James A. Paluch, Jr., is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole. In this remarkably perceptive book, he offers the reader a detailed account of the daily realities of prison life in its mundane essentials, from the culture of the cellblock to the etiquette of the yard and the mess hall. The book also highlights concepts of prisonization, institutionalization, and the community, as well as the nature of modern punishment.
Here, Paluch walks us through a complicated, sometimes treacherous culture behind bars, a place where manipulation and deception often rule. He introduces...

The Cycle of Juvenile Justice takes a historical look at juvenile justice policies in the United States. Tracing a pattern of policies over the past 200 years, the book reveals cycles of reforms advocating either lenient treatment or harsh punishments for juvenile delinquents. Bernard and Kurlychek see this cycle as driven by several unchanging ideas that force us to repeat, rather than learn from, our history. This timely new edition provides a substantial update from the original, incorporating the vast policy changes from the 1990s to the present, and placing these changes in...