Criminal Women tells the stories of four women who, in attempting to become women of their own making, became deeply involved in crime.

Throughout the book, tales from the underworld and the criminal business world are interspersed with inside accounts of life in the women's prisons - Holloway, Styal's 'Bleak House', Durham's H. Wing, Askham Grange, Pucklechurch and Bullwood Hall.

These stories of criminal women are vivid chronicles of the times in which they have lived. They will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the diversity of ways in which women cope...

This book, written by two leading authorities in the field, provides an introduction to the issues surrounding women's imprisonment.

In both the UK and the rest of the world there have been rapid increases in the numbers of women in prison, which has led to an acceleration of interest in women's crimes and the social control of women, and women's experience of both prison and the criminal justice system is very different to men's. This text is concerned to address the key issues relating to women's imprisonment, contributing at the same time to an understanding of prison issues in general and the historical and contemporary politics of gender and penal justice. What are women's prisons for? What are they like? Why are lone...

This book is concerned to explore the idea of imaginary penalities and to understand why the management of criminal justice and criminal justice systems has so often reached crisis point. Its underlying theme is that when political strategies of punitive populism are combined with managerialist techniques of social auditing, a new all-encompassing form of governance has emerged - powerless to deliver what it promises but with a momentum of its own and increasingly removed from proper democratic accountability. A highly distinguished international group of contributors explores this set of...

This book is concerned to explore the idea of imaginary penalities and to understand why the management of criminal justice and criminal justice systems has so often reached crisis point. Its underlying theme is that when political strategies of punitive populism are combined with managerialist techniques of social auditing, a new all-encompassing form of governance has emerged - powerless to deliver what it promises but with a momentum of its own and increasingly removed from proper democratic accountability.
A highly distinguished international group of contributors explores this set of...

In the last decade there has been growing international concern about the increasing numbers of women in prison, the effects that imprisonment has on their children, the realisation that gaoled women have different criminal profiles and rehabilitative needs to male prisoners, and the seeming intractability of the associated problems. In response there has been an overarching policy concern in many countries to fashion and co-ordinate gender-specific policies towards female offenders which aim both to slow down the rate of their offending and/or imprisonment, and also to engender flexible...

Pat Carlen's compelling and compassionate analysis of the penal control of women at the end of the twentieth century is based on new research completed in 1997. She develops many of the themes of previous work, while introducing new concepts such as 'gender-testing', and 'ameliorative justice'. Skilfully and vividly presenting 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.

Explores the ethnography of truancy in its educational, political, legal, economic and ideological contexts. This text attempts to discover how absences may be construed, what absentees from school actually do, and who is responsible for them.

First published in 1979, Official Discourse is an unofficial report of theoretical investigations into a specific state of practice- the publication of reports of official inquiries into law, order and justice issues. The commissions, tribunals and committees of inquiry scrutinized in this book examine problems arising from wrongful imprisonment, police corruption, industrial picketing, and communal rioting and internment in Northern Ireland. Focusing on the reasons why government reports take the form they do, the authors venture into the areas of linguistics, psychoanalysis and Marxism....

Alternative Criminologies celebrates a kaleidoscopic process of permanent critique and a diversity of social and scientific knowledges. It examines complex and global crime issues in light of the many alternative scientific, artistic, empathetic, campaigning and otherwise imaginative criminologies that attempt to understand and/or fundamentally change why crime and justice take the forms they do.

From cutting edge topics such as crimes against humanity, the criminology of mobility, terrorism, cybercrime, corporate crime and green criminology; to gendered...