Prisons and Punishment

From Margaret Thatcher’s first government to austerity politics, Ian Cummins traces changing attitudes to imprisonment and the social state. With fresh insights and critical thinking, he demonstrates how increasingly punitive approaches to crime and welfare have shaped the neoliberal economy and created stigma around those living in poverty.

This timely and unique contribution brings together leading scholars from criminology and theology to challenge criminal justice orthodoxy. They question the dominance of retributive punishment, and consider alternatives which draw on Christian ideas of hope, mercy and restoration.

As marketisation and privatisation reshape the criminal justice system, this illuminating overview sets out their causes, scale and impacts.

With case studies and economic, sociological and criminological perspectives, leading academics consider the evolving roles of public, private and voluntary sectors and possible future reforms.

The first authoritative volume to look back on the last 50 years of The Open University providing higher education to those in prison, this unique book gives voice to ex-prisoners whose lives have been transformed by the education they received, offering vivid personal testimonies, reflective vignettes and academic analysis of education in prison.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Using case studies and a strengths-based approach Best puts forward a new recovery and reintegration model for substance users and offenders leaving prison which emphasizes the importance of long-term recovery and the role that communities and peers play in the process.

Prison suicides reached a record high in 2016 in England and Wales. Provides the first detailed case study of the investigations that follow prison suicides with findings relevant at a global level.

Focusing on one of the most interesting developments in UK prisons over the past 10 years, this book examines the early history of the Prison Radio Association and the formation of the first national radio station for prisoners. It shows how a relatively small-scale media activism came to be an intrinsic part of prison culture.

The Short Guide to Criminal Justice provides a comprehensive, yet concise, introduction to the criminal justice system in the United Kingdom. It includes many student-friendly features such as case study boxes, tables showing key facts and figures and links to data sources and further reading.

This book is the first to bring together international research on evidence-based skills and practices in probation and youth justice in the public, private and voluntary sectors. Wide-ranging in scope, it also covers effective approaches to working with ethnic minority service users, women and young people.

Offering a succinct approach to the vocabulary and terminology of historical and contemporary approaches to crime and punishment, it includes concise but robust definitions of key terms and concepts from expert contributors in a user-friendly A-Z format with clear direction to related entries and further reading.

This book is the first to consider the history of solitary confinement and how it is experienced by the individuals undergoing it. It provides first-hand accounts of the inhumane experience of solitary confinement to provide a better appreciation of the relationship between penal strategy and its effect on human beings.

This book explores the politics of modernisation and transformation of probation in the criminal justice system. It draws upon innovative social theories and moral perspectives to analyse changes in the probation service and makes a timely contribution to criminal justice and probation theory.