Recent changes in local government have been greater and faster than ever. The fifth edition of this leading local government text - comprehensively revised up to and including the 2010 general election - evaluates the changes under Labour and provides an accessible and informed insight into the new government's agenda.

This work stems from frustration: a frustration born of successive governments' insistence that prison works; a frustration born of the knowledge of the realities of crime and punishment, and lastly, the kind of society we are becoming when we continue to police and incarcerate at the rate we do. Since the publication of the first edition a real debate has begun about the war on drugs, and whilst we have continued to imprison at a rate higher than our European neighbours this book remains one of the few voices raised in opposition.

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...

Serial Killers looks at every serial murder in Britain from the 'gay murders' of Michael Copeland in 1960 to the Ipswich murders of 2006 and from a victim-related perspective. Informed by direct experience of his work with serial killers, David Wilson's investigations identify people from vulnerable groups as being most at risk from Hunting Britons: elderly people, women involved in prostitution, gay men, runaways, throwaways, and children and kids moving from place to place. His book also looks at the phenomenon of serial killing in the context of 40 years of change in social attitudes,...

David Wilson is one of the UK's best-known and most innovative criminologists. An 'insider' view of the construction of a news agenda for crime and punishment. This superb read from Professor David Wilson looks at how the -news- agenda for crime and punishment is constructed. It also contains analysis of media stereotypes, narratives and depictions together with insights connecting these to real life. Media portrayals set the agenda for public discourse and popular debate. Academics in their 'ivory towers', professionals and other crime experts ignore this at the risk of seeing their more...

Church and Chapel in Industrializing Society: Anglican Ministry and Methodism in Shropshire, 1760-1785 envelopes a new and provocative revisionist history of Methodism and the Church of England in the eighteenth century, challenging the Church's perception as a varied body with myriad obstacles which it dutifully and substantially confronted (if not always successfully) through the maintenance of an ecclesiastically and theologically rooted pastoral ideal. This model was lived out 'on the ground' by the parish clergy, many of whom were demonstrably innovative and conscientious in...