Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Penology

As new and more virulent articulations of imprisonment, policing, and surveillance have grown over the past decade, one thing remains clear: the prison industrial complex must be abolished. Critical Resistance is a leading voice in the movement for abolition and the pieces in this collection are powerful tools for both long-time activists and those brand new to the movement for abolition now Angela Y. Davis, author of "Are Prisons Obsolete?"

The number of people in prison in the United States has risen 400 percent in the last twenty years the world s highest incarceration rate. Over...

John T. Whitehead analyzes the extent and causes of job burnout in probation officers and correctional officers. Challenging models of burnout that focus on individual-level causes, Whitehead demonstrates that the findings support an organization model of the sources of job burnout -- a finding that has significant implications for managerial policy aimed at reducing burnout. Further, Whitehead shows that while burnout appears to be a serious problem for a sizeable minority of workers, it is not a problem for the majority. Ideal as supplemental reading for courses in criminal justice,...

A distinguished scholar has responded to generic issues of probation's function during a period of growing emphasis on punishment and incarceration for criminal behavior. Primary concern is with present criminal justice perspectives on felons that affect probation activities. This thoughtful book reviews the literature, particularly Petersilia and Rand Corporation research, and poses critical correctional questions. . . . Sensitive to current conceptual ambiguity, Champion carefully defines key terms consistently used to develop perspectives on offenders' dispositions. Although the...

This is the first comprehensive and up-to-date study of how inmates and their wives cope with incarceration and to what extent conjugal visit programs help their marriages. The findings of a family support program in upper New York State compares different groups and has implications for social welfare and corrections professionals.

The authors review the historical background of family support programs for prison inmates, the related literature, and raise questions about the kinds of policies, programs, and services that affect inmates and their families. They point to the effects of...

This comprehensive examination of the effectiveness of prisons is virtually alone in showing that prisons are moderately effective in achieving specific and general deterrence and collective and selective incapacitation. Wright provides evidence which defends prisons as important social institutions and argues that noninterventionist alternative measures are less likely to prevent crime than conventional imprisonment policies. He also offers sentencing recommendations that may maximize the effectiveness of prisons as agents of social control. This up-to-date assessment is required reading...

Punishing Criminals is about sentencing theory and policy and the attempt to identify punishments other than imprisonment. Davies argues for the need to develop more credible and effective community-based intermediate sanctions that have the confidence of the public and the officials in the criminal system. He shows how focus groups can be used to improve the process of consultation. He sees the need to locate sentencing policy decisions within the wider context of the criminal justice process and presents empirical evidence from ten years study of the California criminal justice system....

In recent years, the field of psychology has seen an increasing interest in the aftereffects of psychological trauma. Work has been published that examines the psychological sequelae of rape, incest, combat, natural disaster, fire, and, in a few cases, hostage-taking. This is the first book that takes a long-term perspective, by asking questions such as:

How did survivors view their experience through the lens of time? Were there any positive effects associated with the experience? The author examines how hostage victims perceive their victimization, and how they go about the task of...

This critical perspective on prison education is a marked departure from a literature dominated by descriptions of the criminal mind and correctional education strategies to cure it. Davidson's contributors are prisoners or former prisoners who finished their schooling in prison, some taking advanced degrees, or social scientists who taught in prisons but are not professional correctional educators. Conventionally, prison education is about correcting cognitive deficiencies and improving job opportunities. Here the issues are schooling as surveillance, as politics, and as a means to...

John Irwin writes about prisons from an unusual academic perspective. Before receiving a Ph.D. in sociology, he served five years in a California state penitentiary for armed robbery. This is his sixth book on imprisonment - an ethnography of prisoners who have served more than twenty years in a California correctional institution. The purpose of the book is to take issue with the conventional wisdom on homicide, society's purposes of imprisonment, and offenders' reformability. Through the lifers' stories, he reveals what happens to prisoners serving very long sentences in correctional...

In the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, African Americans made up approximately twelve percent of the United States population but close to forty percent of the United States prison population. Now, in the latter half of the decade, the nation is in the midst of the largest multi-year discharge of prisoners in its history. In Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities, Anthony C. Thompson discusses what is likely to happen to these ex-offenders and why.

For Thompson, any discussion of ex-offender reentry is, de facto, a question of race. After laying...