This book examines the extent to which criminal desistance - 'the change process involved in the ending of criminal behaviour' - is affected by personal and social circumstances which are place specific. Grounded in criminological spatial analysis, as well as more general social scientific investigations of the role of space and place in contemporary social, economic and cultural life, it examines why large numbers of prisoners in the United States and the United Kingdom appear to be drawn from - and after release return to - certain urban neighbourhoods. In doing so Criminal Behaviour in Context assesses the effect of this unique life course experience on the pathways and choices open to ex-prisoners who attempt to give up crime. Including new data on the geographical distribution of offenders, interviews with serving prisoners, and drawing on theories about social context, identity and subjectivity, it discusses the implications of the evidence and arguments presented for prisoner reintegration policy and practice.

This book examines the extent to which criminal desistance - 'the change process involved in the ending of criminal behaviour' - is affected by personal and social circumstances which are place specific. Grounded in criminological spatial analysis, as well as more general social scientific investigations of the role of space and place in contemporary social, economic and cultural life, it examines why large numbers of prisoners in the United States and the United Kingdom appear to be drawn from - and after release return to - certain urban neighbourhoods. In doing so Criminal Behaviour in Context assesses the effect of this unique life course experience on the pathways and choices open to ex-prisoners who attempt to give up crime. Including new data on the geographical distribution of offenders, interviews with serving prisoners, and drawing on theories about social context, identity and subjectivity, it discusses the implications of the evidence and arguments presented for prisoner reintegration policy and practice.

Guernica is an award-winning online magazine of ideas, art, poetry and fiction published twice monthly. The contributors come from dozens of countries and write in nearly as many languages. This annual collects the best of Guernica's published features, interviews, fiction and poetry of 2015.

Covering all the key topics across the subject of Penology, this book gives you the tools you need to delve deeper and critically examine issues relating to prisons and punishment.

The second edition: explores prisons and punishment within national, international and comparative contexts, and draws upon contemporary case studies throughout to illustrate key themes and issues includes new sections on actuarial justice, proportionality, sentencing principles, persistent offending, rehabilitation, and abolitionist approaches to punishment features a companion website directing you towards relevant journal articles and web links.

The book also includes a useful study skills section which guides you through essay writing and offers hints and tips on how you can get the most out of your lectures and seminars. This is the perfect primer for all undergraduate students of Criminology taking modules on Prisons and Punishment or Penology.

“Where is your wound?� asks Jean Genet in the lines Laurent Mauvignier uses as an epigraph to The Wound. By the time we have finished this four-part novel, we realize that for many the wound lies four decades back in “the Events� that people have tried to not talk about ever since: the Algerian War.   Chronicling the lives of two cousins—Bernard and Rabut—both in the present and at the time of the Algerian War of Independence in the 1960s, we get a full picture of the lasting effects this event had on the men who were involved. Through the fragments of their stories we see the whole history of the war: its atrocities, its horrors, and its hatreds. Mauvignier shows readers how the Algerian War, always present yet always repressed, has sickened the emotional and moral life of everyone it touched—and France itself, perhaps. The epigraph, like the novel, suggests that wounded men may even become the wound itself.    

In this first play from the award-winning memoirist and poet Nick Flynn, four strangers meet during a blackout on a New York City sidewalk. Gideon finds himself locked out of his apartment, stranded on the street with nothing but a television and the company of three individuals, each mysterious in their own way: the specter-like Alice, ringleader of the neighborhood; Esra, a fifteen-year-old girl whose mother is MIA--again; and Ivan, a stranded businessman trying to make his way home. As Gideon makes futile attempts to break into an apartment that may or may not be his, an unsettling connection between Ivan and Esra develops while Alice and Gideon look on helplessly. Unable to make sense of their predicament, let alone alter it, the four float aimlessly in and out of seeming reality only to find themselves more lost when the electricity finally comes back on.

Once again exploring the tenuous membrane that separates comfortable, everyday existence from the desperate margins of society, Flynn portrays an urban dystopia disturbingly similar to our own world while poignantly tapping into the loneliness and peril of city life.

"James Shea brings us to the edge of the unknown and points into the darkness, until our eyes adjust and we see that he is pointing at himself, already there. These poems make me wish I had the same dreams Shea has; after reading this book it seems possible--anything does."--Nick Flynn

In this razor-edged memoir Nick Flynn tells the inventive, heart-breaking and at times darkly comic story of an unconventional reunion between father and son. Nick Flynn met his estranged father at the age of 27 while working in a notorious homeless shelter in Boston. This impromptu meeting forces Flynn to reflect on his family history. Is there any truth to his father's claims to be the greatest living American novelist since Mark Twain and a direct descendant of the Romanov dynasty, or that his grandfather invented the life raft? Another Bullshit Night in Suck City tells the story of Nick's early life with his mother as she struggled to keep the fractured family together, and the eerie transient life that led his father onto the streets. It is a remarkable story of sreconciliation against the odds through the enduring strength of one boy's struggle for survival.

"The Writer's Notebook" combines the best craft seminars from the Summer Writers Workshop's history with craft essays by some of Tin House's favorite authors and features a list of contributors that reads like a veritable who's who of contemporary poets and prose writers. Jim Shepard, Aimee Bender, Steve Almond, D. A. Powell, Chris Offutt, and others distill elements of writing and share insights into the joys and pains of their own work. They explore a wide range of topics, everything from writing dialogue to the do's and don'ts of writing about sex. With how-tos, close readings, and personal anecdotes, "The Writer's Notebook" offers aspiring wordsmiths advice and inspiration to hone their own craft. Included is a CD of workshop discussions and panels

This striking, oversized book, designed to evoke encyclopedias, is a highly creative amalgam of collage with a political bent and poetry. From 2011 to 2012, American artist Mel Chin (b. 1951) extracted all of the images from a twenty-five-volume set of Funk & Wagnall's Universal Standard Encyclopedia (ca. 1953-56) and began visually re-editing. Thousands of images rendered by photomechanical reproduction that served a populist, mid-century encyclopedia are reconfigured with 21st-century hindsight and idiosyncratic connections that convey social and artistic commentaries. Surrealism, humor, sarcasm, politics, history, and beauty permeate these sometimes raucous, often confounding, but consistently stunning images. Over 500 black-and-white collages are accompanied by twenty-five poems, one per encyclopedia volume, commissioned by Chin and author Nick Flynn specifically for this publication. Writers range from the well-known to the surprising. The Funk & Wag from A to Z offers mischievous fun with pointed commentary and hilarity. Distributed for The Menil Collection