Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Penology

Who should bear the financial and social costs of the consequences of crime? In answer to this question, this book offers a comprehensive review of the public and private benefits currently available to compensate victims for the losses suffered as a result of crime. The author analyzes the social philosophy and legislative policy behind such remedies as restitution, private insurance, and civil litigation, notes their histories and their limitations, and makes recommendations for ways that each can be improved.

Are advantaged offenders defenseless against the harshness of prison life? Based upon a qualitative study of the prison adjustment of advantaged offenders--those who, prior to prison, possessed college degrees and held high status occupations with commensurately high incomes--this book challenges the special sensitivity hypothesis and concludes that these offenders adjust well to incarceration. The author compared a group of advantaged offenders to a similar group of nonadvantaged offenders, both drawn from New York State prisons, and discovered that the advantaged offenders exhibited...

In the last two decades there has been an unprecedented increase in the use of imprisonment in the United States. This expansion of the imprisonment rate did not happen in the other Western democracies and, more importantly, it happened very unevenly among the fifty states. Professor Davey examines the change in the rate of imprisonment in relationship to the crime rate as well as six other socio-economic variables. Davey then examines a number of states in detail to assess the key factors that resulted in increased imprisonment.

Professor Davey concludes from the analyses that law and...

Attitudes toward the death penalty have changed dramatically throughout the course of history, evolving from times when public executions were occasions of solemn and pious ritual to excuses for raucous entertainment, and finally to the modern era of private, bureaucratized, mechanized, and sanitized executions that are out of sight and out of mind. Conforming thus to modern sensibilities, state-sanctioned killing is somehow more acceptable to us than public hangings would have been, because we can imagine that the inmate's death is relatively painless, and not in violation of the Eighth...

The death penalty is one of the country's most controversial issues. The fairness of its application is debated in coffeehouses, classrooms, political arenas, and the media. However, despite its representation in the media, most death cases receive surprisingly little national media attention. In fact, of the 1000 people executed in the United States since 1977, and the 3,500 inmates currently awaiting execution, only a handful of cases can be recalled by the public. Those that are memorable are so because only a few are dramatically represented in the media. Why is it that those that...

The death penalty remains one of the most controversial issues in the United States. Its proponents claim many things in their defense of its continued application. For example, they claim that it deters crime, that death by lethal injection is painless and humane, that it is racially neutral, and that it provides closure to families of the victims. In this comprehensive review of the major death penalty issues, the authors systematically dismantle each one of these myths about capital punishment in a hard-hitting critique of how our social, political, and community leaders have used fear...

Few state issues have attracted as much controversy and national attention as the application of the death penalty in Texas. In the years since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, Texas has led the nation in passing death sentences and executing prisoners. The vigor with which Texas has implemented capital punishment has, however, raised more than a few questions. Why has Texas been so fervent in pursuing capital punishment? Has an aggressive death penalty produced any benefits? Have dangerous criminals been deterred? Have rights been trampled in the process and, most importantly,...

Before Orange is the New Black, there was Inside.

American jails and prisons confine nearly 13.5 million people each year. Despite these disturbing numbers, little is known about life inside beyond the mythology of popular culture.

Michael G. Santos, a federal prisoner nearing the end of his second decade of continuous confinement, documents the lives of the men warehoused in the American prison system. Inside: Life Behind Bars in America, his first book for the general public, takes us behind those bars and into the chaos of the...

Hibbert tries to show by reference to history of punishments, to the reactions of those who suffered them or have been threatened by them, and to the endeavors of those who have concerned themselves with the criminal and the prevention of crime, that cruelty punishment has an inevitable tendency to produce cruelty in people.

Charles F. Abel and Frank H. Marsh propose an alternative to the present criminal justice system that they consider workable, efficient, and fair. They remind the reader that the criminal justice system is a political institution created by public demands and values and suggest that we must understand the basic identity of law, politics, and society if we hope to create a workable system. An effective criminal justice system, they argue, must be remedial and faciliatory and attempt to heal both victims and criminals. To accomplish this, the scope of what is legally relevant in criminal law...

This book is a comprehensive inquiry into the rehabilitation of criminal offenders and is based on extensive cross-cultural research on legal, ethical, philosophical, psychological, and sociological aspects of rehabilitation. Materials from these disciplines are integrated into a cohesive argument for a new concept of rehabilitation. Particularly innovative is the book's differentiation between various historical models that have been generally confounded until now, the distinction between an authoritarian and a liberty-centered concept of rehabilitation, the development of the latter into...

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the application of the new theory of contestable markets to the problem of the transition to deregulation in regulated industries. It offers an extensive review of both the theory and practice of contestable markets, as well as guidelines for the practical application of the theory to regulated industries and antitrust, with special consideration given to the problems of the rail industry. As applied in this industry, the theory promised to help balance the conflicting goals of regulatory transition and to define standards for revenue...

Prisons have undoubtedly changed over the years, as have penal practices in general, though more so in some countries than others. Prisons and prison systems have long been an overlooked part of criminal justice research, and as a result, limited material is available on many institutions. This comprehensive encyclopedia provides a historical overview of institutions and systems around the world, as well as penal theories, prisoner culture and life, and notable prisoners and personnel.

Readers will find a plethora of information including material on such famous prisons as the Tower of...

Over the last 30 years, a substantial literature on the history of American and European prisons has developed. This collection is among the first in English to construct a history of prisons in Africa. Topics include precolonial punishments, living conditions in prisons and mining camps, ethnic mapping, contemporary refugee camps, and the political use of prison from the era of the slave trade to the Rwandan genocide of 1994.