Public and political interest in issues of crime and punishment in Ireland has grown substantially in recent years. However, the debate tends to be poorly informed and rarely rises above the level of hollow rhetoric. This is an area where important decisions are made in a vacuum. Rhetoric and reaction, rather than reason and principle, are the primary forces shaping criminal justice policy.



Over the past five years the official crime rate has declined sharply. This has been offered as support for the politics of zero tolerance. However there is a range of alternative...

Prisons are dangerous places, and assaults, threats, theft and verbal abuse are pervasive - attributable both to the characteristics of the captive population and to an institutional sub culture which promotes violence as a means of resolving conflicts.

This book examines the ongoing market for child pornography and its ramifications for criminal justice systems around the world. It is based on an extensive review of academic literature and newspaper coverage, a sampling of websites frequented by those with a sexual interest in children, a survey of how police investigate these offenses, the examination of prosecutors' decisions, and interviews with judges. It provides a framework for understanding the contemporary nature of this problem, especially the harms it causes, its intimate relationship with new technologies, and the challenges it...

Prisons are dangerous places - assaults and threats are pervasive - this is attributable to the characteristics of the captive population and an institutional culture which promotes violence. This title seeks to address this issue.

This book provides an overview of the incarceration of tens of thousands of men, women and children during the first fifty years of Irish independence. Psychiatric hospitals, mother and baby homes, Magdalen homes, reformatory and industrial schools, prisons and borstal formed a network of institutions of coercive confinement that was integral to the emerging state. The book, now available in paperback after performing superbly in hardback, provides a wealth of contemporaneous accounts of what life was like within these austere and forbidding places as well as offering a compelling explanation...

Examining two overlapping aspects of the prison experience that, despite their central importance, have not attracted the scholarly attention they deserve, this book assesses both the degree to which prisoners can withstand the rigours of solitude and how they experience the passing of time. In particular, it looks at how they deal with the potentially overwhelming prospect of a long, or even indefinite, period behind bars.
While the deleterious effects of penal isolation are well known, little systematic attention has been given to the factors associated with surviving, and even...

The book is a work of criminal justice history that speaks to the emergence of a more humane Irish state - a close examination of the decision to grant clemency to those sentenced to death between 1923 and 1990, addressing important issues of law and penology that are of continuing relevance for countries that use capital punishment.