into the tribal areas of Pakistan, where no Westerner had ventured for years, hoping to reach the home of a local chieftain by nightfall. But then a dozen armed men in black turbans appeared over the crest of a hill.

"Captive" is Van Dyk's searing account of his forty-five days in a Taliban prison, and it is gripping and terrifying in the tradition of the best prison literature. The main action takes place in a single room, cut off from the outside world, where Van Dyk feels he can trust nobody--not his jailers, not his guides (who he fears may have betrayed him), and certainly not the charismatic Taliban leader whose fleeting appearances carry the hope of redemption as well as the prospect of immediate, violent death.

Van Dyk went to the tribal areas to investigate the challenges facing America there. His story is of a deeper, more personal challenge, an unforgettable tale of human endurance.

IRA Jailbreaks 1918-1921 features the factual accounts of 25 daring rescues, rescue attempts and jailbreaks which raised the morale of nationalist Ireland and brought world-wide ridicule and discredit on the prison and internment camp systems in Britain and Ireland. With stories of their resistance to the degrading criminal code by the political prisoners, the hunger strikes and jail riots, the savage beatings and punishments the prisoners suffered during their incarceration, their accounts offer a window on the world of the men who fought and were imprisoned during the struggle for Ireland's independence. Here is history documented by the men who made it.

'When you are suspended by a rope you can recover, but every time I see a rope I remember. If the light goes out unexpectedly in a room, I am back in my cell.' Binyam Mohamed, Prisoner #1458. For eight years the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba has been home to hundreds of men, all Muslim, all detained in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on suspicion of varying degrees of complicity or intent to carry out acts of terror against American interests. Labelled 'the worst of the worst', most of these men were guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many fell prey to a US military policy of paying bounty money for anyone the Pakistani secret service, border guards or village leaders on both sides of the blurred Afghan-Pakistan border considered a possible or potential 'suspect', thereby becoming currency in the newly defined 'War on Terror'. Held in legal limbo for years and repeatedly interrogated, almost all have been released without charge and only a very few have been tried in the special military commissions set up for the purpose. Guantanamo: If the light goes out illustrates three experiences of home: at Guantanamo naval base, home to the American community; in the camp complex where the detainees have been held; and in the homes where former detainees, never charged with any crime, find themselves trying to rebuild lives. These notions of home are brought together in an unsettling narrative, which evokes the process of disorientation central to the Guantanamo interrogation and incarceration techniques. It also explores the legacy of disturbance such experiences have in the minds and memories of these men.

A unique and telling insight into life in a claustrophobic and sometimes violent atmosphere. An ideal primer on women's issues within the penal system. With 8 pages of colour illustrations.

Follows forty juvenile male offenders, from their first-time admissions to the Ohio system through their incarceration and reentry into the community. The author conducted three lengthy interviews with each of these youth over a period of two and a half years. These interviews bring alive their attitudes and day-to-day prison experiences, as well as the intricate connections between life on the inside and life on the outside. Status is key to everyday life in prison, and it is often played out in demonstrations of masculinity, misogyny, and violence. Some gangs and some ""area codes"" (as the old neighborhoods are called) are seen as tougher than others and are given more respect. Even letters from family members and girlfriends are important signs of whether a prisoner matters: one young man says, ""I'd write letters every day to people to beg 'em to write me back."" Another reports, ""There would be people in there writing girls, saying, hey, write me this nasty letter of things we're going to do and things we did. And they'd write back with these letters. And now he'll get to walk around with his letter bragging, like, hey, check this out. These are the kind of girls I got."" Incarcerated youth also work hard at impression management. Coping with prison requires a young man to present one face to fellow prisoners and another to the authorities who will decide his release date. The author pays substantial attention to the programs youth are offered, including those focusing on education, anger management, job training, and parenting skills. Another section looks at contact between incarcerated youth and the outside world, including a discussion of the impact of incarceration on families. Based on her extensive knowledge of policies in other states, the author also provides a broad overview of the juvenile justice system nationally, describing how the system is organized, administered, and funded. Readers are taken through the juvenile justice process from conviction through parole with special attention paid to new state initiatives and sentencing structures.|Locked Up, Locked Out follows forty juvenile male offenders, from their first-time admissions to the Ohio system through their incarceration and re-entry into the community. The author conducted three lengthy interviews with each of these youth over a period of two and a half years. These interviews bring alive their attitudes and day-to-day prison experiences, as well as the intricate connections between life on the inside and life on the outside. Status is key to everyday life in prison, and it is often played out in demonstrations of masculinity, misogyny, and violence. Some gangs and some ""area codes"" (as the old neighborhoods are called) are seen as tougher than others and are given more respect. Even letters from family members and girlfriends are important signs of whether a prisoner matters: one young man says, ""I'd write letters every day to people to beg 'em to write me back."" Another reports, ""There would be people in there writing girls, saying, hey, write me this nasty letter of things we're going to do and things we did. And they'd write back with these letters. And now he'll get to walk around with his letter bragging, like, hey, check this out. These are the kind of girls I got."" Incarcerated youth also work hard at impression management. Coping with prison requires a young man to present one face to fellow prisoners and another to the authorities who will decide his release date. The author pays substantial attention to the programs youth are offered, including those focusing on education, anger management, job training, and parenting skills. Another section looks at contact between incarcerated youth and the outside world, including a discussion of the impact of incarceration on families. Based on her extensive knowledge of policies in other states, the author also provides a broad overview of the juvenile justice system nationally, describing how the system is organized, administered, and funded. Readers are taken through the juvenile justice process from conviction through parole with special attention paid to new state initiatives and sentencing structures.

Follows forty juvenile male offenders, from their first-time admissions to the Ohio system through their incarceration and reentry into the community. The author conducted three lengthy interviews with each of these youth over a period of two and a half years. These interviews bring alive their attitudes and day-to-day prison experiences, as well as the intricate connections between life on the inside and life on the outside. Status is key to everyday life in prison, and it is often played out in demonstrations of masculinity, misogyny, and violence. Some gangs and some ""area codes"" (as the old neighborhoods are called) are seen as tougher than others and are given more respect. Even letters from family members and girlfriends are important signs of whether a prisoner matters: one young man says, ""I'd write letters every day to people to beg 'em to write me back."" Another reports, ""There would be people in there writing girls, saying, hey, write me this nasty letter of things we're going to do and things we did. And they'd write back with these letters. And now he'll get to walk around with his letter bragging, like, hey, check this out. These are the kind of girls I got."" Incarcerated youth also work hard at impression management. Coping with prison requires a young man to present one face to fellow prisoners and another to the authorities who will decide his release date. The author pays substantial attention to the programs youth are offered, including those focusing on education, anger management, job training, and parenting skills. Another section looks at contact between incarcerated youth and the outside world, including a discussion of the impact of incarceration on families. Based on her extensive knowledge of policies in other states, the author also provides a broad overview of the juvenile justice system nationally, describing how the system is organized, administered, and funded. Readers are taken through the juvenile justice process from conviction through parole with special attention paid to new state initiatives and sentencing structures.|Locked Up, Locked Out follows forty juvenile male offenders, from their first-time admissions to the Ohio system through their incarceration and re-entry into the community. The author conducted three lengthy interviews with each of these youth over a period of two and a half years. These interviews bring alive their attitudes and day-to-day prison experiences, as well as the intricate connections between life on the inside and life on the outside. Status is key to everyday life in prison, and it is often played out in demonstrations of masculinity, misogyny, and violence. Some gangs and some ""area codes"" (as the old neighborhoods are called) are seen as tougher than others and are given more respect. Even letters from family members and girlfriends are important signs of whether a prisoner matters: one young man says, ""I'd write letters every day to people to beg 'em to write me back."" Another reports, ""There would be people in there writing girls, saying, hey, write me this nasty letter of things we're going to do and things we did. And they'd write back with these letters. And now he'll get to walk around with his letter bragging, like, hey, check this out. These are the kind of girls I got."" Incarcerated youth also work hard at impression management. Coping with prison requires a young man to present one face to fellow prisoners and another to the authorities who will decide his release date. The author pays substantial attention to the programs youth are offered, including those focusing on education, anger management, job training, and parenting skills. Another section looks at contact between incarcerated youth and the outside world, including a discussion of the impact of incarceration on families. Based on her extensive knowledge of policies in other states, the author also provides a broad overview of the juvenile justice system nationally, describing how the system is organized, administered, and funded. Readers are taken through the juvenile justice process from conviction through parole with special attention paid to new state initiatives and sentencing structures.

In most countries, problematic drug use is dealt with primarily as a criminal justice issue, rather than a health issue. Accordingly, a large proportion of people in prison have a history of alcohol, tobacco and/or illicit drug use and, despite the best efforts of correctional authorities, some continue to use these substances in prison, often in very risky ways. After release from prison, many relapse to risky substance use, and are at high risk of poor health outcomes, preventable death, or reincarceration. In this edited volume, for the first time we bring together 40 contributors from 10 countries to review what is known about alcohol, tobacco and illicit drug use in people who cycle through prisons, and the harms associated with use of these substances. We consider some evidence-based responses to these harms - both in prison and after return to the community - and discuss their implications for policy reform. This book is international in scope and multi-disciplinary in character. It brings together and integrates the perspectives of public health and addictions researchers, criminologists and correctional leaders, epidemiologists, physicians, and human rights lawyers. Our contributors are unified in their commitment to evidence-informed policy - that is, doing what we know works. An overarching theme pervading all of the chapters is that people who cycle through prisons come from the community, and almost always return to the community. Their health problems are therefore our health problems; in other words, 'prisoner health is public health'.

Women prisoners gain insight and inspiration through their creative reading practices. Drawing on extensive interviews with ninety-four women prisoners, Megan Sweeney examines how incarcerated women use available reading materials to come to terms with their pasts, negotiate their present experiences, and reach toward different futures. Foregrounding the voices of African American women, Sweeney analyzes how prisoners read three popular genres: narratives of victimization, urban crime fiction, and self-help books. She outlines the history of reading and education in U.S. prisons, highlighting how the increasing dehumanization of prisoners has resulted in diminished prison libraries and restricted opportunities for reading. Although penal officials have sometimes endorsed reading as a means to control prisoners, Sweeney illuminates the resourceful ways in which prisoners educate and empower themselves through reading. Given the scarcity of counseling and education in prisons, Sweeney argues that women use books to make meaning from their experiences, to gain guidance and support, to experiment with new ways of being, and to maintain connections with the world.

The No.1 Bestseller! 'I was a very vulnerable young woman with three small children. I was lost ... Pat Quirke tried to come in and control everything' Bobby Ryan's disappearance in rural Tipperary in June 2011 mystified all who knew him. The truck-driver and part-time DJ (known as Mr Moonlight) was an easy-going fellow with no enemies. Or so everyone thought. When Ryan's body was found 22 months later on the farm of Mary Lowry, the wealthy young widow he had been seeing, it was clear that he had met a violent end. And the most likely person to have brought about that end? Pat Quirke, the man who had 'discovered' the body - Mary Lowry's brother-in-law, financial advisor, tenant and one-time lover. Following the longest running murder trial in Irish criminal history Quirke was convicted of murder in May 2019. Getting to that day had taken years of exhaustive work by gardai. The Murder of Mr Moonlight is the definitive account of their investigation as well as the compelling story of how an innocent man paid the price for another man's obsessions. Catherine Fegan, Irish Journalist of the Year (2017), and Chief Correspondent at the Irish Daily Mail, covered every day of Quirke's trial. Over many months she also conducted interviews in Tipperary and further afield. She has written an extraordinary insightful and meticulous account of the case that gripped the nation. '[An] excellent book that shows all the colours of the story that intrigued the nation' Irish Daily Mail 'Well-researched and highly readable ... Fegan proves her journalistic mettle, delivering forensic detail in accessible language ... Anyone who followed the trial will not be disappointed by Fegan's book' Sunday Business Post 'Absolutely compulsive reading (as I know because my wife wouldn't let me anywhere near it - but I did get it in the end!) ... a page-turner' Eamon Dunphy, The Stand

The penitentiary at Deer Lodge, established in 1870, was Montana Territory's first federal facility. In 1889 it became a state penal institution and served in that capacity until 1979. Under the direction of the long serving (1893-1921) and controversial warden Frank Conley, prison laborers built most of the buildings that visitors see today. These buildings bear the marks of a violent history: bazooka scars mar the tower where prisoners holed up during the infamous riot of 1959 and an inmate's delicate stenciling oddly adorns the room where the two riot masterminds died.

In a collaborative documentary of the legendary prison, historian Ellen Baumler tells the physical and human tale of the troubled institution whose idyllic setting contrasts so violently with the history it holds. J. M. Cooper's detailed photographs of the prison's interiors and exteriors combine with historic images to illustrate the stories of the people who lived--and sometimes died--within its walls.

Prisons are on the increase from the United States to China, as ever-larger proportions of humanity find themselves behind bars. While prisons now span the world, we know little about their history in global perspective. Rather than interpreting the prison's proliferation as the predictable result of globalization, Cultures of Confinement underlines the fact that the prison was never simply imposed by colonial powers or copied by elites eager to emulate the West, but was reinvented and transformed by a host of local factors, its success being dependent on its very flexibility. Complex cultural negotiations took place in encounters between different parts of the world, and rather than assigning a passive role to Latin America, Asia, and Africa, the authors of this book point out the acts of resistance or appropriation that altered the social practices associated with confinement. The prison, in short, was understood in culturally specific ways and reinvented in a variety of local contexts examined here for the first time in global perspective.

Norman Parker spent twenty-five years of his life in a high security Category A prison. Convicted of murder and manslaughter in the 1970s, he was sentenced to life at the notorious Parkhurst Prison. An institution filled with the most sinister and violent criminals, Parkhurst is certainly not for the faint-hearted. Norman Parker has certainly seen a lot during his time on the inside, and this is his complete collection of tales from behind the bars. During his gruelling years on the inside, he encountered some of the highest-profile criminals in Britain, from the Kray twins to the Great Train Robbers. With so many dangerous characters, and their deep and dark pasts, there are plenty of stories to tell. From a real-life Hannibal Lector and his murderous cannibal past to a petty thief whose experiences in prison turned him into a brutal and cold-hearted killer. The IRA bomber who deems theft as morally wrong and Vic, a loose cannon who proved that prison was no safer than the outside world as inmates feared for their lives. "The Complete Parkhurst Tales" is a shockingly powerful and intimate portrayal of the prison system is filled with Norman Parker's sharp intelligence and witty observations on every aspect of the secret world in one of Britain's toughest jails.

Leading edge information and ideas from two of the UK's most respected practitioners and authorities. A handbook for people who want to make a difference when working with prisoners. It suggests the tools for this and offers guidance - and is wholly up to speed with what is happening in UK prisons. * Essential reading for every RJ practitioner and student * One of the most important penal reform books for years - Part of a major initiative across UK prisons * Designed to be used in conjunction with the free toolkits available for download from www.WatersidePress.co.uk/RJTools Restorative Justice in Prisons was launched at Brixton Prison in 2006. Prison as an institution is sometimes taken to represent the opposite of restorative justice. The culture of prisons includes coercion, highly structured and controlled regimes, banishment achieved through physical separation, and blame and punishment - whereas restorative justice values empowerment, voluntarism, respect, and treating people as individuals. Recent developments in some prisons demonstrate a far more welcoming environment for restorative work. Examples such as reaching out to victims of crime, providing prisoners with a range of opportunities to make amends and experimenting with mediation in response to conflicts within prisons show that it is possible to implement restorative justice principles in everyday prison activities. Guided by restorative justice, prisons can become places of healing and personal transformation, serving the community as well as those directly affected by crime: victims and offenders. This new book advocates the further expansion of restorative justice in prisons. Building on a widespread interest in the concept and its potential, the authors have produced a guide to enable prisons and the practitioners who work in and with them to translate the theory into action. Reviews 'This book is evidence that restorative approaches have much to offer the prison services in seeking to make their operations effective in meeting prisoner and public needs ...It successfully translates theory into practice and provides a model for organisational and cultural change in prisons': International Review of Victimology 'What strikes you as you read through this text is the sheer simplicity with which Edgar and Newell have captured the changes that are so apparently needed in the prison system today': Andy Bain, Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth

The Criminals of Lima and Their Worlds is the first major historical study of the creation and development of the prison system in Peru. Carlos Aguirre examines the evolution of prisons for male criminals in Lima from the conception-in the early 1850s-of the initial plans to build penitentiaries through the early-twentieth-century prison reforms undertaken as part of President Augusto Leguia's attempts to modernize and expand the Peruvian state. Aguirre reconstructs the social, cultural, and doctrinal influences that determined how lawbreakers were treated, how programs of prison reform fared, and how inmates experienced incarceration. He argues that the Peruvian prisons were primarily used not to combat crime or to rehabilitate allegedly deviant individuals, but rather to help reproduce and maintain an essentially unjust social order. In this sense, he finds that the prison system embodied the contradictory and exclusionary nature of modernization in Peru.Drawing on a large collection of prison and administrative records archived at Peru's Ministry of Justice, Aguirre offers a detailed account of the daily lives of men incarcerated in Lima's jails. In showing the extent to which the prisoners actively sought to influence prison life, he reveals the dynamic between prisoners and guards as a process of negotiation, accommodation, and resistance. He describes how police and the Peruvian state defined criminality and how their efforts to base a prison system on the latest scientific theories-imported from Europe and the United States-foundered on the shoals of financial constraints, administrative incompetence, corruption, and widespread public indifference. Locating his findings within the political and social mores of Lima society, Aguirre reflects on the connections between punishment, modernization, and authoritarian traditions in Peru.

Behind the Walls is a detailed description of the world's largest prison system by a long-time convict trained as an observer and reporter. It spotlights the day-to-day workings of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice -- what's good, what's bad, which programs work and which ones do not, and examines if practice really follows official policy.

Written to inform about the processes, services, activities, issues, and problems of being incarcerated, this book is invaluable to anyone who has a relative or friend incarcerated in Texas, or for those who want to understand how prisoners live, eat, work, play, and die in a contemporary U.S. prison.

Containing a short history of Texas prisons and advice on how to help inmates get out and stay out of prison, this book is the only one of its kind -- written by a convict still incarcerated and dedicated to dispelling the ignorance and fear that shroud Texas prisons. Renaud discusses living quarters, food, and clothing, along with how prisoners handle money, mail, visits, and phone calls. He explores the issues of drugs, racism, gangs, and violence as well as what an inmate can learn about his parole, custody levels, and how to handle emergencies. What opportunities are available for education? What is the official policy for discipline? What is a lockdown? These questions and many others are answered in this one-of-a-kind guide.