Having gained unique access to California prisoners and corrections officials and to thousands of prisoners' written grievances and institutional responses, Kitty Calavita and Valerie Jenness take us inside one of the most significant, yet largely invisible, institutions in the United States. Drawing on sometimes startlingly candid interviews with prisoners and prison staff, as well as on official records, the authors walk us through the byzantine grievance process, which begins with prisoners filing claims and ends after four levels of review, with corrections officials usually denying requests for remedies. Appealing to Justice is both an unprecedented study of disputing in an extremely asymmetrical setting and a rare glimpse of daily life inside this most closed of institutions. Quoting extensively from their interviews with prisoners and officials, the authors give voice to those who are almost never heard from. These voices unsettle conventional wisdoms within the sociological literature for example, about the reluctance of vulnerable and/or stigmatized populations to name injuries and file claims, and about the relentlessly adversarial subjectivities of prisoners and correctional officials and they do so with striking poignancy. Ultimately, Appealing to Justice reveals a system fraught with impediments and dilemmas, which delivers neither justice, nor efficiency, nor constitutional conditions of confinement.

This collection includes a kaleidoscope of voices and perspectives from prisoners, former prisoners, scholars, and activists to examine the extraordinarily invisible and closed system of incarceration that characterizes the massive U.S. prison industry. The book explores in multiple ways, the role of writing in carceral settings, including material realities, ethics, and social justice. It is a book about the power of writing as well as its limits. It is a book that celebrates and critiques, challenges, and reveals. It is a book that, like the writing of incarcerated women, repays careful reading.

Cries for Help opens a window on the closed world of Holloway, other women's prisons and the lives of those held there in the 1970s. This was an era when personal style and charismatic leadership was the order of the day for governors and prison officers, before ideas of 'new management', when problems were solved using personal initiatives. It catalogues the daily lives of women prisoners, their anxieties, fears and preoccupations. The book looks at a lost segment of the population, hundreds of women who were hidden from view, lacking a voice, part of a system for men that hardly knew what to do with them. It contains stories about murderers and other serious offenders and looks at their personal correspondence, including that of moors murderer Myra Hindley.

Confessions of a Prison Chaplain explains the 'lifeline' provided by the work of the prison chaplaincy. Written by a Quaker chaplain (but equally compelling for all faith groups), it shows how important to prisoners contact can be - how chaplains fit into the ever-pressing world of prison regimes. Among the diverse topics covered are Christmas in prison, death in prison (or of a loved one on the outside) and learning in prison - as well as restorative justice (which is in line with the teachings of various faiths: as old as religion itself). As the author writes, prisoners are 'Children of God' no matter what their crime, how petty, serious or heinous. How to deal with those whose crimes are so distressing as to challenge this idea is also a feature of the book. It contains a chapter on life-sentence prisoners, those with only a distant and in some cases forlorn hope of release as well as telling the stories of individual prisoners, their time in prison and the 'calming' role of the chaplain when contrasted with the security pre-occupations and rule dominated routines of governors and prison officers. With a Foreword by Juliet Lyon, Director of the Prison Reform Trust, General Secretary of Prison Reform International and one of the UK's leading commentators on penal matters.

Informative, entertaining, against the grain, Her Majesty's Philosophers highlights the artificiality of prison life. By a Guardian correspondent (and with extracts to be published in that newspaper) this book is set to be a penal affairs classic which every student of crime and punishment should read. Building on his Guardian pieces about teaching Philosophy in prison, this is Alan Smith's account in extensio. From introducing Plato to ever-changing groups of hard-nosed prisoners to them wrestling with Bentham, Phillip Larkin and Shakespeare, it is packed with insights and unexpected turns. It paints a picture in which worlds collide and conventional thinking is turned inside out as 'new modes of discourse' change the men's thinking and ideas. At times surreal the book brings fresh perspectives to the minutiae of prison life: survival, coping, soap, teabags, cell mates, the constant noise and immediacy. And needless to say, the men come up with philosophical gems of their own. Her Majesty' Philosophers is also about isolation, the long hours, knockbacks and the emotional mutilation of imprisonment; and whilst philosophy is 'soft and fluffy' it contrasts starkly with the pragmatic world of prison officers, for whom the Holy Grail is Security, Keys and Prison Craft. The book charts how learning changes lives, especially for prisoners who missed out on formal education, who - once motivated - become voracious readers and extraordinary students. It demonstrates more than any official report the value of a wider agenda than Basic Skills. Prisons have been labelled 'Universities of Crime', but colleges are increasingly populated by those who began their studies in a prison cell. In a book packed with wisdom and humour the author laments the fact that prison policy means that this is becoming a far less easy step.

A revelatory and necessary survival memoir of five years of illegal detainment and torture in Guantanamo Bay

On September 11, 2001, in a cafe in London, Ahmed Errachidi watched as the twin towers collapsed. He was appalled by the loss of innocent life. But he couldn't possibly have predicted how much of his own life he too would lose because of that day. In a series of terrible events, Ahmed was sold by the Pakistanis to the Americans in the diplomatic lounge at Islamabad airport and spent five and a half years in Guantanamo. There, he was beaten, tortured, humiliated, and very nearly destroyed. But Ahmed did not give in. This very ordinary, Moroccan-born London chef became a leader of men. Known by the authorities as The General, he devised protests and resistance by any means possible. As a result, he spent most of his time in solitary confinement. But then, after all those years, Ahmed was freed, his innocence admitted. This is Ahmed's story. It will make readers rethink what it means to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It will also make readers look anew at courage, survival, justice, and the War on Terror.

In America, 2.3 million people-a population about the size of Houston's, the country's fourth-largest city-live behind bars. Sick Justice explores the economic, social, and political forces that hijacked the criminal justice system to create this bizarre situation. Presenting frightening true stories of (sometimes wrongfully) incarcerated individuals, Ivan G. Goldman exposes the inept bureaucracies of America's prisons and shows the real reasons that disproportionate numbers of minorities, the poor, and the mentally ill end up there. Goldman dissects the widespread phenomenon of jailing for profit, the outsized power of prison guards'unions, California's exceptionally rigid three-strikes law, the ineffective and never-ending war on drugs, the closing of mental health institutions across the country, and other blunders and avaricious practices that have brought us to this point. Sick Justice tells a big, gripping story that's long overdue. By illuminating the system's brutality and greed and the prisoners'gratuitous suffering, the book aims to be a catalyst for reform, complementing the work of the Innocence Project and mirroring the effects of Michael Harrington's The Other America: Poverty in the United States (1962), which became the driving force behind the war on poverty. About the Author IVAN G. GOLDMAN is the New York Times-best-selling author of four novels, including Isaac: A Modern Fable (The Permanent Press, 2012), and one nonfiction book, L.A. Secret Police: Inside the LAPD Elite Spy Network, with Mike Rothmiller (Pocket, 1992), a book that prompted the department to padlock its intelligence division. He has covered Congress for the Washington Post, worked the national and foreign desks of the Los Angeles Times, and was an editorial writer for the Seattle Post- Intelligencer. His articles have appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times, and he blogs about current events at www.ivangoldman.blogspot.com. He lives in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

Since the early 1980s, there has been a historically unprecedented increase in the federal prison population. Some of the growth is attributable to changes in federal criminal justice policy during the previous three decades. An issue before Congress is whether policy makers consider the rate of growth in the federal prison population sustainable, and if not, what changes could be made to federal criminal justice policy to reduce the prison population while maintaining public safety. This book explores the issues related to the growing federal prison population, with a focus on the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) operations and budget; federal mandatory minimum sentences; maximum fines and terms of imprisonment for violation of the Federal Controlled Substances Act and related laws; and a statistics report of prisoners in 2011 from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

This interdisciplinary volume of essays studies human rights in political prison literature, while probing the intersections of suffering, politics, and aesthetics in an interliterary and intercultural context. As the first book to explore the concept of global aesthetics in political prison narratives, it demonstrates how literary insight enhances the study of human rights. Covering varied geographical and geopolitical regions, this collection encourages comparative analyses and cross-cultural understanding. Seeking to interrogate linguistic, structural, and cultural constructions of the political prison experience, it highlights the literary aspects without losing sight of the political and the theoretical. The contributors cross various disciplinary boundaries and adopt different interpretive perspectives in analyzing prison narratives, especially memoirs, from such diverse countries as China, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Romania, Russia, Uruguay, and the U.S. The volume emphasizes the literary works produced since the second half of the twentieth century, particularly since the political seismic shift in 1989. The authors treated range from the canonical to the less well-known: Nawal El Saadawi, Varlam Shalamov, Zhang Xianliang, Cong Weixi, Wumingshi, Carlos Liscano, Fatna El Bouih, Nabil Sulayman, Faraj Bayraqdar, Hasiba 'Abdalrahman, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Nicolae Steinhardt, Irina Ratushinskaya, etc. Critical issues investigated include how the writers represent their sufferings, experiences, and emotions during incarceration; their strategies of survival; and how political prison literature can reveal hidden violations of human rights, while resisting official discourse and serving other functions in society. Examining the commonalities and differences in global experiences of imprisonment, the eight chapters engage with the aesthetics of self-making and resistance, individual and collective memory, denial and conversion, catharsis and redemption, and the experiencing and witnessing of trauma. Topics also include the politics of remembering and the politics of representation, such as the problematic relationship between narrative, language, and representations of torture. Similarly under discussion are prison aesthetics of happiness, the role of spectacle in the criminal justice system, and the intersection of prison, gender, and silences. At a juncture when more and more people all over the world actively defy repressive regimes and demand political reform, this book makes a timely contribution to the advocacy and discourse of universal human rights.

The only book on Dovegate TC Contains first-hand insider accounts by staff and inmates Describes the latest developments in TC work Provides extensive data and references A closely observed account of the UK's first private sector prison-based Therapeutic Community (TC) - a 200-bed facility. The book considers: the background to and regimes at Dovegate; modern developments in TC work with (often high-risk) offenders; the differences between Dovegate, Grendon and other UK prison-based TCs; private and public sector imperatives; democratic and hierarchical TCs; reparative, restorative and punitive approaches; accreditation, group work, assessment, suitability and de-selection TC-culture versus prison culture the role of positive attitudes, relationships and experiences; psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, security and control; how TCs alter behaviour and prevent crime.

Theatre and performance practice has the power to make visible the hidden world of the prison. This book explores how theatre makers stage critical questions about prison in society - through specific texts and productions about prison, and theatre taking place in prisons. Theatre can, it argues, provoke much-needed public engagement with the very idea and politics of prison. Drawing on popular culture, dramatic texts and applied theatre, "Theatre & Prison" examines the link between performance and punishment, and illuminates the social, economic and cultural effects of incarceration.

As of 2007, more than 9.25 million people were imprisoned worldwide. Almost half of the persons imprisoned are in the United States, China and Russia. The United States has more persons in prison per capita than any country in the world. Prisons The World Over offers a comprehensive overview of prison demographics and conditions for each of the following countries: United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Israel, Egypt, Iran, Nigeria, South Africa, India, China, Japan, and Australia. The book includes reports on the number of prisoners, the rate per population, the percent of female prisoners, the number of penal institutions and their occupancy level, and the number of privately run prisons Also reported are the offenses for which the inmates are interred, the average length of incarceration, the availability of parole, conditions in the prisons, the availability of educational and work programs, provisions for children of female prisoners, the availability and quality of medical care, the characteristics of the prison staff, the visitation rights of prisoners, and the presence and treatment of political prisoners.

To an Antipodean, this book is at first a fascinating development of the New Zealand Prison System which includes the history of penology prior to the phenomenon coming to these shores. However, this book is not only a history: it is also an exploration of more complex managerial and social issues concerning crime and its treatment, including the interweaving of different penal policies that have brought us to where we are now. In this revised and enlarged edition, it draws on the reactions of many people imprisoned for reasons other than their criminality. By doing that it throws fresh light on the reactions of mankind in general to the loss of liberty. As a result, it raises psychological issues of isolation in all kinds of confinement, captivity, and deprivation that will appeal to everyone who is trying to grapple with the administrative, clinical, legal, and moral problems they create.

Americans are frustrated with prisons. They recognize the need for these institutions, but at the same time, they worry about whether the money used to build and maintain them is well spent. Older prisons are dirty, disgusting, and dangerous, but even newer facilities come up lacking in terms of offering inmates opportunities to take responsibility for their crimes, support their loved ones, further their education, learn job skills, and develop positive relationships in healthy, safe, respectful communities. This book provides insight into the philosophy of restorative justice, which aims to develop ways we can manage our prisons differently to achieve more positive outcomes. Using the case study of an honor dorm in a maximum security prison, the book posits that most of the inmates never learned the basic tools for living life productively and responsibly. They never thought much about their victims or how their actions affected others. They never learned how to get along with others, pick up after themselves, or how to be of service to their fellow man. Swanson uses the writings and reflections of inmates participating in a restorative justice program to demonstrate the challenges and transformative possibilities of this alternative approach to rehabilitation.

Punishment for Sale is the definitive modern history of private prisons, told through social, economic and political frames. The authors explore the origin of the ideas of modern privatization, the establishment of private prisons, and the efforts to keep expanding in the face of problems and bad publicity. The book provides a balanced telling of the story of private prisons and the resistance they engendered within the context of criminology, and it is intended for supplemental use in undergraduate and graduate courses in criminology, social problems, and race & ethnicity.

An uncompromising appraisal of the unique penal crisis affecting Britain and other Western-style democracies. Escalating resort to prisons, longer sentences, overcrowded and ineffective regimes, high rates of re-offending and eclectic penal policy all combine to fuel this crisis, whilst failing to reduce offending. In this new book, David J Cornwell, author of the acclaimed Criminal Punishment and Restorative Justice (ISBN 9781904380207), argues that the symptoms of this penal malaise are grounded in media sensationalism of crime and the need of politicians and their advisers to retain electoral credibility. Change is long overdue, but it requires a fresh, contemporary penology based on Restorative Justice. The book challenges the status quo, asks 'different questions' and places victims of crime at the centre of the criminal justice process. 'The reader is challenged to ask different questions about "true justice" in a book which provides true food for thought in well argued fashion': The Justices' Clerk 'This book offers a sustained argument for restorative justice, and should be heeded by politicians and practitioners alike. Whether either have the courage to take this way of thinking remains to be seen': Internet Law Book Reviews 'David Cornwell seeks to drill down into the key] issues. This book identifies the organizational stresses and strains, the target-setting, the policy "blips" and all the problems of trying to bring radical change to our criminal justice system': Sir Charles Pollard QPM Director, Restorative Solutions, former Chief Constable, Thames Valley Police Service 'An important and timely contribution to the literature': Mark S Umbreit. 'One of the leading writers in the restorative justice] campaign... intelligent and helpful... an urgent call to action particularly about the penal crisis which hangs permanently over this country's head': Justice of the Peace. David Cornwell is a criminologist and former prison governor with extensive experience of operational practice and consultancy within both state and privately managed sectors of correctional administration in a number of countries worldwide. His first book, Criminal Punishment and Restorative Justice, was published by Waterside Press in 2006.

In this autobiographical account of life as a prison governor and administrator, Tom Murtagh deals with life in charge of the Maze Prison, Northern Ireland (when he narrowly avoided being killed by a terrorist bomb) and his move to England that saw him in charge of prisons in Kent and elsewhere. This is when he was faced with a remarkable series of events at Blantyre House where a modern, liberal, ground-breaking and in many respects successful regime was beginning to attract the attention of reformers, academics and others. But that regime also masked more sinister developments - events that should ultimately have received serious attention from a House of Commons Select Committee set up to look into 'The Blantyre House Affair'. Only now - and after much reflection - does Tom Murtagh feel able to tell publicly his side of the affair: of how that committee chose to concentrate on selective and misleading information and 'got it wrong'. Despite all the accolades for Blantyre House, behind the scenes and in reality, the regime was being taken advantage of by a number of very serious offenders who had managed to get themselves transferred there such that the establishment was at risk of being overtaken by organized crime and corruption, leading to covert police and other criminal investigations. The book tells how the author acted to pre-empt this - only to be vilified by HM Inspectorate of Prisons, some penal reform groups and ultimately the committee. As Martin Narey the then Director General of HM Prison Service writes in his foreword, had the author not acted as he did to contain the regime's excesses it is likely that before long Parliament would have been calling for the resignations of Murtagh as Area Director, Narey as Area Director General and also the Home Secretary himself. "The Blantyre House Affair" is a telling example of how people can sometimes be swept along by events that may cause them to ignore those things that are counter or inconvenient to their own aims or interpretation; of how reality can sometimes be ignored.

The United States has long adhered to the rules regarding the treatment of prisoners as set forth by the Geneva Convention. Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, however, special prisons, such as Guantanomo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and other prisons located around the world that are referred to as "dark sites" were opened for the confinement and interrogation of suspected enemy combatants. Media outlets and books have partially exposed occurrences of various degrees of torture taking place in these facilities. These reports have generated a vigorous debate in the U.S. and the United Nations about the legality and morality of such treatments. This book presents recent analyses of these developments.

Under the auspices of a governmentally sanctioned "war on drugs," incarceration rates in the United States have risen dramatically since 1980. Increasingly, correctional administrators at all levels are turning to private, for-profit corporations to manage the swelling inmate population. Policy discussions of this trend toward prison privatization tend to focus on cost-effectiveness, contract monitoring, and enforcement, but in his Private Prisons in America, Michael A. Hallett reveals that these issues are only part of the story. Demonstrating that imprisonment serves numerous agendas other than "crime control," Hallett's analysis suggests that private prisons are best understood not as the product of increasing crime rates, but instead as the latest chapter in a troubling history of discrimination aimed primarily at African American men.

Images of Incarceration focuses on fictional portrayals of prison and prisoners to demonstrate how they are depicted in the cinema and on TV, featuring films such as The Shawshank Redemption, The Birdman of Alcatraz, Scum, McVicar, Brubaker, Cool Hand Luke, Made in Britain and Greenfingers as well as TV dramas like Porridge , Bad Girls , Buried and Oz. The book is part of the Prison Film Project sponsored by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation under its Rethinking Crime and Punishment initiative. It compares fictional representations with 'actual existing reality' to provide insights into how screen images affect understanding of complex social and penal issues: 'Is prison really as represented on screen, harsher, softer or different?'; 'Do viewers separate fact from fiction?'; and 'What might films tell us about the experiences of prisoners and whether prison reduces crime and protects victims?' As authors David Wilson and Sean O'Sullivan explain, prison may be violent and de-humanising but it makes for gripping drama and human interest. Most people know little about what really happens inside prison, so that as prison numbers in the UK and USA escalate as never before, the 'prison film' and 'TV prison drama' can have a significant influence on popular culture and attitudes towards penal reform. Informative, educational and illuminating, Images of Incarceration will be of value to anyone interested in the effect of screen representations on the democratic process, and in particular to people concerned with criminal justice, penal affairs, penal reform, sociology and the media. Reviews 'Fascinating for anyone who has even a passing interest in penal matters or film': Howard Journal of Criminal Justice Author David Wilson is professor of criminology at the Centre for Criminal Justice Policy and Research at the University of Central England in Birmingham. A former prison governor, he is editor of the Howard Journal and a well-known author, broadcaster and presenter for TV and radio, including for the BBC, C4 and Sky Television. He has written three other books for Waterside Press: The Longest Injustice: The Strange Story of Alex Alexandrowicz (with the latter), Prison(er) Education : Stories of Change and Transformation (with Ann Reuss) (2000), and Serial Killers: Hunting Britons and Their Victims 1960-2006 (2007).

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.

In this unique study, authors Komanduri Murty, Angela Owens, and Ashwin Vyas examine the life histories of Black male prisoners in the U.S. Federal Prison system to determine what patterns of behavior or life experiences influenced or precipitated their involvement in criminal behavior. The authors focus on Black male prisoners, using pre-sentence investigation reports to provide readers with detailed descriptions of prisoner characteristics. Through the use of lengthy interview processes, Murty, Owens, and Vyas investigate the phenomenology of Black male offenders, to give understanding to the circumstances under which their crimes were committed. Their study provides valuable lessons for rehabilitation through deterrence and rational theories of human behavior.

Despite the fact that 160,000 people are locked up in our federal correctional facilities, practical information about the federal prison system remains difficult to locate. While some information may be found scattered on the Internet, in directions given at court, or through shared personal experience, there is no single source available that is a collection of all available information. The U.S. Federal Prison System is the first comprehensive book to include official prison policies, first-person accounts from prisoners, and information about each federal facility. Now published in paperback, The U.S. Federal Prison System is perfect for classroom use as it interweaves the academic study of incarceration with a survey of government reports on prison policy. Organized into two parts, this book is an accessible text on the current U.S. federal prison system. Part I is an introduction to federal prison facilities, including key statistics and "views from the inside" provided by inmates of federal prisons. Part II is a look at the Federal Bureau of Prisons policies on various matters such as discipline, education, visits, and religious practices. Key Features A thorough overview of both prison policies and the federal facilities themselves with photos of selected prisons Part II consistently organizes historical background information followed by an account of current policies-with specific federal rules and regulations governing the policies to conclude each topical discussion Appendix A is the first comprehensive listing of every Federal prison in the U.S., complete with facility details and service information Commentary from prisoners-first-person accounts take the reader behind the walls The U.S. Federal Prison System is an ideal text for students studying corrections and penology in Criminal Justice, Criminology, Law, Social Work, Psychology, and Sociology. This book is also an excellent resource for families of inmates, researchers, and the general public.

"Don Reid", a cub reporter once wrote admiringly, "can see as much humanity in the messy murder of a shady lady as the coronation of a queen . . . ". Reid was a strong but gentle man, wise and compassionate, and his discerning eyes observed all the degradation and nobility mankind is heir to in his thirty-five years of covering the Texas prison system for the Huntsville Item and the Associated Press. For many years he was publisher of the Item and later in his life spent much of his time writing and making public speeches. Reid, who died in 1981, was survived by his widow, Frances. The late John Gurwell, who assisted Reid with the book, was a Houston writer whose daughter Kathy supported the reprinting of this book.

"When Don Reid published Eyewitness in 1973, the chronicle of his conversion from a supporter of the death penalty to an ardent opponent, the book was an immediate sensation. Perhaps never before in the history of the American penal system has a man witnessed more electrocutions than Reid, who as Associated Press and Huntsville Item representative watched 189 men die in 'Old Sparky, ' as the electric chair in the Texas Department of Corrections' death chamber was not so affectionately called. This book is a powerful personal account of Reid's conversations with many of the very men he later watched receive the eighteen hundred volts of electricity from generators reserved for electrocutions and his later, almost evangelical efforts to defend the men on Death Row from a similar fate.

"Zinoman makes original contributions on multiple fronts, including colonial systems; prisons as social institutions; political life in prison; public campaigns concerning prisons; and released prisoners in action. He also takes us beyond the colonial/anticolonial, nationalist/communist, and war/peace dichotomies that have long dominated Vietnam studies."--David Marr, author of "Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945"

"This is a wonderful, lucidly argued, and meticulously documented book."--Ann Stoler, author of "Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things"